English Idyll No. 2

Composer: BUTTERWORTH, George
  • From Two English Idylls,1 which Butterworth composed in 1910-1911. The set was first performed in Oxford in 1912.2
  • An idyll is a musical work “evoking the quality of pastoral or rustic life” (Harvard Dictionary of Music), the name derived from a pastoral literary genre.3
  • Both English Idylls are rhapsodies based on folk tunes Butterworth collected in Sussex. In English Idyll no. 2, one tune is quoted: “Phoebe and the dark-eyed sailor”4
  • Listen for: a canon between solo violin and solo clarinet, which closes the piece.5

Sources

  1. Stephen Banfield, “Butterworth, George,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed August 14, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000004467.
  2. Michael Kennedy, “Two English Idylls,” Hyperion Records (2003), August 14, 2019, https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dw.asp?dc=W20226_134103.
  3. Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th ed., s.v. “Idyll” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).
  4. Kennedy, “Two English Idylls,” Hyperion Records.
  5. Ibid.

Cut IDs

10625, 21419