Arthur Butterworth

1975-1984

Arthur Butterworth was born in New Moston, Manchester on 4 August 1923. Although his first experience of music was as a choirboy, he believes it was the sound of a brass band playing in a park which influenced his eventual preoccupation with all aspects of music-making. He soon joined the local St. Chad’s Church Brass Band, thereby initiating a lifelong involvement with brass, and later became a member of Culcheth Military Band at Newton Heath and Street Fold Methodist Band, Moston. He began to compose at the age of ten and this creative side of his personality was later encouraged by a school music master. In 1939, he was awarded the prestigious Alexander Owen Memorial Fund scholarship which set him on his path towards becoming a professional musician. One short-term consequence of this award was his admission to the ranks of the Besses o’ th’ Barn Band. In 1942, having just passed the BBCM examination in brass band conducting, he began war service in the British Army. From 1947 to 1949 he studied composition with Richard Hall at the Royal Manchester College of Music (now the Royal Northern College of Music), where he also received trumpet and conducting tuition. Disillusioned with lack of opportunities for orchestral playing at the RMCM, he left college a year early to begin his professional career with the Scottish Orchestra, precursor to the present-day RNSO; here, he became an unofficial assistant conductor in addition to playing the trumpet. Six years later he returned to his native Manchester to join the Hallé Orchestra as trumpeter under Sir John Barbirolli. He left in 1962 to spend more time on composition and teaching. In 1964, he took up the post of permanent conductor of the Huddersfield Philharmonic Society, a position he held for thirty years. During this period he appeared as guest conductor with many other orchestras, especially the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC Scottish and BBC Concert Orchestras, with whom he has performed several of his own works; recently he has recorded a number of his most important large-scale pieces with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

Now entering his eighth decade as a creative artist, he has written over one hundred and fifty works for a variety of musical forces, his unique sound-world having proved sufficiently flexible to encompass imposing large-scale orchestral pieces, intimate chamber and instrumental works and a significant body of writing for brass band. A practical musician, he has written the majority of his work as the result of a commission, often by individual musicians confident he will provide a piece for their instrument or ensemble that is both idiomatic and challenging.

Prolific and hardworking, Butterworth has maintained a fiercely independent approach to his craft, developing and honing a distinctive style for over sixty years. He has trusted his instincts and remained loyal to his acknowledged influences, always citing Sibelius and the English tradition as his principal muses. His early works were strongly influenced by Hindemith and Vaughan Williams and it was not until the First Symphony (1957) that his own voice fully emerged. Premiered by Barbirolli and the Hallé at the 1957 Cheltenham Festival, this passionate and vivid depiction of the Highlands of Scotland was the culmination of Butterworth’s previous creative output and the work which put his name on the musical map.

Since then he has written many other large-scale orchestral compositions, including five more symphonies (1965, 1979, 1986, 2003 and 2006) and concertos for bassoon, organ, violin, viola, cello, guitar and trumpet: of these, the very fine Viola Concerto of 1983 (Dutton CDLX 7212) is his most personal statement, whilst the inventive Guitar Concerto (2000) has a sultry, Latin flavour unusual from this habitually North-facing composer. The impressive Piano Trio of 1983 (Dutton CDLX 7164), written at the behest of Sir John Manduell is the jewel in the crown of his chamber music, proving his ability to adapt a naturally epic mode of expression for small-scale forces. A Moorland Symphony (1967) and Haworth Moor, for chorus and piano accompaniment (2000) are amongst the most notable works in his select vocal output.

Some of his most successful pieces in any genre were written for brass band, and they rank amongst the most challenging, both technically and musically, in the literature. His experienced ear as a trumpet player has undoubtedly contributed to the international success of pieces such as Three Impressions for Brass (1968), Odin, a brilliant and powerful symphony for brass (commissioned by Black Dyke in 1986 and selected as test piece for the National Championships of 1989) and Caliban, a ‘scherzo malevolo’ written for the Brighouse and Rastrick Band (1978). Other major works for the genre include the Passacaglia on a theme of Brahms, Paen and a stunning transcription of Brahms’ Variations on a theme by Handel, Op.24 (spectacularly recorded by Black Dyke on the Doyen label: DOYCD 130). These compositions all benefit from the experienced ear of an accomplished trumpet player, whilst reflecting the composer’s two main influences: Sibelius and all aspects of the northlands: art, literature, landscape and culture. These twin inspirations lie behind his most characteristic utterances such as A Dales Suite of 1965 (test piece for the National Youth Band Championships of 1972) and his popular orchestral piece, The Path Across the Moors (1959), a delicately evocative miniature tone poem he later arranged for brass band.

A hard-hitting article written for the Music in Education journal in 1970 entitled ‘The Brass Band - A Cloth Cap Joke?’ provoked a strong reaction in band circles. In addition to deriding what he considered to be an unhealthy preoccupation with competition, it outlined his honest, strongly-held belief in the need for more distinguished repertoire for brass bands incorporating works of symphonic stature rather than merely transcriptions of ‘pot boilers’ and novelty items. One unexpected outcome of this article was an invitation from Geoffrey Brand, then music adviser of the National Youth Brass Band, to appear as guest conductor at one of the band’s summer residential courses. In 1975 Butterworth succeeded Brand as music adviser and chief conductor of the NYBB.

During his tenure, he instituted some radical changes, introducing baroque brass music for smaller groups and sanctioning the formation of a choir by the senior housemaster as a further contrast to the habitual all-brass sound. Repertoire was expanded and enriched to encompass his own arrangements of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro and Sibelius’ The Tempest. In addition to programming standard brass band classics such as Elgar’s A Severn Suite, Holst’s A Moorside Suite and John Ireland’s A Downland Suite, he commissioned major contemporary pieces such as Richard Steinitz’s Tableaux of the Heraldic Animals and Paul Patterson’s Cataclysm. He also invited guest conductors, including Sir Vivian Dunn. Though Roy Newsome succeeded him in the NYBB in 1984, he remains one of the band’s vice-presidents.

Arthur Butterworth’s contribution to the world of brass, though considerable, is but a part of his wider achievements in the field of music. This is the result of an integral approach to his craft whereby he lavishes as much attention to detail on a brass band piece as on a major symphony. It is this fiercely held, inspiring belief in the maintenance of the highest standards in all branches of music-making which is perhaps his greatest legacy to the brass band movement.