George Butterworth was born in London in 1885 and was killed in action in 1916 at the age of thirty-one. He won a Foundation Scholarship at Eton at the age of fourteen and went to Oxford in 1904, where he studied under
Sir Hugh Allen. After leaving Oxford he became an assistant master at
Radley and studied for a year at the Royal College of Music.
One of his chief interests was folk dancing, and the influence of folk music showed itself prominently in his music.