Arthur Butterworth

Arthur Eckersley Butterworth, MBE (4 August 1923, New Moston – 20 November 2014, Embsay) was an English composer, conductor, trumpeter and teacher.

Butterworth was born in New Moston, near Manchester. His father was secretary of the local church choir. His mother played the piano and Butterworth himself sang in the choir. For the grand entrance fee of sixpence, young Butterworth attended Hallé concerts and volunteered for the village brass band who allocated him the trombone. While still a teenager he played with the noted band at Besses o' th' Barn and started taking conducting lessons. While playing with the band, he caught his trombone in tram tracks and, discouraged by the accident, changed to the trumpet.

His music teacher at North Manchester Grammar School, Percy Penrose, gave him much encouragement but his parents and headmaster tried to dissuade him from a full-time career. Five years in the wartime Army gave little scope for music-making but Arthur more than made up for it afterwards. In 1939, however, he won the Alexander Owen Scholarship for young brass players and had his first work played in public by the Wingates Band conducted by Granville Bantock. He had no idea at the time how famous he was nor that he was a friend of Sibelius whom he revered! Nevertheless, the great man said kindly “If you try hard enough maybe one day you’ll grow up to be a proper composer.” At the Royal Manchester College of Music (now the Royal Northern College of Music), he studied composition with Richard Hall and also learned the trumpet and conducting. He studied composition with Ralph Vaughan Williams after writing to the composer in 1950, requesting lessons. He served as a trumpeter in the Scottish National Orchestra (now the Royal Scottish National Orchestra) from 1949–55 and in the Hallé from 1955–62; he also played as a freelance until 1963. In that year he began to teach at the Huddersfield School of Music, an activity which he combined with composing and conducting. He was made an MBE in 1995. He was unrelated to the composer George Butterworth (1885–1916).

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