Thomas O'Brien Butler

Thomas O'Brien Butler (3 November 1861 – 7 May 1915; lost on the Lusitania), Irish composer whose chief claim to fame is the Irish-language opera Muirgheis (1903).

O'Brien Butler, as he was generally known, was born in Caherciveen, County Kerry, the youngest child of Pierce Butler (c.1804-1873), a shopkeeper in the village, and Ellen Webb (c.1818-1876). There is no source for his correct surname. Baker's Dictionary indicates that his surname was Whitwell; when he registered at the Royal College of Music in London, his name was noted as Thomas Whitwell-Butler. He does not seem to have been directly related to another O'Brien Butler family from Ireland who lost three brothers in World War I.

Before going to London he grew up in an environment steeped in traditional music. His musical education began in Italy, but it is not known when and where exactly. He enrolled at the Royal College of Music in February 1897 at the rather advanced age of 35 and stayed for three terms only, studying composition with Charles Villiers Stanford and Walter Parratt. Baker's Dictionary also says that Butler travelled extensively and spent some time in India, where his opera Muirgheis was written, but it is not certain whether these travels took place before or after his London studies. A song composition published in Dublin in 1900 is dedicated to "His Highness Rajendrah Singh, Maharajah of Patiala" (see 'Selected works'). In an obituary, the Kerry Evening Post confirms that Muirgheis was written in Kashmir, northern India. After around 1900 he mainly lived in Kilmashogue, in the mountains above Rathfarnham, Dublin, in a house he had called Muirgheis.

Butler died during World War I, when a German torpedo hit the passenger vessel Lusitania on 7 May 1915 just off the southern Irish coast near Kinsale. Butler was on his way back from New York. Baker's Dictionary (1958 edition) claimed that he was on his way home from a concert performance of Muirgheis in New York, while other sources suggest he was returning from making "tentative arrangements for the production of his opera the following year". A photograph of the composer from the Cork Examiner, 11 May 1915, was reprinted in a 2004 documentary book. The Evening Ledger newspaper reported on 8 April 1915 under a photo of a moustachioed O'Brien Butler in a fez that "He wrote the music for the first purely Irish opera which has been produced in this country".

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