Rutland Boughton(1878-1960)

Rutland Boughton was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire and was taught by Stanford and Walford Davies at the Royal College of Music. For a while he was professor of singing and taught music at the Birmingham Institute of Music under Granville Bantock, later moving to Glastonbury. He is best known for his music-drama "The Immortal Hour" (which includes the popular "Faery Song") and for establishing and directing the original Glastonbury Festivals from 1914 until 1926 which won him support from George Bernard Shaw, Henry Wood and Thomas Beecham, among others. He composed in almost every musical genre including opera, symphony, concerti, chamber and choral music and song. Boughton fell out of favour when he insisted on staging his very popular Coventry Nativity choral-drama "Bethlehem" in Westminster, London, in support of the Miners Lockout of 1926. From 1927 until his death in 1960, Boughton lived at Kilcot, near Newent in Gloucestershire where he completed the last two operas of his Cycle of Arthurian Music-Dramas ("Avalon" and "Galahad", which to this day have never been performed) and produced some of his finest works, the quality of which has only been realised within the past 20 years.
For more information visit www.rutlandboughtonmusictrust.org