Brown Plaque - 37 Buckingham St - Aylesbury - UK Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

Brown Plaque inscription reads

Erected by The Aylesbury Society
For the Golden Jubilee 2002

37 Buckingham Street
Rutland Boughton
1878-1960
English Composer
and Socialist
lived here.
Formerly Boughton's
General Grocers

Sponsored by
Aylesbury Town Council
Aylesbury Vale District Council


Taken from www.rutlandboughtonmusictrust.org.uk

Rutland Boughton was born in Aylesbury on 23 January 1878. After studying with Sir Charles V Stanford and Walford Davies at the Royal College of Music, he spent some years as repetiteur at the Haymarket Theatre in London before eventually being offered a permanent teaching post by Sir Granville Bantock at the then Birmingham and Midland Institute of School of Music. There he established himself as a singing teacher, composer and writer. In 1914, and with the support of the Clark family (of shoe manufacturing fame), he founded and directed the first of his Glastonbury Festivals in order to provide a platform not only for his works but for any other music that accorded with his artistic ideals. The Festivals, the first of their kind to be seen in England, continued with increasing success and sophistication until 1926, by which time he had mounted over 300 staged performances and 100 chamber concerts, besides related lectures, exhibitions and a series of innovative Summer Schools.

In 1922 his opera (or choral-drama)'The Immortal Hour' was produced in London where it enjoyed a phenomenal success and still holds the world-record for a continuous run of any serious opera written by an Englishman. Boughton's other notable works for the stage are "The Queen of Cornwall" (based on the play by Thomas Hardy),'Bethlehem' and 'Alkestis'.

After Glastonbury, Boughton took up residence at Kilcot, a small village in Gloucestershire, primarily to complete the cycle of Arthurian Music Dramas that he had begun in 1908 but also to organise further festivals at Stroud (1934) and Bath (1935). Whilst living at Kilcot, Boughton also produced some of his finest orchestral pieces. Despite successful revivals of 'The Immortal Hour' and 'Bethlehem',Boughton's fame declined and it is only in recent years, largely through the activities of The Rutland Boughton Music Trust, that his importance in the history of British music has begun once more to be appreciated.

Type of Historic Marker: Brown Plaque Historical Marker Issuing Authority: The Aylesbury Society Age/Event Date: 01/01/1960 Related Website: [Web Link] Give your Rating:

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Date Logged Log   09/19/2021 Master Mariner visited it