Rutland Boughton Recordings

Rutland Boughton began his studies at the Royal College of Music, London, in 1898 after his music talent attracted the attention of a number of musicians, resulting in him receiving financial support from various people, including the Rothchild

family, to study there. Studying under Charles Villiers Stanford and Walford Davies,
he left the College in 1901 and began his career as a repetiteur and accompanist, before being approached by Sir Granville Bantock to join the staff at the Birmingham and Midland Institute of Music (now known as the Birmingham Conservatoire).

Boughton was interested in history throughout his life. An initial plan had been to create a fourteen-day cycle of dramas on the life of Christ; this was not to come to fruition but his Nativity opera Bethlehem was written in 1915. He wrote five operas based on the legend of King Arthur, beginning with The Birth of Arthur in 1909 and finishing with Avalon in 1945. By 1911 Boughton had moved to Glastonbury – where King Arthur is purportedly buried – initially to establish an annual summer music school. In 1912 he composed what is recognised as his most successful work, The Immortal Hour, based on Celtic mythology. With successful productions in Glastonbury and in Birmingham, The Immortal Hour received over three hundred performances in 1922-1923.

Although Boughton continued to compose throughout his life, his political beliefs and support of the 1926 ‘miners’ lockout’ general strike, during which he insisted that Bethlehem be produced with Herod as a capitalist and Jesus being born in a miner’s hut, made him a persona non grata, most likely contributing to his relative obscurity in recent times.