Rutland Boughton was born in Aylesbury on January 23rd, 1878.

His father was a grocer, in a small and not very thriving way of business, and there was no money to spare for a musical education, even though the boy showed clear evidence of exceptional gifts.

In 1892 he was apprenticed to a London concert agency.

On leaving, in 1901, he endured great poverty, but gradually made his way as a composer, eventually, in 1905, being offered a post in Birmingham at the Midland Institute of Music.

Here he began to blossom - not only as a composer of choral music, a conductor and an inspiring teacher of singing, but also as a thinker and polemicist.

By 1911 he was proposing a commune of artists, living and working together as a direct and practical challenge to the conditions of London musical life which offered scant opportunity to any would-be operatic composer.

His dream of performances that grew directly out of a supportive community eventually found a degree of reality when, on August 5th, 1914, the first meeting of the first Glastonbury Festival took place.

There was no theatre, only the local Assembly Rooms; no orchestra, only a grand piano.

The performers were local amateurs and Boughton's friends - many of whom enjoyed, or were later to enjoy, important professional careers.

Everything was against it - even the times, for was had been declared on August 4th, but such was the composer's driving enthusiasm and imaginative ability in overcoming obstacles that the experiment was a success.

And not least of the triumphs were the three performances of The immortal hour, which first saw the light of day on August 26th.

On the history of the opera you can read in the page related to that, but here I'll just say it was so successful (in fact it was Rutland Boughton's greatest musical success) that it helped to drive him straight to London, and be recognized there as a great composer.

Rutland boughton's other operatic compositions are:

Betlehem - which created quite a stir when in 1926 he insisted on presenting this nativity opera in modern dress as a gesture of solidarity with the miners and the General Strike; Christ was born in a Miner's cottage, and Herod was a top-hatted capitalist; Alkestis - in 1922, for glastonbury; The Queen of Cornwall, - in 1924, again for glastonbury; the cycle of five music dramas on the story of king Arthur: The birth of Arthur, the round table, the lily maid, galahad, and Avalon. - on this project he worked from 1908 to 1945.