George Sainton Kaye Butterworth, MC, was an English composer best known for the orchestral idyllThe Banks of Green Willow and his song settings of A. E. Housman's poems from A Shropshire Lad. Butterworth did not write a great deal of music, and before and during the war he destroyed many works he did not care for, lest he should not return and have the chance to revise them. Of those that survive, his works based on A. E. Housman's collection of poems A Shropshire Lad are among the best known. Many English composers of Butterworth's time set Housman's poetry, including Ralph Vaughan Williams.