He was born in London to a well-to-do family. His father, Sir Alexander Butterworth was a solicitor and later General Manager of the North Eastern Railway, headquartered in York, where George grew up before going to school at Eton. His musical talent as a composer was already apparent while at Eton.

In 1904 he went up to Trinity College, Oxford to read Greats but found that music became more and more important to him, especially after meeting up with Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams. After Oxford, he taught for a year at Radley, then studied for a short time at the Royal College of Music, then concentrated more or less full time on collecting folk songs, sometimes with Vaughan Williams.

On the outbreak of World War I in August, 1914, he quickly joined the Durham Light Infantry as a Lieutenant in the 13th Battalion. During his year in the trenches, he was "mentioned in dispatches" for outstanding courage, won the Military Cross for his defence of a trench that was subsequently named for him, and led a raid during the Battle of the Somme. The raid was successful but Butterworth was killed by a sniper's bullet. His memorial is at Thiepval.

His music is of the very highest quality and at the same time extremely simple and sparing. His own standards were so exacting that he destroyed those of his scores which he deemed unworthy before setting out for France. His teachers included Thomas Dunhill (while at Eton), Christian Padel in York, and Hubert Parry who was director of the Royal College of Music while Butterworth was there.

Although just about every English composer of the time attempted some settings of the poems of A. E. Housman, none caught the essence of the poetry like Butterworth - and no other composer is quite so associated with these poems, especially A Shropshire Lad (published in 1896).

As well as having a recurrent death wish theme, many of Housman's poems return to the senselessness of war and the arbitrariness of who would return and who would not. Although it was the Boer war that was the main subject of such poems, WWI brought new force to the agony of these lines.