Beyond the music: the poetry of Ivor Gurney
Ivor Gurney
For this article I start looking at the poet and composer, Ivor Gurney, four of whose poems are part of my song cycle Four Songs to Texts by Ivor Gurney which, performed by Johnny Herford and William Vann, is on our new disc Quickening: Songs to texts by English and Welsh poets for which we are currently crowd funding.
Gurney was born in Gloucester in 1890 and became a chorister a Gloucester Cathedral where was a pupil of Dr Herbert Brewer and met Herbert Howells, a life-long friend. A scholarship to the Royal College of Music enabled him to study with Stanford, who may have regarded him as unteachable. Gurney's studies were interrupted by the war and Gurney enlisted as a private in the Gloucestershire Regiment. Gurney had a troubled war, he was wounded and there are suggestions that being gassed may have affected his mental health. Always suffering mood swings, and having a breakdown in 1913, Gurney had another one in 1918 but apparently recovered.
He was discharged and seemed to return to health. After the war he returned to the Royal College of Music and studied with RVW. However by 1922 his mental health was again deteriorating and he spent the remaining 15 years of his life (he died in 1937) in mental institutions.
Gurney wrote both poetry and songs, writing hundreds of poems and three hundred songs, though he rarely set his own poetry. His first volume of poetry Severn and Somme was published in November 1917, at a time when Gurney was suffering from the effects of being gassed, as well as the failure of his relationship with a nurse that he met at the hospital to which he was sent.
The poems deal with the twin axes of Gurney's life, the horror of the war and his beloved Gloucestershire, often interleaving the two. He wrote to his friend Marion Scott, 'You cannot think how ghastly the battlefields look under a grey sky. Torn trees are the most terrible things I have ever seen. Absolute blight and curse is on the face of everything'. But he also continued to find inspiration from the Gloucestershire landscape where he had grown up.
His second book of poetry, War's Embers appeared in 1919 to mixed reviews. But it was only in 1954 that Edmund Blunden (at the urging of composer Gerald Finzi) assembled the first published collection of Gurney's poetry.
Quickening: Songs to Texts by English and Welsh Poets comes out on the Navona Records label in the Autumn and features my settings of poems by Ivor Gurney, AE Housmann, Christina Rossetti and Rowan Williams. Please do support our crowd-funding.
Posted by Planet Hugill at Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Handel's Alceste and Boyce's Solomon: Early Opera ...
Resurrection & Light: Choral music for Passiontide...
Arab composers residency and Bushra El-Turk premie...
Mandala: music by Nicola LeFanu and David Lumsdain...
Crowdfunding; Last 12 hours
A glimpse of work in progress: the National Opera ...
Sheku Kanneh-Mason returns to the Shostakovich Cel...
Looking ahead: London Piano Festival goes Russian
Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum
Harry Christophers and The Sixteen in Poulenc
A Celebration of World Voices; the International Y...
Beyond the music: Christina Rossetti and my song-c...
Mr Handel's Scholars
Looking ahead: Cheltenham Music Festival
Artist Development, Summer Festival changes and An...
Jonathan Biss's late style
Mozart and Haydn. City of London Choir, Leon McCaw...
Sheer enthusiasm keeps the fizz in this glass: Ope...
Music for the Sun King: An exploration of 18th cen...
Purcell from New York
Music in our time: from a 70th birthday to young c...
Rediscovering Mendelssohn: Liza Ferschtman talks a...
Rare & revelatory: Vaughan Williams for one and tw...
Handel's Belshazzar
Guildhall Creative Entrepreneurs Scheme
Crowd-funding update: Just a week to go
Club Inégales starts its Spring season
Stylish and intense: Anne Sophie Duprels in La voi...
Guto Puw's Welsh-language opera premieres at the V...
Gallicantus: Queen Mary's Big Belly
Snappy Operas to get children learning and perform...
New commissions, new collaborations & more: Garsin...
Ten days to go
A problem no more: William Relton's production of ...
Handel's Theodora in Manchester
16 choirs from 11 countries - the third London Int...
Looking Ahead: Oxford Phillharmonic's Oxford Piano...
Thrilling moments from a youthful cast in Saint-Sa...
Surrender to the madness: Patricia Petibon and Sus...
Richly vibrant & strongly characterful: songs by B...
Viola Dolorosa: contemporary music for viola and p...
Virtuoso: I chat to recorder player Jill Kemp abou...
Beyond the music: a further look at the poetry of ...
Slow burn: Sondra Radvanovsky's London recital deb...
Looking ahead: Incontri in Terra di Siena
Bampton Classical Opera Young Singers' Competition...
Nancy Cunard invites: ENO's Partenope with Sarah T...
Sacred showcase: Stile Antico in Giaches de Wert
A symphony of sound, light and space.
Looking ahead: Faith and Doubt at Göttingen Intern...
Cédric Tiberghien and friends in Norwich
The Manchester Collective is becoming Intimate wit...
Festa Veneziana!
Looking ahead: West Green Opera
Opera explodes into the autumn
Youth Brahms in characterful performances from Jai...
Barnes Music Festival in full swing
Birthday double bill: Bury Court Opera celebrates ...
Live in HD: Verdi's La Traviata from the Met
ZRI: Schubert at the Red Hedgehog Tavern
Pointed delight: Gilbert & Sullivan's Patience fro...
Popping up in unexpected places: I chat to Pop-Up ...
BBC Radio plans to celebrate the work of five forg...
Beyond the love of comrades: the poetry of AE Hous...
Rare British and Romanian works on tour
Forgotten gems: reviving music by Joseph Gibbs and...
Its heart in the right place: ETO's Tosca in Hackn...
Sacred and Profane: Netherlands Chamber Choir
Elgar Festival: Sir Mark Elder's 70th birthday cel...
Shedding light on a forgotten Romantic: Méhul's Ut...
Sunday afternoon delights: I Musicanti at St John'...
Mescaline, therapy and the Berlin wall: towards ne...
Scenes from Daphnis and Chloe
Lunch with Dowland, Britten, Purcell and Stephen G...
International Women's Day - 8 March 2017
Tara Erraught at Rosenblatt Recitals
A sustained and deeply felt essay: James MacMillan...
Crowd-funding update:
Edmund, Agnes and a Fete Galante: Retrospect Opera...
Looking ahead: Usedom Music Festival celebrates Ni...
Not quite the liberation I was thinking of: France...
Before he was famous: Bellini's first opera, Adels...
Quickening crowdfunding in the Brixton Bugle
Powerful first opera: Ryan Wigglesworth's The Wint...
Balancing commercial and artistic values: I talk t...
Beyond the music: Rowan Williams' 'Winterreise: fo...
Magic at 50: Stephen Osborne helps NCO's birthday ...
Bridging the gap; Wigmore Hall's Annual Fund
Taking the stage: Hrachuchi Bassenz mades Covent G...
Refracting the past: Leonard Elschenbroich in Schn...
Chekhov's grand piano
New singing competition at The Grange Festival
John Gardner Centenary Celebration
Master, pupil & a birthday: Melvyn Tan at Rhinegol...
On Wenlock Edge: Housman's Lads