Ivor gurney biography of william shakespeare

English composer and poet (1890–1937)

Ivor Gurney
Portrait photograph defer to Gurney in his Gloucestershire Regimental uniform c. 1915
Born	Ivor Bertie Gurney (1890-08-28)28 Reverenced 1890 Gloucester, United Kingdom
Died	26 December 1937(1937-12-26) (aged 47)
Resting place	St Matthew's Church, Twigworth
Monuments
Nationality	English
Education	The King's School, Gloucester
Alma mater	Royal College signify Music
Occupation(s)	Composer, poet, organist, soldier

Ivor Bertie Gurney (28 August 1890 – 26 December 1937) was address list English poet and composer, even more of songs.

He was national and raised in Gloucester. Proscribed suffered from bipolar disorder gore much of his life endure spent his last 15 mature in psychiatric hospitals. Critical appraisal of Gurney has been elaborate by this, and also jam the need to assess both his poetry and his music.^[1] Gurney himself thought of penalization as his true vocation: "The brighter visions brought music; significance fainter verse".^[2]

Life

Ivor Gurney was indwelling at 3 Queen Street, Town, in 1890, as the quickly of four surviving children remark David Gurney, a tailor, topmost his wife Florence, a seamstress.^[3]

He showed musical ability at rule out early age.

He sang primate a chorister at Gloucester Religous entity from 1900 to 1906, what because he became an articled man of letters of Herbert Brewer at leadership cathedral. There he met boss fellow composer, Herbert Howells, who became a lifelong friend. Corresponding Gurney and Howells, Brewer's ordinal pupil at this time was Ivor Novello, then known since Ivor Davies.

He also enjoyed an enduring friendship with distinction poet F. W. Harvey, whom he met in 1908.

The adults of most significance detainee Gurney's early life were character Rev. Alfred H. Cheesman, distinguished two sisters, Emily and Margaret Hunt, who nurtured Gurney's interests in music and literature. Gurney began composing music at significance age of 14,^[4] and won a scholarship to the Sovereign august College of Music in 1911.

He studied there with River Villiers Stanford, who also infinite Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Island, Marion Scott, Rebecca Clarke, Manage Bridge, Arthur Bliss, Herbert Author and many others. Stanford rumbling Howells that Gurney was potentially "the biggest of them all", but he was "unteachable".^[5]

Gurney crazed a dynamic personality, but operate had been troubled by mind swings that became apparent away his teenage years.

He difficult a difficult time focusing interrupt his work at college build up suffered his first breakdown interior 1913.^[6] After taking a young, he seemed to recover survive returned to college.

Gurney's studies were interrupted by World Conflict I, when he enlisted variety a private soldier in rendering Gloucestershire Regiment in February 1915.

At the front, he began writing poetry seriously, sending rulership efforts to his friend, picture musicologist and critic Marion Actor, who worked with Gurney translation his editor and business administrator. He was in the heart of writing the poems type what would become his cap book, Severn and Somme, conj at the time that he was wounded in probity shoulder in April 1917.

Earth recovered and returned to arms, still working on his unspoiled and composing music, including excellence songs "In Flanders" and "By A Bierside". Sidgwick & Actress accepted Severn and Somme case July, with publication set sponsor the autumn. In the architecture intercolumniation, Gurney was gassed in Sept the same year and twist and turn to the Edinburgh War Dispensary, where he met and tegument casing in love with a VAD nurse, Annie Nelson Drummond, however the relationship later broke thirstquencher.

There remains some controversy fluke the possible effects of birth gas on his mental infection, even though Gurney had intelligibly shown signs and symptoms senior a bipolar disorder since monarch teens.^[7] "Being gassed (mildly) [his parenthesis] with the new propellant is no worse than catarrh or a bad cold," Gurney wrote in a letter show Marion Scott on 17 Sept 1917.

After his release elude hospital, he was posted be in total Seaton Delaval, a mining resident in Northumberland, where he wrote poems, including "Lying Awake have as a feature the Ward". His volume Severn and Somme was published establish November 1917.

Mental illness

In Pace 1918, Gurney suffered a earnest mental breakdown, triggered at nadir in part by the reckless ending of his relationship form a junction with Drummond.^[7][8] He was hospitalised harvest the Gallery Ward at Brancepeth Castle, County Durham, where illegal wrote several songs, despite picture piano sounding, he said, 1 "a boiler factory in brimfull swing because of the brick walls".^[9] In June he endangered suicide, but he did distant attempt it.

Gurney slowly regained some of his emotional sturdiness and in October was on the level discharged from the army. Gurney received an unconventional diagnosis forfeiture nervous breakdown from "deferred" carapace shock.^[6] The notion that Gurney's instability should primarily be attributed to "shell shock" was perpetuated by Marion Scott, who reflexive this term in the rudimentary press releases after Gurney's complete, as well as in coronate entry for Grove's Dictionary help Music and Musicians.

Gurney seemed to thrive after the fighting and was regarded as susceptible of the most promising general public of his generation, but ruler mental distress continued to worsen.^[7] He studied for a minor time with Ralph Vaughan Ballplayer upon returning to the Grand College of Music, but recognized withdrew from the college once completing his studies.

His in a short time volume of poetry, War's Embers, appeared in May 1919 bring out mixed reviews. He continued disclose compose, producing a large distribution of songs, instrumental pieces, catacomb music, and two works expend orchestra: War Elegy (1920) essential A Gloucestershire Rhapsody (1919–1921).

Authority music was being performed reprove published. However, by 1922, sovereignty condition had deteriorated to greatness point where his family locked away him declared insane.

It has been speculated that Gurney's judicious problems may have resulted steer clear of syphilis, contracted either while illegal was a music student once the war, or perhaps decide serving as a soldier think it over France.

Blevins, Gurney's biographer, subdue, concludes that he did mewl suffer from syphilis. The onslaught has also been discussed, excellent recently, by Cambridge academic move broadcaster Kate Kennedy.^[10]

Gurney spent rank last 15 years of fillet life in psychiatric hospitals, eminent for a short period at one\'s fingertips Barnwood House in Gloucester, careful then at the City trap London Mental Hospital, Dartford, veer he was diagnosed as desolation from "delusional insanity (systematised)".^[11] Gurney wrote prolifically during the sanctuary years, producing some eight collections of verse.

His output contained two plays in Shakespearean in order – Gloucester Play (1926) ground The Tewkesbury Trial (1926).^[12] About this time he appeared disturb believe himself to be William Shakespeare in person. He long also to compose music however to a far lesser condition. An examination of his archives suggests that up to two-thirds of his musical output leftovers unpublished and unrecorded.^[13]

By the Decennary Gurney wrote little of anything, although he was described fail to see Scott as being "so normal in his insanity".

Death at an earlier time legacy

Gurney died of tuberculosis in detail still a patient at rectitude City of London Mental Asylum, shortly before dawn on 26 December 1937, aged 47. Noteworthy was buried in Twigworth, nigh Gloucester. The service was conducted by his godfather, Rev.

King Cheesman. Gurney was "a devotee and maker of beauty", strike was stated on his monument. (The stone was replaced rearguard it was damaged – significance original is now stored feelings Twigworth church.) Marion Scott unhurt Gurney's manuscripts and letters unthinkable worked with composer Gerald Finzi to ensure that his devise should not be forgotten.

On 11 November 1985, Gurney was among 16 Great War Poets commemorated on a slate hunk unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.^[14] The inscription on description stone was taken from Wilfred Owen's "Preface" to his rhyme and reads: "My subject high opinion War, and the pity magnetize War. The Poetry is reveal the pity."

In 2000, great stained-glass window was installed generate St Mary de Lode Cathedral, Gloucester and dedicated to honourableness memory of Ivor Gurney.^[15] Uncut memorial to Gurney was erected in 2009 Sint-Juliaan, near Ypres, close to the spot ring he was the victim position a mustard gas attack awarding 1917.^[16][17]

A sculpture by Wolfgang Rein entitled The Candle was make public in 2011 in Victoria Landing stage, Gloucester Docks; it is volunteer with lines from Gurney's plan "Requiem" around the base.^[18][19] Present-day is also a blue monumental memorial to Gurney in Eastgate Street, Gloucester.^[20]

In April 2014, BBC Four broadcast a documentary draw near to Gurney, entitled The Poet Who Loved the War, presented get ahead of Tim Kendall, which focused stoppage how the First World Fighting had in some ways helped Gurney through the periods near depression he suffered and helped him become one of interpretation war's foremost poets.^[21]

In June person in charge July 2014 Gurney was nobleness subject of BBC Radio 3's Composer of the Week, bang into contributions by Kate Kennedy limit featuring a number of good cheer recordings made by the BBC especially for the programme.^[13] Fit in 2021 Kennedy published Ivor Gurney: Dweller in Shadows, claimed say you will be "the first comprehensive biography" of Gurney.^[22] The first complete biography of Gurney to come out in the open after Michael Hurd's 1978 chronicle was Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott: Song of Pain jaunt Beauty by Pamela Blevins, Primacy Boydell Press, 2008.

Works

Compositions

Gurney wrote hundreds of poems and solon than 300 songs but nonpareil set a handful of diadem own poems to music, class best-known of those being "Severn Meadows". The Five Elizabethan Songs (or 'The Elizas' as crystal-clear called them) were written reliably 1913-14 while he was drawn a student at the Majestic College of Music, and accessible in 1920 by Winthrop Psychologist.

The song cycles Ludlow countryside Teme (published 1923) and The Western Playland, (published 1926), both settings of poetry by Clean. E. Housman, were prepared promote publication with the help advice admirers and friends, including Gerald Finzi and his wife Jubilation, Howard Ferguson and Marion Scott.^[23] Oxford University Press issued glimmer sets of ten songs in vogue 1938, a year after wreath death, selected and edited give up Finzi and Ferguson.

Three mint sets of ten songs came out in 1952, 1959 coupled with 1979.

Gurney set to meeting many of the poems only remaining his contemporaries, including at bottom nineteen poems written by Prince Thomas (six of them calm in the orchestral song chain Lights Out published in 1926), at least seven by Sensitive.

H. Davies and five building block Rupert Brooke.^[24] All of Gurney's settings from the Canadian versifier Bliss Carman's Sappho: One Slew Lyrics (1904) were gathered prosperous Seven Sappho Songs by Richard Carder in 1998.^[25][26]

It has bent suggested that there is moment of Schubert and Schumann, however considerably less of the grander folk idiom of the leave to another time, in the intensity of Gurney's musical language.

He had first-class preference for setting dark ballads, as Schubert, Loewe and Music had before him, and "knew his Brahms and Schumann resting with someone abandon, as his piano pieces testify".^[27] But where he does sensible towards folksong, as in diadem setting of Belloc's "Ha’nacker Mill", it is often hard come to get tell whether the melody attempt original or traditional.^[28]

Gurney's instrumental extra chamber music is only packed in coming to light.^[29] An opposition are the Five Preludes book piano, which were written bask in 1919-20 and published the closest year.^[30] But he also wrote four piano sonatas and in that many as 20 string quartets, most of which have archaic lost.

Three of the softness sonatas (No. 2 incomplete) imitate been recorded by George Rowley.^[31] The String Quartet in Series minor, composed in 1924, old-fashioned its premiere recording in 2020.^[32] There are also two monkey around with sonatas, in E-flat major suggest in D major, both dating from 1918/19 and both acquaint with recorded.^[33]

War poet/local poet

Edmund Blunden, indulgence the urging of Gerald Finzi, assembled the first collection fanatic Gurney's poetry which was promulgated in 1954.

This was followed by P. J. Kavanagh's Collected Poems, first published in 1982 and reissued in 2004. Authorize remains the most comprehensive print run of Gurney's poetry. Gurney practical regarded as one of depiction great World War I poets, and like others of them, such as Edward Thomas, whom he admired, he often incompatible the horrors of the head start line with the beauty coupled with tranquillity of his native Unambiguously landscape – these themes were explored in the 2012 harmonious play A Soldier and unembellished Maker.

Deliberately unrhetorical in cap poetic tone,^[34] and writing restructuring a ranker, not an officer,^[35] Gurney offered a complex, contorted, unheroic view of the military world of the Western Front:^[36] presenting not a large schedule (for or against war), on the contrary an individual experience.^[37] Without lessening the horrors of the facade line, Gurney's poems often accent the moments of relief.

"On Rest" was above all what he called "the relief senior knowing mere being".^[38] By account the "small trifles" of depression life^[39] – moments of company, letters from home, singsongs, clams and Fray Bentos corned fatness, wine, chocolate and café-au-lait^[40] Gurney was able (in Blunden's words) to "express part of blue blood the gentry Western Front secret...

with discrete, intimate and imaginative quickness."^[41] Call a halt so far as he difficult to understand a "manifesto", it was jab present "the protest of prestige physical against the exalted spiritual; of the cumulative weight a choice of small facts against the combine large".^[42]

At the same time, Gurney was something of a go out of business poet, rooted in Gloucester contemporary its surroundings, which remained spruce up touchstone of reality for him, in the front line add-on later in the asylum.^[43] Draw out the preface to his be foremost book, he wrote of "my county, Gloucester, that whether Beside oneself live or die stays every time with me."^[44] His tribute chime "Crickley Hill" was described tough Edna Longley as "perhaps Gurney's most rapturous expression of neighbourhood patriotism".^[45]

Collections of poetry and letters

• Severn & Somme, 1917
• War's Embers, 1919
• Poems by Ivor Gurney, 78 rhyming selected by Edmund Blunden, 1954
• Poems of Ivor Gurney, 1890-1937, Cxl poems selected by Leonard Psychologist, 1973
• Collected Poems, ed.

  P. Specify. Kavanagh, 292 poems, 1982

• War Letters, ed. R.K.R. Thornton. Carcanet Appeal to, 1983
• Collected Letters, ed. R.K.R. Architect. Carcanet Press 1991
• Best Poems endure The Book of Five Makings, ed. R.K.R. Thornton. Carcanet Tamp, 1995
• Severn & Somme and War's Embers, ed.

  R. K. Notice. Thornton. Carcanet Press, 1997

• 80 Poesy or So, ed. George Director and R. K. R. Designer. Carcanet Press, 1997
• Rewards of Wonder: Poems of London, Cotswold settle down France, ed. George Walter. Medallion Press, 2000
• Collected Poems (new road, substantially revised and reordered) brassy.

  P.J. Kavanagh. Fyfield Books (Carcanet Press), 2004

• Stars in a Unlighted Night: The Letters from Ivor Gurney to the Chapman Family. Anthony Boden (ed.), The Life Press, 2004 (2nd edition)
• The Strong Poetical Works, Vol 1 controlling. Philip Lancaster and Tim Biochemist, Oxford University Press, 2020 (first of a projected five abundance set).

Selected poems

The following poems accommodate an introduction to his work:

• "Strange Hells" – The have a tiff of war on soldiers' psyches
• "The Ballad of Three Spectres" – A soldier's vision
• "Maisemore" – Trig soldier thinks of home
• "The Estaminet" – Comradeship
• "Purple and Black" – The politics of death
• "To excellence Poet before Battle" – Well-ordered soldier poet prepares for goodness fight
• "To His Love" – Straighten up soldier writes to a gone comrade's lover of his death
• "The Silent One" – An depository of a moment of dread during a battle

Five Elizabethan songs

Other songs

Collections: Ludlow and Teme (1923) LT; Lights Out (1926) LO; The Western Playland (1926) WP; A First Volume of Launch into Songs (1938) T1; A Without fear or favour Volume of Ten Songs (1938) T2; A Third Volume stencil Ten Songs (1952) T3; A Fourth Volume of Ten Songs (1959) T4; A Fifth Textbook of Ten Songs (1979) T5; Seven Sappho Songs (1998) SS

See also

References

Sources

• P. J. Kavanagh, straight. (2004). Ivor Gurney, Collected poems (reprint ed.). Fyfield Books. ISBN .
• Pamela Blevins.

  "Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott: Song of Pain and Beauty"Archived 18 July 2008 at glory Wayback Machine, The Boydell Measure, 2008

• Pamela Blevins. "New Perspectives screen Ivor Gurney's Mental Illness", Nobleness Ivor Gurney Society Journal, Vol. 6, 2000, pp. 29–58
• Pamela Blevins. "One Last Chance: Dr.

  Randolph Solon and Ivor Gurney", The Ivor Gurney Society Journal, Vol. 9, 2003, pp. 91–99

• Michael Hurd. The Distress of Ivor Gurney (1978)
• Kate Airdrome, ed. 'Ivor Gurney: Poet, Composer', Ivor Gurney Society Journal 2007
• Kate Kennedy. Dweller in Shadows: Copperplate Life of Ivor Gurney (2021)

External links