Ivor Gurney

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Memorial plaque for Ivor Gurney in Gloucester Cathedral

Ivor Bertie Gurney (born August 28, 1890 in Gloucester , † December 26, 1937 in Dartford , Kent ) was an English composer and poet .

Life

Gurney sang in the choir at Gloucester Cathedral and became friends with Herbert Howells . He began composing at the age of 14 and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1911 . There he studied with Charles Villiers Stanford - also the teacher of Ralph Vaughan Williams , John Ireland and Arthur Bliss , who thought that Gurney was possibly the most outstanding of these. Gurney's studies were interrupted by World War I, in which he was wounded and sustained a gas injury. It was around this time that his poetic talent emerged, which manifested itself in the two collections of poetry, Severn and Somme (1917) and War's Embers (1919). After the war, Gurney returned to London to resume his music studies with Vaughan Williams.

Gurney likely suffered from episodic bipolar disorder from early adulthood that led to a major breakdown in the spring of 1918 while still in the military. The circumstances of this collapse suggested a diagnosis of "war neurosis" (Shell Shock). His illness was subsequently diagnosed as schizophrenia; a reliable classification is no longer possible today, as the categories of psychiatry of that time differ considerably from today's. Although he had a highly artistically productive period after his discharge from military service, his state of mind continued to deteriorate. By 1922 his condition had deteriorated so much that his family pronounced him "insane". He spent the last 15 years of his life in mental institutions, first briefly at Barnwood House in Gloucester and then at the City of London Mental Hospital in Dartford. He continued to write poetry and, in chaotic spurts, music collected and saved by his friend Marion Scott . Edmund Blunden , Gerald Finzi and others later took on the editing . In 1937 he died at the age of 47, presumably of tuberculosis .

plant

Gurney wrote hundreds of poems and over 300 songs and was considered one of the most promising poets and musicians of his generation before he was admitted to the institution. He only put a single one of his poems, Severn Meadows , into music. His most famous compositions are the 5 Elizabethan Chants (or The Elizas , as he called them) and the song cycles Ludlow and Teme and The Western Playland based on poems by Alfred Edward Housman . Gurney was “a lover and maker of beauty”, as can be read on his tombstone, and the intensity of his music has echoes of Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann , but surprisingly few traits of folk songs that you often encountered in his day. Gurney also composed purely instrumental music, mainly for piano.

Although Gurney is mainly remembered as a composer, his reputation as a poet steadily increased, especially after his poems were published by Blunden in 1954, which made his name known to the public again. PJ Kavanagh's Collected Poems , first published in 1982, are the best edition of Gurney's poems. Gurney is considered one of the great English poets of World War I, and like others among them, such as Edward Thomas whom he admired, he often portrayed the horrors of the front in contrast to the beauty and tranquility of the original English landscapes.

Others

In 2011, as far as is known, a violin sonata in E major, composed by Gurney in 1918, was performed for the first time since its creation. A performance of the sonata, one of only five total that Gurney completed, was also released on CD in 2013.

In 2014, a new stained glass window was unveiled to the public in Gloucester Cathedral, dedicated to Ivor Gurney and a general tribute to all soldiers of the First World War.

literature

Work editions

  • PJ Kavanagh (Ed.): Collected Poems of Ivor Gurney . Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford 1982, ISBN 0192119400 .
  • PJ Kavanagh (Ed.): Selected Poems of Ivor Gurney . Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford 1990, ISBN 0192826360 .
  • Anthony Boden: Stars in a Dark Night: The Letters of Ivor Gurney to the Chapman Family . Alan Sutton, Gloucester 1991, ISBN 0862992257 .
  • RKR Thornton (Ed.): Collected Letters . Carcanet Press, Manchester 1991, ISBN 0904790657 .

Secondary literature

  • Michael Hurd: The Ordeal of Ivor Gurney . Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1978, ISBN 0192117521 .
  • John Lucas: Ivor Gurney . Northcote House, Plymouth 2001, ISBN 0746308876 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rare Ivor Gurney violin sonata released on BBC News, February 1, 2013, accessed March 30, 2014
  2. ↑ Gloucester Cathedral's Ivor Gurney window a WW1 'tribute' on BBC News March 29. 2014, accessed March 30, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Gurney, Ivor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gurney, Ivor Bertie (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English composer and poet
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Gloucester
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1937
Place of death Dartford , Kent