Impression sketch of Ivor
Gurney composing music in a disused mortar trench by Jamie
With promising abilities as
musician,
A scholarship for young
Ivor Gurney
Gained his place at
Royal College of music, under
The tutorship of Charles Villers
Stanford;
Yet a talented student was
unteachable.
A personality of dynamism
had been
Tainted by mood swings - effects hurt
His abilities to study. By
1913 Gurney succumbed
To a mental breakdown; on recovery
He returned, enlisting at
war's start.
Poet and composer Gurney
would
Not let war defer his need
to create
Music - summer 1916, Private Ivor Gurney sought
A quiet place on the front,
to find this
In some disused mortar trench.
Within his pocket was a likely copy
Of a poem, sent him by
Marion Scott.
John Masefield's 'By a
Biersides,' centred on subject
Of death - sitting in an
open box
Of earth Gurney set out his
music.
In the very setting of
Masefield's
Words, Gurney envisioned a
scene;
Evoking a classical romanticised
image of a dead
Greek hero, over which an oration
Is pronounced by a poet
priest.
'A sacred city built of
marvellous
Earth - Life was lived nobly
here
To give such beauty birth.' These very lines had
Possessed him - a reflection
of true war,
A city of trenches and army
of youth.
There young death might give
birth
To beauty with poetry set to music -
For living is turned on its
head, where death
Opens unknown doors, to
suggest
There is grandeur in dying youth.
From sun that spilled over trooper
Gurney's shoulder into that
trench
Mortar hole, lit up a square of earth-stained
paper
On which he composed - after which
He posted to Royal College of
music.
A soldier as poet, enabled
the mind
Of composer translated by
musicians
Hands - from dirt to
sanitised congratulations
By Mr Montague
Muir-Mackenzie for
All students who had gone to
war.
An annual Royal College of
Music
Meeting, heard
Muir-Mackenzie's words
Praise songs on earth-stained
paper, passed by some
Sensitive censor - two
compositions
Played might have included
Bierside.
The first of Gurney's war
songs,
By simple ambition called
for a big
Voice to translate emotion
and the shifts of musical
Moods, to reflect the composers
Struggle for his love of
battle.
by Jamie Mann.
Anon.,1917.
Songs From The Trenches. The Daily Telegraph, [online] 30 March 1917. P.3. Col.3. Available at: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive/12214420/Daily-Telegraph-March-30-1917.html>
[Accessed: 01 April 2017].
Source:
File: Teaching the
Songs of Ivor Gurney: An Applied Studio Guide to the Utilization of Fourteen
Songs. Available
at:
<https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=osu1448468099&disposition=inline>
[Accessed 01 April 2017]
Source: File: The Songs of
Gurney and Ireland. A talk given by Ian Venables to the Ivor Gurney Society on
the 11th May 2000. Available at: <http://ianvenables.com/gurney/>
[Accessed 01 April 2017]
Mann, J., 2016. 100
years Ago - Poems by Jamie Mann. [letter] (Personal communication, 01 April
2017).
#WW1
#WW1centenary #GreatWar #WW1poem #GreatWar #WW1centenary #worldwarone
#worldwaroneremembered #WW1poets
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