Ivor Gurney (
August 28, 1890 -
December 26, 1937) was an
English composer and
poet.
Born at 3 Queen Street,
Gloucester in 1890, Gurney sang as a chorister at
Gloucester Cathedral, from 1900 to 1906 when he became an articled pupil of
Dr Herbert Brewer at the cathedral. During this time he met two important friends, composer Herbert Howells, also a pupil of Brewer, and the future poet F. W. Harvey. Gurney began composing music at the age of 14 and won a scholarship to the
Royal College of Music in 1911. He studied there with
Charles Villiers Stanford who also taught
Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, Marion M. Scott, Rebecca Clarke.
Frank Bridge, Herbert Howells, Arthur Bliss and many others. Stanford told Howells that Gurney was potentially "the biggest of them all", but he was "unteachable". Gurney's studies were interrupted by
World War I where he was wounded in April 1917 and
gassed in September the same year. But his poetic gift also revealed itself at this time, resulting in two volumes of poetry,
Severn and Somme (1917) and
War's Embers (1919). After the war, Gurney returned to London to resume his music studies at the RCM with Vaughan Williams.
Gurney suffered from
bipolar disorder, which showed symptoms during his mid-teens and led to his first documented breakdown in 1913, followed by a major breakdown in the spring of 1918 while he was still in uniform. He was never
shell-shocked nor did he suffer from
schizophrenia, the label often used to describe his illness. The 1918 breakdown was triggered by the failure of his relationship with VAD Annie Nelson Drummond whom he met when he was a patient at the Edinburgh War Hospital. The notion of Gurney as a shell-shock victim owes its existence to Marion Scott. Both Gurney and Scott knew he had not suffered shell shock. Gurney even admitted to lying about it on a pension application: "I gave in application the reason of 'after shell shock' which was false", he acknowledged. Scott knew it too. She had been told often enough but she could not put a name to what was happening to him -- no one could. War seemed to provide an explanation for the unexplainable. Every attempt Scott made to get Gurney into facilities for shell shock victims met with denial. Even her efforts to work for him through the Shell Shock Commission failed. Army doctors saw a deeper, more entrenched problem at the root of his trouble than shell shock -- they found him suffering from "Manic Depressive Psychosis". To have suffered because of war is more poignant and more heroic than to have suffered because one is ill. Scott was an image maker. She used the notion of Gurney as a victim of shell shock to what she believed would be his advantage. It was Scott wrote the initial press releases after Gurney's death and subsequent articles suggesting that his illness was connected with the war. She also wrote the first Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians entry on Gurney using the term "shell shock". As a result that label had stuck to his name even though it is false.
Although Gurney seemed to thrive after the war when he was regarded as one of the most promising men of his generation, his untreated bipolar illness continued to worsen. By 1922, his condition had deteriorated to the point where his family had him declared insane. He spent the last 15 years of his life in mental hospitals, first for a short period at Barnwood House in Gloucester, and then at the City of London Mental Hospital,
Dartford. He continued to write poetry and a scattering of music, which was collected and preserved by his friend Marion M. Scott and later edited by
Edmund Blunden, Gerald Finzi, and others. Gurney died of
tuberculosis in the City of London Mental Hospital on
26 December 1937 at the age of 47. He was buried in Twigworth, a small village to the north of his beloved
Gloucester.
Gurney wrote hundreds of poems and more than 300 songs as well as instrumental music. He set only a handful of his own poems, the best known being
Severn Meadows. His best-known compositions include his Five
Elizabethan Songs (or 'The Elizas' as he called them) and the song-cycles
Ludlow and Teme and
The Western Playland, both settings of poetry by
A. E. Housman. Gurney was "a lover and maker of beauty", as it said on his gravestone (now replaced, and stored inside Twigworth church), and there is something of
Schubert and
Schumann, but considerably less of the prevailing folk idiom of the time, in the intensity of his musical language.
Gurney is known both as a poet and composer and his reputation in both arts has continue to rise.
Edmund Blunden, at the urging of composer
Gerald Finzi, assembled the first collection of Gurney's poetry which was published in 1954. This was followed by
P. J. Kavanagh's Collected Poems, first published in 1982 and reissued in 2004. It remains the best edition of Gurney's poetry. Gurney is regarded as one of the great English World War I poets, and like the others of them, such as
Edward Thomas whom he admired, he often contrasted the horrors of the front line with the beauty and tranquillity of his native English landscape.
Ian Venables is chairman' of the Ivor Gurney' society and is currently working to achieve the publication of some previously un-published works from Gurney.
