Ivor Gurney & Marion Scott

Ivor Gurney & Marion Scott PDF Author: Pamela Blevins
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 1843834219
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description
Insightful account of the life and works of two of the most important figures in twentieth-century British cultural life.

Ivor Gurney & Marion Scott

Ivor Gurney & Marion Scott PDF Author: Pamela Blevins
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 1843834219
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description
Insightful account of the life and works of two of the most important figures in twentieth-century British cultural life.

Dweller in Shadows

Dweller in Shadows PDF Author: Kate Kennedy
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691212783
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Originally a student of music, [Gurney] took up poetry in the trenches of the First World War, and was working on what would be his first volume of verse when, in 1917, he suffered wounds to the shoulder; and it was just before publication of this volume, Severn & Somme, that he was gassed at Passchendaele. After his return to Britain he resumed his musical studies, ... and quickly found outlets for his compositions. There is some debate about whether or not his subsequent mental illness was a consequence of the horrors and sufferings of the war; but mental illness marked the rest of his life, and indeed from about 1922 until his death he was institutionalised ... He nevertheless continued to produce poems and musical compositions in prolific fashion, and his works in both areas are read and performed, respectively, to this day"--

Dweller in Shadows

Dweller in Shadows PDF Author: Kate Kennedy
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691218552
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first comprehensive biography of an extraordinary English poet and composer whose life was haunted by fighting in the First World War and, later, confinement in a mental asylum Ivor Gurney (1890–1937) wrote some of the most anthologized poems of the First World War and composed some of the greatest works in the English song repertoire, such as “Sleep.” Yet his life was shadowed by the trauma of the war and mental illness, and he spent his last fifteen years confined to a mental asylum. In Dweller in Shadows, Kate Kennedy presents the first comprehensive biography of this extraordinary and misunderstood artist. A promising student at the Royal College of Music, Gurney enlisted as a private with the Gloucestershire regiment in 1915 and spent two years in the trenches of the Western Front. Wounded in the arm and subsequently gassed during the Battle of Passchendaele, Gurney was recovering in hospital when his first collection of poems, Severn and Somme, was published. Despite episodes of depression, he resumed his music studies after the war until he was committed to an asylum in 1922. At times believing he was Shakespeare and that the “machines under the floor” were torturing him, he nevertheless continued to write and compose, leaving behind a vast body of unpublished work when he died of tuberculosis. Drawing on extensive archival research and spanning literary criticism, history, psychiatry and musicology, this compelling narrative sets Gurney’s life and work against the backdrop of the war and his institutionalisation, probing the links between madness, suffering and creativity. Facing death in the trenches, Gurney hoped that history might not “forget me quite.” This definitive account of his life and work helps ensure that he will indeed be remembered.

Severn & Somme

Severn & Somme PDF Author: Ivor Gurney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1914-1918
Languages : en
Pages : 80

Get Book Here

Book Description


In Zodiac Light

In Zodiac Light PDF Author: Robert Edric
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0552774189
Category : Biographical fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Get Book Here

Book Description
It is December 1922. Ex-soldier, poet and composer, Ivor Gurney, suffering from increasingly frequent and deepening bouts of paranoid schizophrenia is transferred to the City of London Mental Hospital, Dartford. Neglected by the military and his own family, and abandoned by all but a notable handful of his friends, Gurney begins a descent into the madness and oblivion which he believes has long been waiting to claim him. Yet following his arrival at Dartford, there are still those who continue to believe in Gurney’s capabilities. It seems that he might find some calm and ease in his life, and thus achieve the status so many consider him capable of achieving..

Stars in a Dark Night

Stars in a Dark Night PDF Author: Ivor Gurney
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780750934671
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of letters written by Ivor Gurney whilst on the Western Front shows that, although the facts of his life are undeniably tragic, the relationship he forged with his family was loving.

British Women Composers and Instrumental Chamber Music in the Early Twentieth Century

British Women Composers and Instrumental Chamber Music in the Early Twentieth Century PDF Author: Laura Seddon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317171330
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the first full-length study of British women's instrumental chamber music in the early twentieth century. Laura Seddon argues that the Cobbett competitions, instigated by Walter Willson Cobbett in 1905, and the formation of the Society of Women Musicians in 1911 contributed to the explosion of instrumental music written by women in this period and highlighted women's place in British musical society in the years leading up to and during the First World War. Seddon investigates the relationship between Cobbett, the Society of Women Musicians and women composers themselves. The book’s six case studies - of Adela Maddison (1866-1929), Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), Morfydd Owen (1891-1918), Ethel Barns (1880-1948), Alice Verne-Bredt (1868-1958) and Susan Spain-Dunk (1880-1962) - offer valuable insight into the women’s musical education and compositional careers. Seddon’s discussion of their chamber works for differing instrumental combinations includes an exploration of formal procedures, an issue much discussed by contemporary sources. The individual composers' reactions to the debate instigated by the Society of Women Musicians, on the future of women's music, is considered in relation to their lives, careers and the chamber music itself. As the composers in this study were not a cohesive group, creatively or ideologically, the book draws on primary sources, as well as the writings of contemporary commentators, to assess the legacy of the chamber works produced.

Modern English War Poetry

Modern English War Poetry PDF Author: Tim Kendall
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199276765
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Get Book Here

Book Description
Modern English War Poetry ranges widely across the twentieth century, incorporating detailed discussions of some of the most important poets of the period. It emphasizes the influence of war and war poetry even on those poets usually considered in other contexts, such as Ted Hughes and Geoffrey Hill.

Gerald Finzi's Letters, 1915-1956

Gerald Finzi's Letters, 1915-1956 PDF Author: Gerald Finzi
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783275723
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1095

Get Book Here

Book Description
A fully annotated edition of more than 1600 letters from and to Gerald Finzi, spanning the composer's life from ca. the early 1920s up until his untimely death in 1956. Gerald Finzi's (1901-1956) masterpiece is the radiant and touching cantata Dies Natalis. He is also highly regarded for his Thomas Hardy song-settings, for his Intimations of Immortality, and for his fine cello and clarinet concertos. As a scholar, he championed the then neglected composers Hubert Parry and Ivor Gurney, and the eighteenth-century John Stanley, William Boyce and Richard Mudge, composers he revived with the amateur orchestra he founded. Diana McVeagh, Finzi's biographer, brings together more than 1600 letters from and to Gerald Finzi, spanning the composer's life from the early 1920s until his untimely death in 1956. His more than 160 correspondents include Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, Edmund Rubbra, Arthur Bliss and Howard Ferguson, Michael Tippett, Benjamin Britten and Sir John Barbirolli, the poet Edmund Blunden, and the artist John Aldridge, making this a portrait not only of Gerald Finzi but also of his group of composer, musician and artist friends in the first half of the twentieth century. In these mostly unpublished letters Finzi emerges as a multi-faceted and complex character, developing from a solitary, introverted youth into a man with strong views and wide interests: education, pacifism, vegetarianism, the Arts and Crafts movement and the English pastoral tradition, among others. From amusing trivia to the deeply serious ideas and principles Finzi set out at the onset of war and in the 1950s, these letters allow for first-hand insights into his personality and background. This definitive edition is fully annotated, offering context with substantial commentaries on the correspondence, illustrations by Joy Finzi, a chronology, bibliography and a catalogue of works.

Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War

Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War PDF Author: Peter Barham
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300125115
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a poignant, sometimes ribald, history of the rank-and-file servicemen who were psychiatric casualties of World War One.