Exoneration of a cinema organist

Today I had a visit in the archive from Gurney's great-nephew: the grandson and grand-daughter-in-law of Gurney's sister, Dorothy. They were over in England on holiday from Australia, to where Dorothy emigrated following her marriage.

In readiness for their visit, I got out the photographs held in the archive, some examples of his music and poetry, and also some of the correspondence between Don Ray and the visitors' other great-uncle and great-aunt, Gurney's brother Ronald and sister Winifred. I haven't yet got to these in my cataloguing, and had a browse through some of those items I hadn't yet been through. In this part of the collection - the Don Ray gathering of recollections during 1950-51 - two letters grabbed my attention. The handwriting was so poor that I thought it to be that of Ralph Vaughan Williams. However, on inspection it turned out to be John Haines who, by the time of writing in 1951, was almost blind and his handwriting had deteriorated with this loss of sight.

One of these letters from Haines had been partially transcribed - perhaps by Don Ray - but there were numerous gaps where words were indistinguishable, and the transcriber obviously gave up two thirds of the way through the letter. Where the transcriber stopped, I endeavoured to continue, and was rewarded with an interesting nugget of information I thought I'd share here. It arose from what must have been a question from Ray to determine whether, in his capacity as solicitor, Haines had ever acted for Gurney. Haines's letter cites just one instance relating to the period of 1921-22, during which Gurney moved from job to job, unable to keep any for a great length of time.

One of the posts Gurney sought was that of cinema organist. He wrote to Edward Marsh that such posts were 'hard to get, fearful to retain, easy to lose.' (December 1921, Collected Letters p.523). He was successful in obtaining two such posts, one in Plumstead, London, and one in Bude, Cornwall, neither of which he retained for long; only a matter of days. In the brief words of Michael Hurd on the subject in The Ordeal of Ivor Gurney, these jobs 'eluded his grasp'. He elaborates no further, and one is left to presume that either Gurney's erratic tendencies at this time or perhaps the unsuitability of his music were to blame. However, Haines's letter perhaps refutes this in some way: he writes that he was successful in obtaining the then not insubstantial sum of '£10 for him out of a cinema company for wrongful dismissal.' He doesn't note which cinema it was, although earlier in the letter he states that he was employed as a cinema organist in Cornwall. Perhaps it was therefore the Bude cinema that had terminated his contract on weak or insubstantiable grounds. In Haines's action against the cinema Gurney found absolution, a little money; but he may rather have continued in post, working and making music to earn his living.

'New' musical works

Today I have been mopping up the last of the asylum correspondence and writings, scattered around the archive, completing the chronologisation of this very extensive section of the archive (it fills several large box files) prior to the final cataloguing. A very large proportion of these date from one of Gurney's anni mirabilis, 1925; the writings after this time can be held in just one of the files. The letters and poems are often undated, sometimes difficult to read, and, in the case of the letters of appeal, rather pointeliste in their content. I am therefore relying on the paper types, handwriting, and anything that can be gleaned from the content.

When I compiled the catalogue of musical works, 3 or 4 years ago, I spent a lot of time trawling through all of Gurney's letters endeavouring to locate all references to his music. This yielded information about a number of works for which manuscript material is no longer extant, some of which were verified by Gerald Finzi's catalogue of works collated in 1937, more than thirty works in which are missing presumed destroyed.

However, in my reading through the correspondence at that time I obviously missed a few letters/references, for I can now add some further works to that catalogue:

There is new song setting of Longfellow, being one of the sections from The Saga of King Olaf, 'Einar Tamberskelver', written at around the same time as the Longfellow/Heine setting, 'The sea hath its pearls', of 21 April 1925, which this letter also mentions, alongside the Frederic Mistral setting from this time, 'A la Raco Latino'.

In my original catalogue, a reference in a(n unposted) letter to Edward Elgar yielded the fact that there were further settings of Walt Whitman were made for what was one of Gurney's preferred vocal/instrumental combinations, baritone, string quartett and piano, over and above the two I knew about: 'Ethiopia Saluting the Colours' and 'In Cabin'd Ships at Sea'. To this can now be added what Gurney titles 'By the Bivouac's Fire', which must be his misremembering of 'By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame'.

A letter of 3 April [1926] notes that he has just completed two movements of an Organ Sonata in F# minor. Finzi lists a sonata slow movement in this key for 1925. This could be one and the same work, Finzi perhaps approximating the date, but it could be that this is a new work. It would also correlate with a page of sketches from around March 1926 in F# minor which I had hitherto suggested might be related to other known but missing organ works from this time: an 'Heroic Elegy' for organ and an 'Easter Rhapsody'. This letter also makes reference to the second of Gurney's symphonies: the 1925 Symphony in E major. Here, in April 1926, he writes that, 'Ivor Gurney, whose Symphony in E major would make Brahms gasp, is in Hell, and where that MS is (and how) he knows not.' The work is already out of his hands, a work of which, in September 1925, he had noted the completion of the first and second movements, with the scherzo being in progress. Finzi's catalogue notes the existence of a piano score of this work, but this is now missing.

The final addition to the catalogue is a curious reference to a 'MS Anthem (E. Dolber) of war truly, written 1920 (with New College Oxford).' No title is given; just the fact that it is a manuscript anthem. I am sure the letter reads 'Dolber', although I haven't yet found a poet of this name. The date would correspond with a time when he was making other musical works embodying, if not commemorating the war, such as the War Elegy for orchestra of November 1920. It would be nice if this work did indeed find its way into the hands of New College, who might perhaps have forgotten about it in some dusty corner of the music department...

Gurney war poetry manuscripts online

July this year saw the launch of a major new resource which brings to public access some 1200 pages of Gurney manuscript, which can be viewed on the internet, free of charge. The First World War Digital Poetry Archive has been developed over the last few years by Oxford University Computing Services, and was initially launched at the Imperial War Museum in November 2008, making available manuscripts by poets including Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg. Other poets are being added to the site, and July saw Gurney's turn, becoming one of the most represented poets on the site, with the manuscript pages that we at the archive had digitised in the latter part of 2008.

The online collection includes letters, many of which included poems, being sent home to Blighty, to Marion Scott, notebooks containing drafts of poems, typescripts, typescript and handwritten transcriptions by Scott, as well as Gurney's own copies of the two volumes published during his lifetime, Severn & Somme (1917) and War's Embers (1919), annotated with amendments made some years after they were published, when Gurney was having his extraordinary last flurry of creativity in the asylum before he turned to silence, musically and poetically speaking.

To explore this fantastic new web resource, go to http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/gurney.

Rhapsodising Gurney's Home-coming

Followers will have noticed that I haven't been on the blog for a while. There are a number of things to catch up on, which I shall so do in posts during the next week. To begin with, this home-coming is best marked by some Gurney home-comings: recognition of Gurney in his native Gloucester.

Firstly, for many years there has been a plaque stuck down a side alley, next to Boots on Eastgate Street, which marked the approximate location of the address, 3 Queen St (long demolished) where Gurney was born. This was in such a dingy corner that it would only be seen by those seeking it out, and hardly a fitting memorial to draw attention to one of Gloucester's most notable sons. Thanks to the efforts of city councillor and fellow First World War literary researcher, Sebastian Field, the council were persuaded to cast a new plaque which could be mounted in a more prominent position, on a pillar in front of Boots, next to the Roman remains that are on view there. The readiness with which this can now be seen by the casual passer-by can only e a good thing. Read Sebastian's report of the unveiling of the plaque here.

The second thing to report is the announcement of the Three Choirs Festival programme for next year, 7-15 August 2010, which features what almost amounts to a mini Gurney festival in the latter part of the week! The most exciting item in the programme is the first performance of Gurney's Gloucestershire Rhapsody for orchestra. Ian Venables and I have recently met to begin the process of editing the work for this premiere, which is to take place at Cheltenham Town Hall, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. Composed between 1919 and 1921, this is a remarkable work that portrays Gurney's view of Gloucestershire. Rather than wallowing in a perhaps cliched rhapsodic lyricism, Gurney's c.20 minute work is a great sweeping landscape which portrays the nobility of his Gloucestershire - echoed in lines from his poetry such as 'Crickley cliffs blared a trumpet ever', and also something of its heritage and Gurney's recognition of Gloucestershire being as much within him as around him, recalling musics of former ages in a curious section which seems to smack of a musical mediaevalism, what may be harking back to an almost Virgilian pastoral idyll. Although completed in 1921, it was never performed, although it was listed in contemporary biographical summaries as being one of his most important works. In some of his later letters he asked that it may be performed under the auspices of a Patron's Fund concert at the Royal College of Music - such concerts as saw the first performance of the War Elegy in 1921 - but it was never to be.

As well as this important premiere, there will be a rare opportunity to hear a Gurney string quartet movement, and a recital featuring his songs. However, Gurney will also feature for the first time in one of the main cathedral concerts; his music will be performed on the stage upon which he himself had such success as a boy treble when he appeared alongside Madame Albani as the Youth in Mendelssohn's Elijah. This is for a performance of a choral work I recently revived and orchestrated: The Trumpet; a setting of a poem by Edward Thomas dating from around 1921. This will be a rousing opening to a concert which features Elgar's Sea Pictures and Finzi's Intimations of Immortality. For full details of the programme visit the Three Choirs Festival website.

Gurney and Edward Thomas

This coming Saturday, 16 May, Churchdown, on the slopes of Chosen Hill, plays host to an event jointly hosted by the Ivor Gurney Society and the Edward Thomas Fellowship. The marriage of the two societies in this event is a natural one: Gurney, having been introduced to Thomas's poetry by John Haines (who knew Thomas personally) in autumn 1917, took the poetry to heart, making numerous musical settings of Thomas as well as becoming a major influence upon his own verse. In fact, when Gurney left hospital in 1918 and began to rejuvenate his creativity, Haines acknowledged the beginning of a new phase in Gurney's poetry, albeit with the influence of Thomas's poetry being a little too present. Thomas also puts in a named appearance in a few of Gurney's poems - notably in 'The Mangel-Bury', which was the subject of much discussion a couple of weeks ago when it was featured as 'Poem of the Week' in The Guardian - see the Guardian site and extensive blog commentary at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/apr/27/poem-of-the-week-ivor-gurney-mangel-bury.

Thomas had, by the time of Gurney's introduction to his work, and as described in 'The Mangel-Bury', 'fallen at Arras'. However, in 1932 Thomas's widow, Helen, visited Gurney in the asylum, at (if I remember rightly) the behest of the Finzis. She took with her some of Edward's maps and, tracing the map with his finger, relived the routes that Thomas had marked on them, Thomas and Gurney almost walking side by side in his reliving of those routes both he and Thomas knew.

With some 90 people booked to attend the event already, tickets may no longer be available, but it could be worth getting in touch to see if you could be squeezed in. If you can, you will be treated to three short talks - one on Thomas, one on Gurney and one on Gurney's musical settings of Thomas. There is also a recital given by soprano April Frederick featuring some of these settings.

For those who might be interested, there were 19 solo song settings of Thomas:

The Penny Whistle (1918)
Sowing (1918)
Lights Out (1919)
To-day I think [aka 'Scents'] (1919)
Bright Clouds (1920)
Snow (1921)
The cherry trees bend over (1921)
*The Bridge (1921)
*The Gallows (1921)
Cock-crow (1921)
*Adlestrop (1921)
*The Owl (1921)
*The Mill-Pond (1921)
*In Memoriam (1921)
*Out in the Dark (1921 rev. 1925)
*It Rains (c.1921-2)
Will you come? (1922)
*Words (1925)
The Trumpet (1925)

Those songs marked with an asterisk remain unpublished. 'Adlestrop', however, is probably going to be performed on 15 July at Minstrel Music's summer music festival near Ipswich, Suffolk. (Details will no doubt be published on their website in due course.) 'The Penny Whistle', 'Lights Out', 'Scents', 'Bright Clouds', 'Will you come?' and 'The Trumpet' were published by Stainer & Bell in 1926 as the song cycle, Lights Out.

There is also a choral setting of 'The Trumpet', composed in around 1921. First performed at Paul Spicer's English Choral Experience in 2007, it was given its first performance in my orchestration as part of the Cumbria Choral Initiative's Vaughan Williams Festival in Kendal in July 2008. Vocal scores of this work are available from Chosen Press.

St. George's Day

St. George is perhaps a curious choice to be England's patron saint: a Turkish knight who never set foot in England, but whose cult was introduced into this country in around the eleventh century, and whose banner, by the 13th century, had been adopted by the king of England, under which he fought in the crusades.

Gurney obviously thought it rather an anomaly also, for in his poetry St. George is not mentioned, in spite of the fact that there are poems specifically about this date, 23 April. The date would have held more significance in the fact that we celebrate St. George's day on the Turkish festival marking their first day of Spring.

However, today was for Gurney all about Shakespeare: our prized poet and playwright who, reputedly, both was born and died upon this day in 1564 and 1616 respectively. 80 Poems or So contains two poems titled 'April 23 1922', the first beginning 'Now on this famed day, Shakespeare's day...' and the second being a paean to England and (although unnamed) Shakespeare, briefly recalling some of the playwright's escapades.

Where there is a mention of St. George in Gurney's work it is with obvious reference to Shakespeare. It comes not in his poetry but in his completed play, The Tewkesbury Trial (April 1926). This play runs partly in parallel with Shakespeare's Henry VI part I, Gurney's second scene announcing the death of Henry of Monmouth (viz. Henry V - albeit an announcement premature by six days in historical fact), the funeral procession of whom opens Henry VI; their are some common protagonists: the Duke of Bedford, John of Lancaster; Sir John Fastolfe; The Duke of Gloucester; John Talbot also is mentioned. These figures make only a cursory appearances, since the play takes place principally in the Gloucestershire; in the meadows, taverns and houses around Tewkesbury and Fairford, and mostly consists of the everyday people of these provinces making a commentary upon the place, upon music, and sometimes on the distant action. The spirit of Shakespeare's Henry V is invoked, scenes taking place upon St. Crispin's Day, the Agincourt song being heard at one point, and also in the scenes of battle at Verneuil, France (a battle of the Hundred Years War that, again, Gurney gives prematurely, happening in the play 14 months before it did in actuality). During this part of the play there is a communal call to arms in which the soldiers all shout,

'Forward! Forward!
St George for England! St George!'

St George finally makes his way into Gurney's work, but only secondarily, through the eyes of Shakespeare.

Gurney and Shakespeare is a small part of Sebastian Field's remit in his PhD on Shakespeare and the Great War (visit his blog here!). Inspired by John Lee's essay in Tim Kendall's Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry, Sebastian's work is looking at the influence of Shakespeare upon poets in the Great War, at the heart of which, in 1916, fell the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. From my conversations with Sebastian it is remarkable to hear how much influence one can find, not only upon poets (Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen, Gurney et al) but in wider circles.

The matter of Gurney and Shakespeare is probably a PhD entire in itself. I have today completed the initial transcription of Gurney's 1926 poetry - a remarkable collection of 300 poems (some 40,000 words) - as many poems from that one year as the Collected Poems (1982/2004) contains in entirety. For me, this is a remarkable benchmark as it means that my transcription of Gurney's complete poems is nearing completion - a benchmark in my PhD. However, the poetry of this year contains a number of poems that take Shakespeare as their starting point. These poems bear references to the play from which they stem, including references to specific acts, scenes, and sometimes line numbers. There is one set of poems, for instance, inspired by King Lear - Gurney's favourite Shakespeare play. These poems are not merely a rewriting of the passages in question (Gurney isn't attempting to improve Shakespeare, although some extensive rewritings of Shakespeare's plays do exist elsewhere in the archive, dating from around this time or slightly later) but are a point of departure. One may find a common line with Shakespeare's original, but the emerging ideas are Gurney's, sometimes an expansion of something Shakespeare writes; sometimes a quasi-commentary thereon. There are also a number of songs written by Gurney presumably for insertion into the plays where there are no songs. It would be a significant undertaking to examine this work in detail, endeavouring to unravel Gurney's responses, but a little of it might fall under Sebastian's brief, and in writing up of my PhD there will be some cursory examination of this work.

Tea with the Kavanaghs

When one is working so closely with the primary source material, as I am in the reorganisation, cataloguing and transcriptions of the Gurney archive, one can sometimes lose sight of published sources. There have been occasions on which I have come across a poem that I am sure is published, only to find that, when cross referenced with various sources, it is a poem that I have come to recognise solely through my acquaintance with it in the manuscripts and typescripts of the collection. More to the point, in working with the original source materials one can become so wrapped up in one's own emerging ideas about Gurney and his work, one's reading focussing on contextual rather than direct commentary, that one forgets about the work of other commentators on Gurney's work.

Yesterday I went with one of my archive colleagues, Rebecca Shorter, to collect a box of papers relating to P.J. Kavanagh's work on Gurney, which he had decided to give to the archive. Kavanagh, with the help of his wife, Kate, edited the 1982 'Collected Poems', reissued in a revised edition by Carcanet/Fyfield Books in 2004, and a number of the papers in the newly donated accession relate to the production of this volume (correspondence, proofs etc). The collection also contains scripts to radio talks and correspondence with researchers working on dissertations on Gurney.

We collected the papers from the Kavanaghs' home in Gloucestershire, and whilst there we talked for a while over our respective cups of coffee or tea, speaking in the main (rather predictably) of Gurney: the poetry, the archive, reception of his work, their work on the edition et al. Numerous points emerged that were particularly interesting, such as the fact that the misnomer that is the original 'Collected Poems' was given at the insistence of the publisher, who argued that they weren't misleading the public in that title, since, in lacking the definite article it didn't purport to being THE Collected Poems. Also, both Kate and P.J. Kavanagh mentioned their particular interest in the late poetry of 1926, echoing my own interest in that work, which, as I've said before on this blog (26 April 2008), seems to lose sight of his more parochial/personal interests and achieve a timeless universality. The other thing that struck home in our conversation was P.J. Kavanagh's statement that 'nobody reads the editorial commentary'. Rather embarrassedly this brought home the realisation that I hadn't read his introduction to the Collected Poems since beginning work on the poetry.

Over a late brunch this morning at Doveston's (the best cafe in Lichfield city centre!) I read Kavanagh's introduction and found that much of that of which we had spoken of was there. However, the enthusiasm for the 1926 poetry is given a bit of a dampener in the introduction, it being noted as a remarkable oeuvre, but essentially 'bloodless' in content. I can see where this is coming from, but think it rather depends upon the context of his work. Certainly, when compared with some of Gurney's earlier work it could appear to be bloodless, because, I believe, Gurney's poetry (in part) can be so bloodSOME; so very full of body and of striking imagery and language, particularly in comparison with many of his contemporaries and forebears. There is perhaps a little less 'blood' in some of the 1926 poetry, but it is still very present; still so very full of life and colour, and, in parts, of drama. Its allusions turn from the more immediate drama of the First World War and his the predicament of his own incarceration to more classical ideas, no less dramatic in essence but perhaps more discreet in statement.

The other point upon which we agreed - and one first pointed out to me by Anthony Boden - is, for me, the true tragedy of Gurney: the fact that his work has been overshadowed by his labeling as a 'Mad' poet and composer. This is by far the most journalistically 'newsworthy' part of Gurney's life, but, although significant in the tragedy of his final isolation from the world, should not be dwelt upon. This is another point I found to be well made in Kavanagh's introduction to the Collected Poems. Gurney's asylum work shows a remarkable lucidity, much of the time - in fact Gurney should be seen as all the stronger an artist for the fact that he was at Dartford producing some of his best poetry, in spite of his predicament. One can't ignore this aspect of his life, but it should not become the principal facet of his reception. What must it be like to come afresh to Gurney's work without knowing anything of his life? I have, with Gurney, been increasingly of the opinion that his work should be considered away from the minutiae of his life. The opinion of Ruskin that knowledge of the person behind a work of art and the circumstance and intention of their creation is irrelevant - the Intentional Fallacy - is a matter in which I have often thought him to be wrong. However, in Gurney's case there is a lot to be said for it. Let his work be judged neutrally, on its own terms.