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| Gurney
Lost and Found
Manuscripts Recently Rediscovered |
Songs & Piano Pieces
Orchestral War Elegy |
Early Gurney Music Uncovered from Down Under
Gurney’s Missing Piano Manuscripts Returned to City
By Phil Norris (phil.norris@gloscitizen.co.uk)
Gloucester
Citizen © 2002, Used by Permission.
The following article from the Gloucester Citizen, dated January 30, 2002, gives details of a gift to the Gurney archive of a number of Ivor’s previously unknown piano and song compositions dating from 1908 and 1909. The Society Committee has agreed to offer Mr. Hayward (eldest son of Leslie Hayward and Dorothy Evelyn Gurney) and his sisters, May Burrage and Shirley Armstrong, honorary membership of the Society in recognition of their generous gift. The music in question is being assessed by Richard Carder, Michael Hurd and Ian Venables. Their comments will be published in a future Society Journal.
A Documentary on Gloucester poet and
composer Ivor Gurney is to be broadcast as some of his recently-discovered
music scores are prepared for possible performance. The BBC2 programme
Long
Remembered Hills will feature one of Gurney’s inspirational places
— Chosen Hill, a popular haunt for writers in the early 20th Century.
It is linked to a new Open University
music course to feature the lives and works of Gloucester-born Ivor Gurney
(1890-1937) and Lydney-born composer Herbert Howells (1892-1983).
Appearing in the programme is the chairman of The Ivor Gurney Society,
Anthony Boden, who has been in contact with Gurney’s nephew Jack Hayward,
who lives in Australia. Mr. Hayward has a small collection
of original manuscripts of piano pieces which were composed in 1907 and
1908 and which are unknown to Gurney scholars in the UK.
Mr. Boden said: “I asked Mr. Hayward
if it would be possible for photocopies to be sent to England for inclusion
in the Gurney Archive at Gloucester City Library. “To my great delight,
Mr. Hayward wrote to say that he and his sisters had agreed not just to
send copies but to sent the original manuscripts.
“They believed the correct place for
them was with the rest of the collection. All Gurney enthusiasts
will be excited by their extremely generous gesture, and these important
piano pieces are now being studied by experts with a view to future performance
and publication.”
The pieces were written when Gurney
was a young man studying music at Gloucester Cathedral and before he went
to the Royal College of Music.
Mr. Boden said it would depend on
the quality of the work whether they were performed — but scholars would
find them interesting because they show the development of the young composer.
Gurney’s star has risen in the past two decades following a successful
biography and anthology of his poetry.
The film Long Remembered Hills
features footage shot on Chosen Hill, Gloucester Cathedral, St. Mary de
Lode Church, and Wainlodes Hill, Twigworth. It will be shown twice
a year for the next five years and will be broadcast for the first time
on BBC2 at 12:30 a.m. next Tuesday [February 5, 2002]. Chosen Hill
was also an inspiration for other artists, including composer Herbert Howells
and poetry F. W. Harvey.
Performed Once and Tucked Away
Gurney’s ‘Lost’ War Elegy is Found
By Pamela Blevins © 2002
We can credit Marion Scott with providing
the clue that has led to the discovery of Ivor Gurney’s ‘lost’ orchestral
composition, War Elegy.
I was recently at the Library of Congress
in Washington reading microfilm of The Christian Science Monitor
in my on-going effort to copy all of Scott’s reviews and criticism appearing
in that newspaper from 1919 to 1933 (and in other publications).
Scott wrote on many musical topics for the Monitor, a daily newspaper,
but it is her twice-weekly collection of reviews of London concerts and
events that account for the greater portion of her contribution.
As I reeled through 1921, I came to
the July 16 edition where I found her review of “Recent Music in London
Rehearsal”. It was an account of The Patron’s Fund rehearsal that
had been held at the Royal College of Music on June 16 when the only known
performance of Gurney’s War Elegy was given. The concert
was conducted by Adrian Boult with the then-new Queen’s Hall Orchestra.
After that the work seemed to disappear and was considered missing or,
worse, lost.
The Elegy shared the
program with Thomas Dunhill’s symphony, Hugh Bradford’s fox-trot for 26-players,
Eric Fogg’s The Golden Valley and R. O. Morris’ Novelette
for orchestra, which Scott described collectively as ‘a hopeful crop of
compositions’, adding “Though none was impeccable, the general level stood
high, and their virtues were positive as well as negative”. She cited
their sincerity, purpose and “illumined” beauty in the positive column.
‘The first, a war elegy by Ivor Gurney,
is comparatively short but produces an impression of great aims,’ she wrote.
‘The themes are heartfelt and sincere, their treatment is grave and sensitive,
and the opening and closing sections of the work are eloquent. Toward
the middle, the music loses its grip and wanders around rather than holds
the direct onward flow. It will probably gain by being rewritten.’
In a letter to his friend John Haines
written in November 1920, Gurney mentioned the Elegy and
indicated that he was having difficulty with it. ‘The songs come
all right, but the Piano Sonata and “Elegy” for Orchestra; No, there is
a hard and futile grind there’. (CL, p.506)
Having once been an investigative
newspaper reporter, I found the mystery of the missing Elegy
an inviting challenge. It could well be lost or it could still exist.
But where?
I sent an email to Peter Horton at
the Royal College of Music library and asked him if the War Elegy
might be ‘tucked away’ at the R.C.M., which seemed to me the logical place
for it to be if it were anywhere. It was first and last performed
there and it was not in the Gurney Archive.
Within less than 48-hours, I had the
answer. My search was over. ‘The MS of the War Elegy
is indeed at the RCM, MS 4498,’ Mr. Horton replied. There is no indication
from the manuscript or from the catalogue as to when or how it came to
be at the R.C.M., however it was probably left there after the performance
in 1921.
It will be interesting to learn if
the War Elegy merits a contemporary performance.
