A Lament While Serving with the Alongside Poems by Walt Whitman

WORLD WORLD Ivor Gurney Gurney's experience of - it’s not really lambkins frisking at that “the German people are fighting for a just the war was marred bya all as most people take for granted”. cause”. He was amused by the thought of series of injuries, including “Dona nobis Pacem”, written in 1936, musicians becoming soldiers. “Bach as a staff- being shot in the shoulder echoes Bliss in using Christian texts sergeant (handing over a pair of oversized A lament while serving with the alongside poems by Walt Whitman. boots), that would be okay, but Beethoven Gloucestershire Regiment There is no doubt that in this work, practicing rifle drill, Mozart throwing hand- in April 1917, and gassed FOR THE LOST in September that same Vaughan Williams was cautioning grenades or standing guard year. Some have against conflict. in front of a barracks; Schubert as an air force Like the artists, poets and writers of the era, the world was also robbed of speculated this may have The Great War was a tragedy for lieutenant and Mendelssohn as an NCO at a many of its brightest musical talents. Stephen Johns, Artistic Director at the had an impact on the British artists, no doubt, but there vehicle fleet convoy? They are inconceivable.” severity of his shell-shock were similar losses on all sides of As the war moved on, including the death in Royal College of Music, looks back at the composers who were lost during the after the war. the conflict. The German composer, action of his father, he came ever closer to the First World War, and those whose experiences informed their later works Rudi Stephan is worthy of front and its horrors. In 1918 he wrote with particular mention. At his death joy “Shuddering, we heard that the Emperor on the Eastern Front he left behind abdicated, that Ebert will become Chancellor n September 1914, a month after The years leading up to the war were heady Butterworth was highly self-critical, and range across the contrasting themes of war a range of works, including orchestral pieces and – oh greatest bliss – that there will be declaration of war, Sir Hubert Parry, with change and musical development and destroyed the majority of his compositions and memories of a pre-war English Idyll – and operas. He was the rising star of the cease-fire in the coming days”. composer and Director of the Royal experimentation. Stravinsky had set the world before leaving for the Front in 1915. witness his largest orchestral works “War informal Jungdeutsch movement, moving on Maybe we should end where we started, College of Music, gave his Director’s on fire with his radical ballet score, Le sacre de What remains include the beautiful Elegy” and “Gloucestershire Rhapsody”. from the late Romanticism of Strauss, and with Parry. In the words of the Oxford address. He spoke with courageous printemps, in 1913. Wagner’s music had pastorale “The banks of green willow”, Arthur Bliss found himself strongly rejecting combining influences from Debussy to Berg Dictionary of National Biography: “During defiance: “If we have to stand in rows over challenged and inspired composers through and the song cycle “A Shropshire Lad”, German influences in music – he was furious and Stravinsky. It is a double tragedy that the the war he watched a life's work of progress Iagainst the Albert Hall with files of Prussian Europe and beyond, with Mahler and Strauss selected from the large collection of poems to return wounded from the Somme to find majority of his manuscripts and works in and education being wiped away as the male soldiers ready to demolish us we shall all developing the avenues their predecessor had of A E Houseman, with their own narrative “a public vociferously applauding a German progress were themselves destroyed population, particularly the new fertile look down the murderous barrels without opened up. Debussy, Ravel and others of the loss of ordinary men in an earlier war. soloist”. Rejecting much of his pre-war music, in Allied bombing of Worms in 1945. generation of composing talent of the Royal winking an eyelash”. But, tellingly, Parry ploughed different furrows in a uniquely Ernest Farrar taught the young Gerald Finzi, written in the Germanic tradition of Brahms, Others whose early deaths robbed later College, dwindled.” But Parry proposed spoke also with sadness at what he foresaw French style. Schoenberg’s experimentation in who later wrote his Requiem da Camera in he set out on new paths. Later in life he generations included André Caplet, to whom confidence that, even in greatest trauma, the would be inevitable loss: “Our pupils are Vienna had scandalised the public. A memory of his teacher. Much of his music admitted being troubled by frequent nightmares Debussy had entrusted the orchestration of “finest results in art” would profit, and that made of different stuff from the pupils of nationalist streak in music in earlier decades has not dated well, but notable is his Heroic – dreaming of being stuck in the trenches and some of his most popular piano works, “those who can extract something true and ordinary schools. They are gifted in a rare had been the inspiration for composers Elegy, dedicated “To Soldiers”. Francis Purcell doomed to fight on even knowing the armistice including “Clair de Lune”, and the Belgian inspiring out of such a welter of wild realities and special way. Some of them are so gifted including Grieg and Verdi, and now their “Bunny” Warren was just 21 when he was had been signed”. His large choral work, composer, Georges Antoine. But there were are likeliest to reinvigorate the things that that their loss could hardly be made good.” successors. Vaughan Williams was amongst reported missing at Mons in 1916 – his body “Morning Heroes”, presaged Benjamin Britten’s further musicians who lived through the tend to become stale and unprofitable”. “If The poets who lived and died in the those busy gathering folksongs around rural was never recovered. Only a few works great masterpiece, the “War Requiem”, in its use conflict and went on to have great influence you want to stupefy a genius, the surest way First World War are known by many – England. Composers and performers travelled survive, but his loss was keenly felt amongst his of war poetry, including Whitman and Owen, on the art. Vaughan Williams had travelled to do it is to keep him in cotton wool”. And, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert freely far and wide, experiencing and contemporaries. Parry said of him that this was interlaced with classical texts. to France in 1908 to study with Maurice despite the knowledge that not all would Brooke – and their works speak powerfully exchanging each other’s musical traditions. “a peculiarly tragic case…one of humanity’s No discussion of the music of this time can Ravel. Now they found themselves on return, he saluted those who continued to of the horror of war and a nostalgia for The Royal College of Music in London tenderest possessions was ruthlessly destroyed”. be complete without mention of the earlier opposite sides of the war. Ravel was a keen volunteer: “There are a vast number of our home. Fewer may be aware of the effect was home to a particularly talented Herbert Howells was particularly close to generation of Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan conscript, driving cargo trucks to the Battle best and most gifted ones offering themselves of this cataclysmic war on the composers generation – the contrasting styles of Parry Warren, writing “Elegy for solo viola, string Williams. Whether or not Holst’s famous, of Verdun. His health deteriorated through to the same fate. All honour to them, and all of the time. and Charles Villiers Stanford as teachers was quartet and strings” in his memory, which was asymmetric march “Mars, the bringer of war” the war, and he was discharged in 1917. anxiety to us!” attracting a rich seam of gifted first performed in a Mons Memorial Concert is a conscious representation of the new He wrote his piano work young musicians. This war at the Royal Albert Hall in 1917. mechanical warfare, its violent and relentless “Le tombeau de was devastating to them. Moving, too, are the stories of those rhythms stand in sharp contrast to the simple Couperin” through the George Butterworth folk-oriented harmonies of much contemporary Of those British composers who survived the war but who period of war, completing Arthur Bliss Butterworth served for composers from the RCM were severely affected by it. Prime amongst English music. Holst was frustrated that he it in 1919. Each of the Serving with distinction much of the war as a who did not survive the war, these is Ivor Gurney. Gurney was both poet was rejected as unsuitable for military service. movements is dedicated to in the Royal Fusiliers and subaltern in the Durham George Butterworth, Ernest and composer; Stanford declared that Gurney By contrast, Vaughan Williams, then 42, and friends who had not Light Infantry, serving Grenadier Guards during Farrar, Francis Purcell was potentially “the biggest of them all”. It is already a highly-successful composer, signed survived. On listening, it is alongside the many the war, Bliss's composing miners of the county. Warren and William Denis likely that Gurney had a mental illness from up with the Medical Corps. Although he rarely a surprisingly uplifting career was interspersed He was killed by a sniper Browne are prominent. early in his life, but there is no doubt that his spoke of his war-time activities, his music was work – Ravel explained with a number of other in the Battle of the Butterworth’s compositions experiences in the war – he is widely undoubtedly affected.

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