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

Load more