Gurney the Composer

Gurney saw his original work as a composer to be his most important: as he wrote, 'the brighter visions brought music; the lesser poetry or mere pleasurable emotion'. He was enormously prolific, particularly in the field of song for which he is best known.

Click on the tabs above to read about his work in the various genres. For a list of currently available recordings and published scores, see the Current Bibliography.



The manuscript of one of Gurney's most important songs: a setting of words from John Masefield's play, The Tragedy of Pompey the Great, 'By a Bierside'. Gurney composed the song in 1916 whilst serving as a private soldier with the 2/5 Gloucesters. It was written whilst lying on a damp sandbag in a disused trench mortar emplacement in Flanders. The mud staining to this first page suggests that this is that first manuscript of the song.
(Image © copyright the Ivor Gurney Estate)

 

The Songs of Ivor Gurney

Gurney composed some 330 songs, about 90 of which have been published. It is in this genre that Gurney's genius has been most widely recognised, his particular sensitivity to the poetry he set arising from his dual ability as both composer and poet.


Below are a few 30 second extracts from Gurney's songs taken from the latest release by Naxos Records, vol. 19 of their English Song Series, Ivor Gurney: Songs. You can buy this recording from the Society Shop or through Amazon.co.uk. Our thanks to Naxos for permission to make these extracts available on this site.


Ha'nacker Mill

This setting of Hilaire Belloc's Ha'nacker Mill, composed in 1919, is an elegy to a place Belloc knew in his youth, a mill at Halnaker hill near Slidon in Sussex. When revisiting the place in later life it was in desolation, and this poem sees its decay as symptomatic of the wider demise of English agriculture in a post-industrial world.


Under the Greenwood Tree

This song is from Gurney's early masterpiece, the Five Elizabethan Songs, in which set Gurney's most popular song is also found, 'Sleep'.

 

 

Works for Solo Piano

Gurney composed numerous miniatures for piano, as well as four known sonatas, the last of which is now missing. However, much of his effort in writing for the piano was put into Preludes. He composed at least 17 preludes, five of which - Gurney's 'Set one' - were published by Winthrop Rogers in 1921. One manuscript in the Gurney Archive contains the beginnings of 'Set Three', implying that Set Two must have been written, either as a now missing whole or in the collation of the various preludes composed between those of sets one (1919) and three (c.1921). From Gurney's wartime correspondence it appears that Gurney was intent upon composing a collection of 'English Preludes', being perhaps his answer to Bach's Das Wohltemperierte Clavier - the Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues.

The Gurney Society oversaw the publication by Thames Publishing (now part of Music Sales) of Gurney's two early Nocturnes and nine preludes, all of which are recorded and available on CD.

It is hoped that audio samples from these recordings will be made available here shortly.

Publications & Recordings:

Some of these will shortly be available from the Society Shop

  • Preludes & Nocturnes for piano, ed. Jennifer Partridge (Thames Publishing, 2004)
  • Piano Music by Ivor Gurney & Howard Ferguson, Mark Bebbington (pf.), including Gurney's nine published preludes, two nocturnes and four unpublished miniatures.
    Somm Records: SOMMCD038
    Buy this disc from the Society Shop

 

 

Chamber Music

To be completed shortly...

 

 

Choral Works

To be completed shortly...

 

 

Orchestral Works

Only three of Gurney's orchestral works are extant, the scores of the two symphonies we know Gurney was working on, one of which we know to have been completed in short score, now being lost. During the last five years the Gurney Estate has been preparing editions of the three extant works for performance and recording. The last of these, the Coronation March, is due to be completed this March in time for its first performance in Gloucester in June, a century after it was written.

The extant works are as follows:

Coronation March (1910-11)
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Composed in response to a competition run by the Worshipful Company of Musicians for a march to be performed at the forthcoming celebrations of the coronation of George V, this march began life as a March in B flat, before being retitled on its orchestration in January 1911. In the event no prize was awarded.

Gurney's march has not been performed to date, and will receive its world premiere in Gloucester in June 2011.



War Elegy (1920)
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Written in November 1920, at around the time of the interment of the Unknown Warrior at Westminster Abbey and the unveiling of the Cenotaph, Gurney gradually settled on the title War Elegy having initially christened it 'Funeral March' and then 'March Elegy'. It was given its first performance at the Royal College of Music in 1921, in one of their Patron's Fund concerts - probably under the baton of the young Adrian Boult - after which it remained in the RCM archives until it was found in the 1990s.

The work was recorded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2006, and is available on CD from Dutton records.



A Gloucestershire Rhapsody (1919-1921)
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Gurney's Gloucestershire Rhapsody was given its first performance during the 2010 Three Choirs Festival, in Cheltenham Town Hall.