Ivor Gurney: in the asylum

Unmouthed – the asylum songs and poems of Ivor Gurney

Kate Kennedy

From Gramophone magazine, Tuesday, 15 June 2021

A new BBC programme explores the hundreds of works Gurney produced - but few have heard - during his 15 years in an asylum. On BBC Sounds.

Ivor Gurney (1890- 1937), First World War poet and composer of songs including the immortal ‘Sleep’, is loved by music and poetry enthusiasts alike, but his considerable reputation stands on only a fraction of his work: the majority is yet to be published. Only four years after the guns on the Western Front fell silent, just when he could look forward to taking his place in literary and musical London once more, he was locked up against his will in mental hospitals. He spent the remaining 15 years of his life incarcerated, but still writing and composing. He died of tuberculosis in the City of London Mental Hospital, emaciated and alone, at Christmas in 1937.

The asylum was a disaster for a man who lived to tramp freely over the meadows and hillsides of his native Gloucestershire, and who was driven by the knowledge that he was a great talent, with something unique and valuable to offer. And yet, out of those 15 years of silence (as it appeared to the outside world) came a terrible and hard-won opportunity. He wrote more within the asylum than many poets or composers write in a lifetime. Despite hardly being published, or performed, he kept writing, often in a white heat of creativity, and produced hundreds of poems, and reams of songs, string quartets and piano works.

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You can read the full article on Gramophone magazine’s webpage.

Kate will give a live online lecture and seminar on Gurney on 31 October 2021.