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| Ivor Gurney, British composer and poet |
DOES ENGLAND STILL EXIST?
“Where did the beautiful England I knew and loved go? I miss it so!“ a friend wrote to me the other day.
I loved it too. Even though I am still proud to be an American, I was raised to be an inveterate Anglophile.
Where did the England we remembered go?
It has been debased, demeaned, and rotted out from within by misguided notions of fairness, equality, and the pernicious, corruptive non-ideals of multiculturalism. But take heart, the gentle, bucolic splendor and majesty of the England we will always love lives on in her great literature, poetry, magnificent architecture, beautiful gardens, and perhaps most of all in the wonderfully evocative music composed in the late-nineteenth and early-twenties centuries by the British composers of that period –– a great tribute and poignant farewell to a magnificent civilization overwhelmed, and all but snuffed out by the diabolical forces of modernity.
~ §~
MEANWHILE, BACK at the D'RAT DEBACLE:
NEED ANYONE SAY MORE?
What a lovely piece of music! Thank you for calling your readers attention to it.
ReplyDeleteI note this from the YouTube blurb:
Gurney served with the Gloucestershire Regiment during the First World War, fighting on the Somme, where he was first wounded in the shoulder, then gassed.
Something very similar to my Uncle Bill, who volunteered to serve on the front lines in Belgium, so as to spare the life of one family man.
Uncle Bill, my surrogate grandfather who taught me much about the love of music and the love of the Lord (and did both of those things for innumerable teenagers wherever he lived), came home but severely disabled from his wounds (shrapnel and the aftereffects of having been gassed).
Although my Uncle Bill lived for many years after the war, he eventually went blind (detached retina) and died from complications from the wounds he sustained. Till his dying day, Uncle Bill was proud for having served his nation, and Tennesseans in those days were not people who valued the concept of nation. Only after WW1 did Tennesseans value the concept of nation.
My point: many veterans go on, quietly, to do great things for our society. Just look at the contributions of Ivor Gurney!
YES. As I often quote, "The GREAT are rarely FAMOUS, the FAMOUS rarely GREAT."
DeleteGurney's mentor at the conservatory, a man who taught virtually ALL the major English composers of the period, considered Ivor Gurney to have had the very greatest potential of the students he had taught.
DeleteI love all the music from this bittersweet epoch, bu I sensed greater strength, more forceful character, and a higher awareness of the Truth of Being in Gurney's work than that of the the others, though admittedly all have much to recommend them.
Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) was Ivor Gurney' mentor. Look him up, he ha great influence over the development of British music of the period. Taght just about everyboy who was anybody in the field.
DeleteSome of Ivor Gurney's poems.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that link. I only discovered Ivor Gurney just yesterday. His life was unpleasant, ultimately ended tragically when he was but 47 in a London mental hospital, BUT his glorious soul managed, even in the face of terrible adversity to give us some SPLENDID, Life-Affirming MUSIC of an EXALTED, caliber.
DeleteI hve yet to read ny of his poetry.
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ReplyDeleteWE DO NOT ACCEPT MORONIC PLATITUDES AND INPID OBSERVATIONS FROM TROLLS WHO MAKE A FALSE PRETENSE AT APPEARING RESPECTABLE.
DeleteWorth reading -- especially THIS COMMENT by Mustang.
ReplyDeleteI AGREE, and since few ever bother to click on links –– a most irritating an distracting method of sharing information, I have always felt –– I have copied and will now paste Mustang's remarks right here.
DeleteWe imagined that The Great War would be the war to end all others, but whoever envisioned that, as history reveals, were horribly mistaken. There were no lessons learned in its aftermath, beginning with the gathering of victors to feast at the corpse of the defeated foe.
Industrialists, and those who would ride their coattails, became greedy, some even to the extent of borrowing money to ride the wave of economic opportunity —and this led us to an economic collapse that soon made its way around the world. No country escaped save those that had no economy to begin with.
Then came the rise of the dictators; first, in Russia, then in Italy, and finally in Germany. Today we can denounce these madmen, but if we think that they were a manifestation too far away from American shores for anyone to care about—we should think harder.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was enamored by what Mussolini was doing in Italy —and he wasn’t alone. America’s greatest industrialists thought that fascism would work well in America, and they even hatched a plot to seize the government with Smedley D. Butler as its military head. The plot failed, because of Butler, but the event serves as an example to us now that (1) the people who assume the trappings of power are an untrustworthy lot, (2) the loss of freedom in America is only one election away (governed in a significant way by thoroughly under-educated citizens), and (3) Americans must never take their eyes away from our foremost prized possession: Our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I am an oath keeper. I will always do my duty. Still, our government has mired us into a senseless and wasteful series of foreign policies and commitments that, rather than making us more patriotic and prouder of our country, forces us to question the intelligence and wisdom of our leaders and the patriotism of our citizens. I am still waiting for someone —anyone— to explain to me how either Iraq or Afghanistan serves our “national interests.” To my mind, defining this ought to be the first step before ever committing our nation’s most precious resources to armed conflict.
On Armistice Day, I think about those brave young lads who distinguished themselves on the field of battle. World War I was a sad chapter in World History. We ought to have learned important, sustaining lessons from it, but I fear we have not —even today. ...
Not cheesy enough... :(
ReplyDeleteEven the proper English gentleman needs a common touch. ;p
DeleteSo Banish the thought of lost gentility. Grieve the loss of the rude and crude Gloucesterman.
DeleteFor of what worth is the Tru-staff w/o a contrasting point of reference?
DeleteYou ar sadly mistaken. No matter the condition of ur birth or our present station in life we're always best advised to fix our gaze at the highest possible goals and hope to learn to appreciate the best manifestations of human endeavor.
DeleteI will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.
~ Psalm 121 - KJV
:P
DeleteFor in the prim and proper lies masked all that is right and true.
DeleteHenry IV, part 2 | Act 3, SCENE II.
DeleteGloucestershire. Before SHALLOW'S house.
Neither the glory of the music, nor the content of my small observations reached you, Joe, or you wouldn't be able to say such things.
DeleteI think you have brought pre-concived notions that reflect what you have ASSUME Dthis past is all about rather than giving us an honest appraisal of what is really there after makng the effort to absorb its content.
I admit, of course, that I do just that to YOU, Thersites, and FJ. all the time, myself, but let us not reduce commetary to a mere sparring match as is the custom in far too many venues in the blogosphere these days.
God IS all IN all, whether anyone likes to acknowledge it or not.
Ivor Gurney, himself, may not have fully realized that in his conscious life (even the greatest of the great rarely do), but his innate grasp of the Higher Reality that is the TRUTH of BEING dominated his unconscious mindd, despite the cruel adversities that plagued him, and that Higher Cinsciousness gave us THIS marvelous piece of music, and much else of great value.
The greatness in the work lies in contrast to the smallness of the works of others. One cannot appreciate the former without the latter. One cannot appreciate the noble with the base. They are BOTH necessary. That is my point. To rectify your omission. Yes, by all means, glory in "her great literature, poetry, magnificent architecture, beautiful gardens, and perhaps most of all in the wonderfully evocative music", but also glory in her simple and oft rustic people who provide its' backdrop and points of contrast.
DeleteOf COURSE, Joe! "Ca va sans dire," but Shakespeare, Dickens and Kipling and many others icluding Henry Purcell, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven all of whom had a profoundly "earthy" side to their personalities have fully acknowledged all of that (I did check out your links by the way, believe it or no),
DeleteThere is absolutely NOTHING either "prim" or "proper" in Ivor Gurney's orchestral tone poem. It reaches very deeply into the ESSENCE of what it means to be a PERSON, even if the work IS unmistakbly ENGLISH in characer.
What did you think I was touting –– tightly corseted Victorian ladies wearin white gloves in elegant dawing rooms sipping tea served with luscious buttery scones, homemade strawberry jam, poured from silver pots into dainty bone china cups finely decorated with sprays of green leaves and bright flowers indulging in vacuous, polite, hypocritical conversation about "safe" subjects while covertly despising or pitying one another? }:^)>
Again, I urge you to LISTEN to the MUSIC.
Read what I said to our friend SilverFiddle who deemed it "nice."
Unless I am INSANE –– which I am not fit to ascertain, of course, though naturally I don't think so –– the exalted spiritual and aesthetic SUBSTANCE I find in this music is absolutely real, but Gurney's GENIUS presents it in earthly awareness of the Beauty in Nature, and the fierceness of human passion.
This stuff AIN'T som kind of Aery Faery ideaized dream vision of what OUGHT to be, but rather a very strong affimation of what IS –– on ALL levels.
ALL turly GREAT thungs ae ALWAYS three-dimensional.
The trouble with the cynics and barbarous iconoclastic philophers you like to quote is their hopelessly ONE-SIDED view of the world. They INSIST on seing ONLY the Drab, Dark, Depraved, Depressing, Dissolute, Degenerate, Degraded side, and want to give the impressiion that all the LOVELINESS and REFINEMENT and ILLUMINATING, ENCOURAGING VIEWS we've known are ILLUSORY.
So DAMN tHEM to HELL for THAT, the bastards. ]:^)>
Then where's the "Turkish March"?
DeleteIon was a rhapsode. He could explain the greatness of Homer, but that of no other poet of the age.
This is a rhapsody. It is one-sided by definition.
So enough with the disputation. Enjoy it in all its' one-sidedness. There's nothing wrong in that.
TRULY great things are NEVER "one-sided." They are all-encompassing.
DeleteNot everyone sees that, but nonetheless, it IS true.
'Tis heard in the rustling of leaves in the forest
Seen in the waving of golden fields
Midst loveliest flowers' gaudy array
'Tis seen in myriad stars in Heaven.
Fierce it sounds in the thunder's loud roll
And flames in the ligtning's brightly quivering flash ...
What is the "IT" the lines refer to?
The HOLY SPIRIT, the Be All, End All of Existence.
MUCH better than that, my friend! I find it ELECTRIFYING –– majestic, insightful, poignantly beautiful, ennobling, powerfully stirring emotions of deep appreciation for all that was and remains good, and penetrating sorrow and regret for all the good threatened with irretrievable loss. that we have been busily throwing away with both hands since the World War I and Great Depression.
ReplyDeleteI found this Rhapsody so heartbreakingly beautiful I burst into tears as I listened to it for the very first time just yesterday. And yet I find it tremdnsouaky ENCOURAGING, because, as I see it, it presents clear proof that the the Holy Spirit does, indeed, exist, that it ultimately dominates and supersedes ALL other considerations, and that even the smallest AWARENESS of God's presence in our lives makes all the suffering –– and the tedium of the Daily Grind –– worthwhile.
But then I've soent my entire conscious life studying the historical development, the intricacies of harmony, counterpoint, and form in serious music with increasing wonder and affection for more than seventy years.
But, it ALWAY struck me as of paramoupnt importance since childhood. I believe it was God's way of calling my attention directly to Him. I feel BLEST. Not everyone receives such a call –– at lest not in that particular way.
I published this at KID's blog earier this morning, and then at Farmer's Letters with few emendations.
ReplyDeleteIF you take the time to examine its implications thoroughly, I think you might agree the these remarks are as relevant to this great pece of music an dthe life of Ivor Gurney its composer as any we mght say abiut them DIRECTLY.
The Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster
A Brave New World (1931-32) by Aldous Huxley
ANIMAL FARM (1945) by George Orwell
Nineteen-EIghty-Four (1949) by George Orwell
Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding
The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood
Those are the major dystopian novels I've read. All paint essentially the same gruesome, terrifying picture. Though the details, characters and settings vary, each of these books carries essentially the same message:
WE are OUR OWN WORST ENEMY.
Even Walt Kelly's cartoon character Pogo said it in the mid-nineteen-fifties when he famously published "WE have MET the ENEMY, and he is US!" I was fourteen at the time, and remember being struck by that while reading the Pogo strip in the New ork Herald Tribune when Kelly first first presented it.
The veneer giving us the appearance of being civilized is, and always has been, exceedingly thin –– and very fragile.
Things aren't really different now from what they always have been, BUT since the powerful discoveries and developments in "Science" and "Technology" have replaced the absolute authority of DIVINE LAW –– especially in the minds of far too many members of our supposedly "elite," educated class, the process of degeneration and dissolution has been greatly accelerated.
Unless and until we learn once again to RESPECT, BELIEVE and RELY on the supremacy and benevolence of GOD, as revealed to us in the Holy Bible, things aren't going to get any better. We'll just keep on chasing our tails with ever increasing efficiency and ferocity at ever increasing ates of speed in impotent frenzy –– a truly dismal prospect.
November 12, 2018 at 7:33 AM Delete
Blogger Franco Aragosta said...
I hasten to add that believing in God, and valuing the authority of wisdom gleaned from the basic precepts found in the Holy Bible does NOT make one "a religious fanatic" as most of the dismal "deep thinkers" and aggressive atheists on the Left would have you believe.
Submitting to Divine Authority takes true HUMILITY –– a quality not naturally possessed by many human creatures.
Our maing problem as a species is our inimical penchant for trying always to find an EASY aWAY to get throgh life –– one that absovles us of responsibility for ourselves.
Those foolish "philophers" who have encouraged such an attitude are guilty of Spreading CONFUSION while DESTROYING Good and RETARDING true Progress.
What is "True Progress?"
The determined advance towards ENLIGHTENMENT.
We must remember, however, that ENLIGHTENMENT does not mean advocacy of the kind of skepticism that breeds sneering cynicism, factionalism, sarcasm, immorality and ferocious misanthropy.
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ReplyDeleteYour shallow, jejune, vacuous, transparently tendentious, cliché ridden observations are NOT welcome at this blog.
DeleteTODAY is VETERANS DAY or ARMISTICE DAY, so once again I post the poem written just yesterday to note the occasion. Make of it what y will, f coyrse, but I hope someone some merit and relevance in it.
ReplyDelete___ A VETERAN’S DAY LAMENT ___
The thought arises once again:
That our brave men have died in vain
If in our now-degraded state
We see no more why they were great,––
And rattle on belligerently ––
Rejecting Thought that made us free ––
Embracing now with loud insistence ––
Malice threatening our existence ––
Tearing at each other's throats ––
While a leering Satan gloats ––
A sorry spectacle that wrenches
My heart thinking of the trenches
Filled with anguish, fear and dread
As bullets whizzed above each head,
And buried in the mud the mines
Lurked to shatter limbs and spines,
While in the distance cannons boomed
Inspiring fear that all were doomed.
Then to see a body shattered ––
One a buddy –– now "parts" scattered ––
In the mud with corpses strewn ––
Gruesome lit by sun or moon ––
More pitiful the wounded lie
In agony praying to die.
And all around the smell of blood
Vomit, –– urine, –– faces, –– crud
Defined the hellish atmosphere
But few if any shed a tear.
They knew they had a job to do ––
Protecting our land –– and you ––
From Tyranny, –– Brutality ––
Poverty –– and Slavery ––
Their Sacrifice –– Our Legacy –
Now relegated to the Fire ––
Ever the Enemy’s Desire ––
Because their precious Victory
Was neutralized by Sophistry
That promised Peace eternally
By ceding our Sovereignty
As a dumb ovine assembly
Always led too easily
To the abattoir where brutally
They end up slaughtered ruthlessly.
And so the Enemy has won ––
Not by bayonet, bomb, or gun ––
But by an ideology
Seductive, to those lazily
Imagining there’s an Easy Way
To stop becoming Satan’s Prey.
Thus lulled into a stupor we
Now feel a false Security.
Forgetting the we owe a debt
To those brave men who fought to get
Continued Opportunity
To cherish their fine legacy.
Because the Left runs Education
We’ve lost our great Emancipation ––
Betrayed great men through dissipation
Made worse by endless argumentation.
~ FreeThinke (11/11/18)
You and AOW have been showcasing English composers I haven't heard and as is your habit, introduced me to some fine music.
ReplyDeleteIf I may suggest a film in the spirit of the theme, Powell & Pressburger's WW II film. A Canterbury Tale . It's subtle and you need to stick with it but it rewards with a great sense of optimism for the glory of English culture.
On reaching Canterbury one of the leads realizes his dream of playing Bach on the cathedral organ.
I thnik you would enjoy it and find the film quite moving.
Thank you, Ducky. I'm sure I would love it. Wasn't it Pressburger who was responsbile for giving us The Red Shoes, wth Moira Shearer, Aniton walbrook and Marius Goring –– also The Tales of Hoffman with tenor Robert Rounsville?
DeleteI believe –– and despite our differences I think you must too –– that the BEST of any culture is immortalized in the ART left behind for us to wonder at, examine, analyze, , and savor for all time.
The Red Shoes and Tales of Hoffman are indeed part of Powell & Pressburger's extensive portfolio. They should be better known.
DeleteIf you would know a culture you must know its art.
So we agree at last.;-) But that, of course, is why I am so exercised about our current state of affairs, since I see no beauty and very little of enduring value produced in a culture that seems devoted to mindless iconoclasm, destructive anarchic initiatives and the frankly obscene glorification of dysfunction, degeneracy and out-and-out trash.
DeleteFranco, Your response to my comment was touching. Unfortunately, Merry Olde England no longer exists...
ReplyDeleteHow Immigration Changes Britain
They cannot offer asylum to the Pakistani Christian woman because they fear their own citizens will riot and kill in the streets.
I doubt the rioter would be men in bowlers sipping tea.
It does look that way, Silver, but my point in featuring this splendid symphonic workwas to demonstrate that the SPIRIT of all that we knew and loved survives, and lives on in the Art, Architecture and Literature left behind.
DeleteOf course the architecture, pantung and sculpture are vulnerable to the horrid sort of "official" vandalism the Moslems perpetrate n objects of which they don't "approve." WE are experiencing something of the kind ourselves wit the current mad fad to destroy public mnuments honoring leaders of the Confederacy, etc. At the rate we're going 'm very much afraid that soon we'll see movement to destroy Mount Vernon and Monticello, because they honor patriarchal white men wh owned slaves –– something of the sort. Wait for it.
"the SPIRIT of all that we knew and loved survives, and lives on in the Art, Architecture and Literature left behind.
ReplyDeleteAmen my friend! Today is Claude Monet's birthday, btw. I love his paintings.
Mine too! The Impressionists saw far beyond any literal, camera-like representation of reality and into essence of things.
DeleteExcellent
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ma. I'm glad you were able to recognize that.
DeleteThis has been an unusually satisfying thread. Thanks to all who contributed.