JOHN MOREL (Baritone)
BRATZA (Violin)
In the years immediately after the War, when the roll call of the younger musicians, who are to be responsible for the immediate future of British music, was being taken, the name of Ivor Gurney was prominent. Gurney was born in 1890, was educated first as a chorister at
Gloucester Cathedral and at the Royal College of Music under Stanford and Vaughan Williams. He soon established a. reputation as a writer of songs, and he was amongst the earliest of that group of song-writers who rallied to the standard of A. E. Housman , the author of ' A Shropshire Lad ', and set his lyrics to music of the folk-song order in what was then almost a convention with composers. Gurney's merit, however, is not confined to songs of a stereotyped character, and although many of his published songs are settings of Housman's lyrics, he has drawn upon the verses of many poets, in many periods, with a catholic discrimination.