A poet and composer, Ivor Gurney was a victim of the First World War, in which he was wounded and suffered shellshock. Before the war he had been a chorister at Gloucester Cathedral and then an articled pupil of the cathedral organist. The war interrupted his time at the Royal College of Music in London, to which he returned in 1918, to study with Vaughan Williams. Suffering from depression, he entered a mental institution in 1922, remaining there and in similar hospitals until his death in 1937.

Songs

Gurney is chiefly remembered as the composer of songs – settings of Housman, Edward Thomas and others – totalling as many as 300, set against his 900 or so surviving poems.