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Music, however, began to dominate his life and in 1910 he became the college’s organ scholar. In 1903 he won an open scholarship to Rugby, and in 1907 a major scholarship in classics to Clare College, Cambridge. W Denis Browne was born in Leamington Spa on 3 November 1888. That there are no more than a handful of songs merely reflects the intolerable fact that their lives were ended before they could reach either maturity or any acceptable degree of fulfilment. His song of mourning and consolation may serve to remind us of the shadow that the First World War cast over succeeding generations.Įrnest Farrar, Frederick Kelly and W Denis Browne are represented by such songs as show their talents at their best and most typical. Gerald Finzi makes an apperarance because the carnage left deep scars on his creative imagination even though he was of an age to escape personal involvement. He, however, is represented by only one song-for the very simple reason that he has been recorded already so often and so excellently. Next to Gurney in terms of sheer genius must stand George Butterworth. Many of his songs have been recorded elsewhere, but there are still gaps and it is some of these that this collection seeks to fill. He has emerged as one of the symbolic figures of his time: his poems a fierce and truthful report of war and its consequences, his songs the paradigm of genius wasted in its prime. Moreover, although he was not killed on the field of battle his fate was in some ways worse than that of those whose lives were summarily ended. The greater number of songs are by Ivor Gurney, because in terms of actual achievement, both as composer and poet, he is the outstanding figure of the group.

The choice of songs and composers calls for an explanation. Not least among the wasted lives were those of the little group of English composers whose achievements-considerable or pitiably embryonic as may be-are celebrated in this collection. Millions of young men, urged on by vainglorious and dunderheaded military commanders, leapt to the slaughter and took with them talents that the world could ill afford to lose. Europe drifted into the conflict through the sheer incompetence of its leaders and the inability of anyone, at any level, to envisage the degree of devastation that would be unleashed. No one wanted it-not even the Austrians, understandably apprehensive of their tenuous hold over the Balkan states after the heir to the Hapsburg Empire had been assassinated at Sarajevo. Of all the world’s great wars none has been more pointless or more prodigal of human life than that of 1914–1918.

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