Originally posted by ahinton
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I agree - and univerisities IMV are dab hands at it. So personally I don't blame the individual researcher in this case. And it's also equally likely the publicity department of her publisher is responsible for the hype - I think she has a book out shortly! -
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From the research that I've done in the last few years it seems that one person who helped finance Gurney's long stays in asylums was Sir Alexander Kaye Butterworth, George's father. It seems he knew Marion Scott.
I suspect that he felt very regretful for not having taken his son's musical aspirations seriously.Comment
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Ivor Gurney - Unmouthed- - Sunday Feature
What happens to a creative mind when it has everything taken away?
Many writers and composers are eccentric, some might even be labelled ‘mad’. But that generally is not a bar to having their voice heard. Once an artist is certified insane however, the way in which their work is viewed changes forever. And their ability to share their creativity is taken from them in the most extreme way society offers.
Ivor Gurney, outrageously gifted composer and poet, lost everything when mental health problems saw him committed to an asylum after the First World War. A composer who had been considered one of the best of his generation would remain behind closed doors until his death.
Ivor Gurney was tricked into being certified, when a magistrate and two doctors were invited incognito to his house, and waited, reading the newspaper, for him to incriminate himself. They were about to leave, finding nothing odd about him, but just at the last minute, he approached the magistrate to ask if he might borrow a revolver with which to shoot himself. That one question set the course for the rest of his life. Being suicidal was enough to ensure incarceration in an asylum, and Gurney was never again a free man.
He had few visitors, and interest in his music and poems ebbed away.
But on a scrap of paper, hidden away in a box in an archive, you can see Gurney talking about music scores in his mental hospital room – he calls them ‘poor unmouthed creatures’.
For 15 years, Gurney continued to write – hundreds of beautiful, moving, compelling and troubling works - which disappeared, unheard and unpublished.
In this programme, writer and broadcaster Dr Kate Kennedy travels to the asylum for the first time, seeing the buildings where Gurney spent his years and traces his journey inside. She gains access to Gurney’s archives - discovering a treasure trove of lost compositions and poems. Words and music about the Gloucestershire landscape Gurney would never again see; about his mental state; about thoughts of suicide; about the devastating effects of war.
Together with poet Andrew Motion and musicologist Stephen Johnson, Kate Kennedy explores the lost works of Gurney. And we hear previously unheard songs which tenor Nicky Spence and pianist Dylan Perez rehearse and perform especially for the programme.
Through examining his manuscripts, we find Gurney being deprived of a pen, the tool of his trade. He was obliged to compose his poetry and music in pencil – a pen nib could be used to slash wrists. We chart his many attempts (some successful) to escape from the institutions that confined him. On one occasion he managed to get as far as Vaughan Williams’s house, who was faced with the impossible situation of having to hand his own pupil over to the police.
Through conversations with asylum employees, we learn that Vaughan Williams and Arthur Benjamin actually regularly visited Gurney in the asylum to play through his latest compositions, all of which have been neglected since. We find one asylum doctor, Dr Anderson, who cared, and tried to help him (and interview his son), and others who undertook horrendous experiments on him, injecting him with malaria. In Gurney’s medical notes, he is found to be two stone lighter, and ‘on his knees, praying for death.’
The programme ends with his death from near-starvation and tuberculosis, alone and forgotten over Christmas of 1937.
I've long been fascinated by IG, hence my recent post about a short reference to him on R4's Today Programme. Full marks to them for including am albeit brief Arts item in their news flagship. It may of course have been a subtle trailer for the above! I can't wait to hear previously unknown pieces.Comment
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I am a bit emotionally 'wrung out' following this Sunday Feature. The Blake quotation, A Robin Redbreast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage kept going through my mind. Having said that, asylums (dreadful word) were in many ways enlightened in the first part of the 20th century, being set in rolling grounds with a home farm, a chapel, and an ethos of fresh air and exercise. Alas, so-called 'care in the community' has seen the disappearance, mainly for building development, of such places. I'm sure they had their dark side too and clearly Gurney felt 'a caged spirit' even if his physical environment was benign. His being returned there after an escape to RVW's house must have been awful for all concerned.
Whilst the programme was beautifully presented, I felt I would like more detail of exactly what was 'discovered' in Gurney's own hand. Big scope for a PhD, I think.
Mrs A and I discovered (or should I say re-discovered) pianist Iain Burnside's Radio 3 play A Soldier and a Maker on the life of Ivor Gurney. It's brilliant, with many genuine Gloucestershire accents, but no longer available on 'Sounds'. However it is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrS28FJdYLI
Highly recommended.Last edited by ardcarp; 20-06-21, 22:56.Comment
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Just listened to this and very much enjoyed it ………Comment
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Yes I thought it was an outstanding programme and one which didn’t fall into the easy trap of condemning mental asylums. My father was a consultant at Stone House in the sixties and it was a fairly enlightened place . He took us as children to a Christmas dance there and I remember the minstrel’s gallery. The idea behind these county asylums was to withdraw the mentally ill from the stresses of the city and use an early form of green therapy, occupational therapy (which my father was very keen on) and gardening though by the sixties drug treatments were well established though still the subject of scientific debate . There were drawback with some , unlike Ivor, reluctant to leave. I won’t get into the controversies surrounding ECT but it did sound to me something of a desperate measure to induce fits through malarial infection. The growing effectiveness of drug regimes led to the closure of these hospitals . At some, no doubt there were abuses but my father always felt that closing them was a cost saving measure and led to the problem of quite severely ill people not taking their medicine , not looking after themselves , living on the streets and undergoing severe physical and psychological decline . Many end up in custody or even prison temporarily which without specialist care is perhaps the worst place for them .Originally posted by ardcarp View PostComment
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I wonder if anyone remembers Tim Sanders' play for Radio 4 of 1998 titled "Gurney", of which I fortunately still have a tape.
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Initial reaction last night: I was a bit disappointed. After the hype I would have expected a bit more academic or forensic evidence to justify statements such as 'first time this [poem] has ever been read aloud'. And the sound of some of the readings was poorly balanced in relation to other material - fatal if the reader is using a regional accent and speaking quietly.
A peculiar absence was of any serious attention to Gurney's diagnoses: a 'medical historian', Peter Barham, appeared once, but there was too little said to disentangle archaic psychiatric language from modern understanding and diagnoses. Shocking that malaria was injected in order to induce fitting in an attempt to cure a psychiatric disorder.
In short quite an affecting, dramatic programme, but it leaned a little too far to the populist stance for my taste.
That said, it has inspired me to take a hitherto unknown interest in Gurney and his music.Comment
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Heledenleben (#23) your post chimes in with my view of 'enlightened' psychiatric hospitals, and the fact your father was a consultant there is fascinating. to hear. Yes of course there was a downside too. But how much I agree with:
closing them was a cost saving measure and led to the problem of quite severely ill people not taking their medicine , not looking after themselves , living on the streets and undergoing severe physical and psychological decline . Many end up in custody or even prison temporarily which without specialist care is perhaps the worst place for them
Kernelb. Yes the programme was a bit short on the academic details as I hinted in #21. As far as categorising mental illness with the right words, the problem is the words change at least every decade. Borderline Personality Disorder seems flavour of the month just now...whatever that means.
Glad your interest in Ivor Gurney has been kindled though!Comment
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From His wiki entry it appears that Gurney suffered from severe manic depression (aka bipolar). This is a potentially very severe illness with a high suicide risk. Nowadays the good news is that it’s one of the more treatable mental illnesses with drug regimes.Originally posted by ardcarp View Post
BPD or borderline personality disorder is often confused with and indeed misdiagnosed as Bipolar (and vice-versa) , even by Consultants. BPD is a slightly controversial diagnosis with some not recognising it as a distinct illness. One problem with BPD is that those suffering from it are thought to have their condition worsened by the hospital experience (which fits a bit with Ivor’s sad story) . Some consultant psychiatrists maintain that the BPD diagnosis is sometimes erroneously given as a way of managing difficult cases out of inpatient care. I’m not a medic but I covered the issue in some depth in my work as a journalist (now semi retired).
The good news is that the treatments available for serious mental health conditions are WAY better than in Ivor’s day; the bad news is that unless you are a severe case access can be difficult and there is , I’m told by medics , a great lack of inpatient beds. If you speak to a GP they will often tell you that mental health services are amongst the most vital of all - the onward impact of a severely ill relative on the rest of the family is often incalculable.Comment
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