Ivor gurney biography of martin

Ivor Bertie Gurney was born in a cramped house in the shadow of Gloucester Cathedral.

Ivor gurney biography of martin

His father was loving but sometimes distant tailor, his mother evidently controlling and neurotic. Despite his family's lack of social status and education, through the kindness of family friends he gained early exposure to literature and music which, coupled with the landscape of his home county fed the young Ivor's imagination, as it would for the rest of his life.

He became a chorister at the Cathedral and later studied the organ with Herbert Brewer (where he was a fellow pupil of Herbert Howells and Ivor Novello). Both Gurney and Howells were present at the premiere of Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis in 1910, and both of them walked the streets of Gloucester for hours afterwards excited by the new sound of the work.

He also met the aspiring poet F. W. ("Will") Harvey who was to remain one of his closest friends.

Ivor gained a schol