FEATURE
Battle sounds: RCM composers on the front line 100 years after the end of WW1, the RCM Library has begun to digitise a fascinating series of letters held in the RCM collections. Together, they tell the intriguing wartime story of RCM composers Herbert Howells, Ivor Gurney, Arthur Bliss and Arthur Benjamin, as well as their friend, musicologist Marion Scott.
Below Ivor Gurney Opposite (top) A letter from Marion Scott to Herbert Howells Opposite (bottom) Arthur Bliss in uniform
When Britain entered the war in August 1914, three of the composers at the Royal College of Music left their studies and enlisted immediately. Arthur Benjamin joined the Officer Training Corps, Arthur Bliss became an officer in the Royal Fusiliers and Ivor Gurney, initially rejected because of his eyesight, was later accepted into the Gloucestershire Regiment. That September, RCM Director Sir Hubert Parry stood in front of his students and gave voice to a persevering sense that, amongst the monstrous bloodshed to follow, the sacrifice of such talented individuals would be felt as a particular tragedy. ‘Our pupils are made of different stuff,’ he declared. ‘Some of them are so gifted that their loss could hardly be made good.’ Howells, in poor health, did not enlist. Amongst his peers and teachers, there was a feeling that the composer ought to be spared from active service. But in March 1916, as conscription began in Britain, Howells confided in a letter to Scott that, ‘the contention that potential creative artists should be preserved cannot hold good now that so many of them have been slain’. Parry, too, spoke of the apparent incompatibility between these two desires – protecting one’s gift or following the conflicting pull of patriotism. The question of Howells’ enlistment, however, was put to rest when he was diagnosed with Graves’ disease and declared exempt from service. His subsequent letters, and those of Scott -- who wrote for numerous music publications and cofounded the new Society of Women Musicians -- are invaluable in painting a picture of life on the home front, both at College and beyond. In the early months of the war, there was a sense of business as usual at the RCM. ‘It is surprising how little the convulsions and upheavals of the European struggle have affected the calm stability of English institutions,’
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reads an editorial in the Christmas 1914 RCM Magazine. ‘Lessons have been given and received … talents have expanded’. In an address the following spring, Parry declared that, ‘civil life has to go on’ and with it, the development of ‘special gifts of art’. Yet by 31 May 1915, civil life, too, was on the firing line as Zeppelins rained their first bombs down on London. The raids intensified over the next year. On 5 April 1916, Scott wrote from the capital to tell Howells of ‘those monstrous Zeppelin moths which the fine weather fetched out of their cocoons’. The Germans launched the first ever chlorine-gas attack later that month and then, on 1 July 1916, the Battle of the Somme began. Only six days into the conflict, Bliss was wounded and sent to Derbyshire to recuperate, a convalescence that, he wrote to Howells, at least allowed a brief pause in which to ‘think a little about music.’ A month later, the battle claimed the life of RCM composer George Butterworth. Howells’ letters show that frequently, music became the language with which these RCM composers chose to respond to this new reality. Against the evolving soundtrack of the battlefield, they created their own sounds. Compositions were passed from Europe back to England, confirming Parry’s assertion that, ‘the art we follow is fit to be pursued and cultivated even by the side of the greatest doings of active life.’ Gurney found unexpected inspiration on his first night on the front. Arriving to relieve a Welsh regiment, he spent the evening immersed in Welsh song in what he deemed a ‘strangely beautiful entry to war’s rout.’ Despite taking a gunshot to the shoulder in April 1917 and wrestling long-term mental health problems, the soldier maintained an impressive musical
