Battle Sounds: RCM composers on the front line

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.

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 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’.

Ivor Gurney

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,’ 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 and poetic output. Indeed in July, Scott wrote to Howells that, despite his deteriorating psychological state, Gurney had ‘a new song already planned in his head’. The composer was gassed that September, however, and invalided back to Britain. He was reposted to Northumberland, but suffered his second breakdown in March 1918.

A letter from Marion Scott to Herbert Howells

Having not engaged in active service, Howells was, unsurprisingly, the most prolific composer during these years – Bliss compared his friend’s energy to ‘the machine gun that links its [cartridges] at a rate of 500 a minute’. Several of his compositions are documented in his letters to Scott. In March 1916, he wrote of finishing ‘this latest microscopic fancy of mine’. The piece, Sir Patrick Spens, was to become his first major choral work. Later, he sent Benjamin some part songs, and his friend wrote back enthusiastically: ‘They are economy in war-time itself!’

Arthur Bliss in uniform

Benjamin, meanwhile, was attached to the Royal Flying Corps in November 1917 and immediately taken with what he termed ‘God’s own sport’. Between flights, the Australian found time to begin a ‘Cyrano overture’. ‘Perhaps it will be a miniature tone-poem,’ he mused in June. But just two months later, his plane was shot down by a German squadron under the leadership of a young Hermann Göring. News of his imprisonment at Ruhleben internment camp – where he spent the remainder of the war – was received with some relief in London. Scott wrote to Howells, ‘Though it is sad to think of him “in” Germany, a prisoner … thankfulness overflows every other feeling’.

On 19 May 1918, German Gothas launched a huge night raid on London. Weeks later, an even deadlier threat arrived on British shores. The Spanish fl u reached the capital in June. By

While the final months of the year brought fresh tragedy – Bliss was injured in a gas attack a few days after Parry’s death – it also brought new music.

October, both Gurney and Howells had caught the virus. That month Scott wrote to a fl u-stricken Howells describing how ‘the influenza is raging in London’. By November she revealed that the whole Scott household was also ill, and lamented ‘all the millions who have suffered’ from this ‘devil of a disease!’

In the autumn, the College was rocked when the pandemic claimed the life of one of its own. Scott penned a desperate letter to Howells: ‘For twenty five years all but three months Sir Hubert has been Director, and there are no words nor tears which can express what this loss will be to College’. The letter was postmarked 7 October 1918; Parry died that very day.

While the final months of the year brought fresh tragedy – Bliss was injured in a gas attack a few days after Parry’s death – it also brought new music. Benjamin penned a violin sonata, while Gurney returned from Europe with the mud-spattered manuscript of By a Bierside, famously composed by candlelight in a trench mortar.

On 10 November, Scott wrote to Howells: ‘It makes me so happy that at this great time in the world’s history, you and Ivor are both bringing into the world these beautiful things, which will live and go down to succeeding generations as fl owers of the English spirit, fadeless and fragrant.’ The next day, on 11 November 1918, the armistice fi nally brought fi ghting to a close.

The letters form part of the Herbert Howells Collection, housed in the RCM Library. Digitised versions can be accessed by searching the RCM Library catalogue:

https://rcm.koha-ptfs.co.uk