Gurney: War Elegy
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Lest we forget: music for Remembrance Day
14. Gurney: War Elegy
The story of Ivor Gurney is one of the saddest in classical music: Gurney enlisted as a soldier in the Gloucestershire Regiment in 1915, but suffered a breakdown in March 1918, apparently as a result of shell shock. He wrote his War Elegy in 1920, but was declared insane in 1922 and spent the last 15 years of his life in mental hospitals.
