Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott: Song of Pain and Beauty

Based on original research and newly discovered material, Song of Pain and Beauty is the first biography of Gurney since 1978 and the only biography of Scott. It tells the dramatic story of two geniuses who met at the Royal College of Music in 1911 and formed an unlikely partnership that illuminated and enriched the literary and musical worlds in which they moved. Gurney’s poetry and songs have taken their place as “part of the inheritance of England.” Marion Scott, Gurney’s strongest advocate, emerges from his shadow for the first time. Her own remarkable achievements as a pioneering music critic, musicologist, advocate of contemporary music and women musicians place her among the most influential and respected women of her generation.

Song of Pain and Beauty explores Gurney’s relationships with his parents and siblings, with Herbert Howells, Arthur Benjmani, F. W. Harvey, the Hunt sisters, Sir Charles Stanford, Alfred Cheesman, Annie Nelson Drummond, Marion Scott and others. It provides details into Marion Scott’s remarkable background and career along with insights into her unconditional devotion to Gurney, her gift for friendship, her vision, courage, strength of character and inner spiritual depth. Song of Pain and Beauty explores Gurney’s attempts to create music and poetry while struggling to overcome the bipolar illness that eventually derailed his genius, and it restores Marion Scott’s rightful place in music history. The cover design is by Rolf Jordan, artist and editor of The Clock of the Years: An Anthology about Gerald and Joy Finzi.


Ordering Information Song of Pain and Beauty will be released published by Boydell Press in November, 2008. It is now available via pre-order from the publisher, and from Amazon US, or from Amazon UK. Publishing details: 60 b/w illustrations, Size: 24.4 x 17.2 , 10 digit ISBN: 1843834219, 13 digit ISBN: 9781843834212, Binding: Hardback, Publication date: 20/Nov/2008, List Price: 60.00 USD / 30.00 GBP			Book Description Ordering Information Author Biography Table of Contents Cover Art Perspectives
Author Biography Pamela Blevins lives in the mountains of North Carolina where she is the co-founder and editor of The Maud Powell Signature, Women in Music magazine (website), a quarterly online publication of the Maud Powell Society for Music and Education. A keen advocate of music in education and developing ways of teaching academic subjects using music, she has long been devoted to the cause of women in music and developed the pioneering lecture series “Silent Destiny: The Woman Composer” in 1977. She has published extensively on Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott as well as on other British composers and poets including Edward Thomas, Gerald Finzi, Wilfred Owen, Ethel Voynich, and women writers in World War I. She is also an advocate of the American composer Elinor Remick Warren. She has written a new Gurney biography, Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott: Song of Pain and Beauty (further information), which explores Gurney’s life through his relationships with Marion Scott, Annie Nelson Drummond, Alfred Cheesman, and his mother, and provides a new assessment of the nature of Gurney’s mental illness. Perspectives Essays

Table of Contents		Cover Art

1	London, 1911
2	A Clash of Wills
3	An Island of Serenity
4	Friendship and Poetry
5	The Gurney Family
6	Golden Days
7	A Lad’s Love
8	The First Breakdown
9	The Lost Year
10	The Experiment
11	A Partnership
12	The Dirty Business of War
13	Blighty
14	‘Love has come to bind me fast’
15	‘You would rather know me dead...’
16	An Uncertain Course
17	A New Mastery
18	The Tide of Darkness
19	‘There is dreadful hell within me...’
20	Asylum -- 'the soul halts here’
21	The Last Chance
22	‘A fantastic mix-up’
23	Bitter Troubles and Suffering
24	‘In time to come’
25	Epilogue