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Indeed the still unpublished song Western Sailors, one of his best asylum efforts, is arguably among the finest things Gurney ever wrote. His songs included as many as five or more settings each of Brooke and Graves (who writes sometimes under the pseudonym 'John Doyle'), admirably recorded by Benjamin Luxon on Chandos 8831 [listen : Chandos Butterworth and Gurney track 21 0:00-0:43].

What's more, Gurney (it is not always realised) set some of his own more scatological writings, fairly wildly, under various pseudonyms; so the justly celebrated Severn Meadows ('Only the Wanderer knows England's graces') [listen : Hyperion track 6, 'Severn Meadows', 0.03-1.33] is not the only occasion he set his own words.

Gurney also set poems by Blunden (The Idler), Ledwidge (Desire in Spring, first published in 1927-8, ten years before the composer's death) [listen : Hyperion disc track 12 'Desire in Spring', 0:00-1:02] and Sassoon (Everyone Sang). A number of these songs are in the process of being published for the first time by the flourishing Ivor Gurney Society, of which Anthony Boden, the founding chairman (as well as biographer of the Parry family and of Gurney's closest friend and fellow war poet F W Harvey, and author of a forthcoming biography of Thomas Tomkins), recently passed over the chairmanship to Ian Venables -- himself a notable Worcestershire-based song composer.

Gurney's piano music -- some dozen Preludes and Nocturnes [listen : Gurney Piano Disc, Nocturne in B Track 10 0.00-0.52], the latter showing a marked influence of Schumann, the former of composers from Chopin to chromatic Brahms and Scriabin -- has been edited for publication by the pianist Jennifer Partridge and is due for publication by William Elkin shortly [listen : Gurney Piano Disc, Prelude in D flat, Track 4 0.00-1.03 fade].

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