Main content

By a Bierside

Composer: Ivor Gurney
Performer: Kathryn Rudge (Mezzo)
Performer: James Baillieu (Piano)
Recording date: 13 February 2017
Date of broadcast: 13 February 2017

Ivor Gurney composed 'By a Bierside' while serving in the front-line trenches of the Great War in 1916. The themes of death and loss are obvious in the music (the words by poet John Masefield talks of the destruction of a city) but the calmness of the song doesn't match the dangerous and brutal situation he was in at the time he was writing it.

Composer: Ivor Gurney
Performer: Kathryn Rudge (Mezzo)
Performer: James Baillieu (Piano)
Recording date: 13 February 2017
Date of broadcast: 13 February 2017

Release date:

Available now

5 minutes