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Track(s) taken from CDD22026

The boat is chafing

composer
Ivor Gurney (1890-1937)
1920
author of text
John Davidson (1857-1909)
from Scaramouch in Naxos

Michael George (bass), Clifford Benson (piano)
Recording details: April 1987
Seldon Hall, Haberdashers' Aske's School, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
Produced by Paul Spicer
Engineered by Antony Howell
Release date: March 1988
Total duration: 1 minutes 17 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)
The boat is chafing (1920) is taken from the ‘pantomime’ entitled Scaramouch in Naxos by the Scottish playwright and translator John Davidson (1857–1909). His plays were published in 1894 with a frontispiece by Aubrey Beardsley. Perhaps when Gurney composed this song about setting off in a boat for ‘a land unknown’ he was aware that Davidson, impoverished and mentally ill at the end of his life, had committed suicide by drowning himself at sea at Penzance.

from notes by Graham Johnson © 2012

Other albums featuring this work

The Power of Love
Alice Coote (mezzo-soprano), Graham Johnson (piano)
CDA67888
War's Embers
Michael George (bass), Clifford Benson (piano)
CDH55237Last few CD copies remaining

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