William Denis Browne (composer) St Michael's Cornhill Mon. 4 Jun

[seaJane]

"William Denis Browne was Organ Scholar at Clare College Cambridge before World War I. He was a friend of Rupert Brooke, and both were tragically killed in action.  His dramatic Evening Canticles (of 1911) will be sung this Monday in London, during Choral Evensong at St Michael's Cornhill (Monday 4 June, 6pm). Other music will be by Howells (Responses), Stainer (Anthem) and Bach (Organ voluntary)."

From a Cambridge-based acquaintance.

[michaeldr]

13 hours ago, seaJane said:

He was a friend of Rupert Brooke, and both were tragically killed in action.

 

 

Arthur Asquith commented on W Denis Browne as follows:

 

“W. Denis Browne was a contemporary and devoted friend of Rupert Brooke at Rugby and at Cambridge, and they joined the RND on the same day. Previously he was assistant musical critic to 'The Times' and lovers of music will remember him as the author of a beautiful setting of the songs 'Scalathiel' and 'Grantiana'. Rare ebullitions of an underlying high and fiery spirit took by surprise acquaintances who were accustomed to his infinite gentleness, selflessness and sympathy. His zeal for the welfare and training of his men was unlimited and most of his brother officers would, I think, have voted him the Ideal Platoon Commander. At Blandford he arranged for the teeth of his men to be seen by a dentist. They were mostly miners and at Malta, seeing that many of them were suffering from the glare of the sun, he bought blue spectacles for them all. He hurried back to the peninsula from Alexandria in less than a month after receiving his first wound, just in time to take part in the costly attack of 4 June. Survivors of the attack describe him as having shot and bayoneted several Turks in their second line of trench before he fell.”

[from 'Kelly's War' by Jon Cooksey & Graham McKechnie]

 

See also http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2002/May02/WDBrown.htm for further details on W Denis Browne

 

Brooke died on active service, however he was not killed in action.

Edited 2 June , 2018 by michaeldr
to add attribution

[michaeldr]

Interesting that The Gallipoli Association also link Brooke & Browne today (2^nd June)

see https://www.gallipoli-association.org/on-this-day/june/02/

 

I also notice that both the GA and Ms Pamela Blevins manage to give the impression that the 'Denis' in WDB's name was used as his fore-name, whereas somewhere or other, I gained the impression that it was part of his surnames.

 

There's a review of the WDB composition here on page 19 here https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57b61aefd482e9d6d891c291/t/57b7882b414fb53695b04fa5/1471645750994/AAMarticle.pdf

I hope that the service goes well.

[IanA]

And the opening of the Magnificat in his own hand.

[michaeldr]

Today on the anniversary of his death, it seems appropriate to remember here that WDB wrote poetry as well as music.

 

 

To Rupert Brooke

 

I give you glory, for you are dead.

The day lightens above your head;

The night darkens above your feet;

Morning and noon and evening meet

Around and over and under you

In the world you knew, the world you knew.

 

Lips kissing and limbs clinging,

Breast to breast in a silence singing

Of forgotten and fadeless things:

Laughter and tears and the beat of wings

Faintly hear in a far-off heaven;

Bird calls bird; the unquiet even

Ineluctable ebb and flow

Flows and ebbs; and all things go

Moving from dream to dream; and deep

Calls deep again in a world of sleep.

 

There is no glory gone from the air

Nothing is less. No, as it were

A keener and wilder radiance glows

Along the blood, and a shouting grows

Fiercer and louder, a far-flung roar

Of throats and guns: your island shore

Is swift with smoke and savage with flame;

And a myriad lovers shout your name,

Rupert! Rupert! across the earth;

And death is dancing, and dancing birth;

And a madness of dancing blood and laughter

Rises and sings, and follows after

All the dancers who danced before,

And dance no more, and dance no more.

 

You will dance no more; you will love no more;

You are dead and dust on your island shore,

A little dust are the lips where

Laughter and song and kisses were.

And I give you glory, and I am glad

For the life you had and the death you had,

For the heaven you knew and the hell you knew,

And the dust and the dayspring which were you.

[seaJane]

[yperman]

On ‎01‎/‎06‎/‎2018 at 22:44, seaJane said:

 He was a friend of Rupert Brooke, and both were tragically killed in action. 

I am probably wrong but I thought Rupert Brooke died of a mosquito bite that went septic ...

[seaJane]

You are quite right! The blurb is not mine - but I should have spotted that all the same!