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Music Webmaster Len Mullenger

INGLIS GUNDRY 1905 - 2000

INGLIS GUNDRY - An Introduction

      Inglis at 80
By the time INGLIS GUNDRY entered the Royal College of Music in 1935 to study with Vaughan Williams he had already obtained a degree in Classics and Philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford, studied Law at the Middle Temple for two years and had become a Barrister-at-Law. He won the Cobbett Prize for his String Quartet in 1936 and in the same year wrote Three Chinese Pictures . His Suite Heyday Freedom from the opera Return of Odysseus was accepted by Henry Wood for the Proms and was conducted by Basil Cameron in 1942 in naval uniform at the Royal Albert Hall in 1942. Inglis Gundry was also in the Royal Navy serving in HMS Welshman when she went, alone, to help save Malta before the first convoy. He went to the Admiralty as an Instructor Lieutenant where he edited the Naval Song Book and organised weekend music courses, concerts and lectures in various parts of the country in collaboration with the Workers Educational Association. After the war he continued taking music appreciation classes for the WEA and the Extra-Mural Departments of London, Cambridge and Surrey Universities. He has been doing this work for over half a century as, in his ninetieth year, he is still taking one of these classes.

During the 50s Inglis Gundry gave several talks for the radio programme Music Magazine and his Songs of Experience were broadcast on Radio 3. During the 60s he won the Morley College Opera Competition with The Prince of Coxcombs which is one of his fifteen operas. Eight operas have been performed, one of them in his native Cornwall.

In 1960 he founded, with friends, The Sacred Music-Drama Society of which he was Music Director and Conductor from 1960-86. Previously these 13th Century Christmas and Easter Trilogies from Fleury were available only in Latin, but Inglis Gundry translated them into English according to the Authorized Version ot the Bible from a photocopy of the original manuscript. His meticulous translations ensured that none of the original rhythm patterns was lost. The Sacred Music Drama Society performed these wonderful music-dramas in costume for over 34 years in churches all over the country includlng Southwark Cathedral. There will be a performance of the Easter Trilogy at the Richmond Unitarian Church on Sunday 18 June 1998.

Inglis Gundry is vice-President of the Cornish Music Guild. Although born in London into a family that had left Cornwall over one hundred years before his birth, he has always felt very much that his roots are in Cornwall. He was made a bard of the Cornish Gorsedd in 1952 and studied the Cornish language and dialect.

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The music of Inglis Gundry by Peter Crossley-Holland

The operas of Inglis Gundry by Inglis Gundry (Illustrated)

Inglis Gundry an article by Jane Lofthouse

Composers by the grace of God by Inglis Gundry

Autobiography: The Last Boy of the Family by Inglis Gundry

List of Works

Gallery

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