David Ivor Davies, aka Welsh composer Ivor Novello (1893 -1951) composed over 230 published songs in his short lifetime, resulting in the distinction of being honoured by the coveted international Ivor Novello Awards – The Ivors – for excellence in song writing, named in his memory.
Ivor Novello: the early years
He was born in Cardiff to a very musical ‘Mam’, Clara Novello Davies, a prominent singing teacher and founder-conductor of the Royal Welsh Ladies Choir, who claimed that as baby Ivor used to cry in perfect thirds: he must become an opera composer!
However, young Ivor’s obsession with operetta – fuelled by living opposite the Gaiety Theatre on The Strand, and as a young man he is reputed to have seen the premiere of Franz Lehar’s operetta The Merry Widow 100 times, falling hopelessly in love with the ‘original’ Widow, Lily Elsie – led to Ivor preferring to compose for that genre instead of Mam’s hoped for Grand Opera.
Beginning his career, a song based on simple harmonies that he would have played and sung on Sundays in chapel, Keep The Home Fires Burning ‘Til The Boys Come Home, was adopted and sung by the troops as a song of hope during WW1 as they marched to and from the front line. It made the 21-year-old composer very wealthy and launched his career overnight.
Ivor Novello and operetta: 'King of British Musical Theatre'
He went on to create and compose eight successful musically romantic operettas in London’s West End, earning him the accolade King of British Musical Theatre: Glamorous Night (1935), Careless Rapture (1936), Crest of The Wave (1937), The Dancing Years (1939), Arc de Triomphe (1943) Perchance to Dream (1945), King’s Rhapsody (1949) and Gay’s The Word (1951). Each of them included an opera-inspired scene within an operetta, making further substantial vocal demands on the technique and stamina of the solo singers.
Ivor Novello: musical training
Ivor’s own musical training was steeped in singing from early years. Aged ten, and until his voice broke late, six years later, he got a taste of musical performance at the highest level as star treble in the choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, where his annual solo rendition of Mendelssohn’s O’ For The Wings of a Dove reduced many a chapel worshipper to tears!
After Oxford, he studied theory of music with Herbert Brewer, organist of Gloucester Cathedral, alongside two other apprentice composers, Herbert Howells and Ivor Gurney. Brewer adored Ivor, declaring him his laziest pupil ever – something Ivor was to prove wrong with his legacy of 230 published songs. Ivor’s 'Coronation Finale' in King’s Rhapsody (1949), including a full Kyrie eleison, was dedicated affectionately to Dr Brewer by way of apology.
Ivor also played the piano well, accompanying Mam’s many singing pupils and most of the leading singers of the day, including the celebrated soprano Dame Clara Butt. Having been a page boy, aged eight, at her wedding, she had presumably forgiven him for being sick all over her wedding dress after too many ice creams at the reception…
Ivor Novello: inspired by the great composers
Ivor's musical tastes were very wide, and he spent hours listening to and absorbing the hundreds of recordings he owned, by a hugely diverse collection of favourite composers – including Rachmaninov, Schoenberg, Ravel, Debussy, Mahler, Elgar, Fauré and Richard Wagner, his favourite master creator of the fusion of musical drama.
There is no doubt Ivor’s compositions were strongly influenced by all of these composers, notably Elgar, in Ivor’s 'Rose of England', a patriotic march for baritone and chorus (Crest of The Wave, 1937); Puccini, in Lorenti’s tenor aria 'Shine Through My Dreams' (Glamorous Night, 1935), bearing a similarity to the big tenor aria in Turandot; and 'My Life Belongs To You' (The Dancing Years, 1939), inspired by his love of Lehar’s The Land of Smiles (containing the famous evergreen tenor aria 'You Are My Heart's Delight'). The latest Lehar operetta had been playing to full houses at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane – the very same vast theatre Ivor was to compose his hat trick of four successive operettas for, which also saved this grand dame of theatreland from permanent closure.
Ivor’s admiration of Richard Strauss’s opera Der Rosenkavalier similarly inspired his intensely lyrical trio 'The Gates of Paradise' in Act 2 of his King’s Rhapsody (1949). The soprano and mezzo duets 'Wings of Sleep' (The Dancing Years, 1939) and 'We’ll Gather Lilacs' (Perchance to Dream, 1945) suggest homage to Delibes’ Lakmé 'Flower Duet' and Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann Barcarolle, both with their gentle 6/8 lilts in close vocal harmony.
Ivor Novello: the performer
It is for no small reason Ivor chose professional opera singers for his principal roles. These included former New York Metropolitan Opera soprano Mary Ellis; American soubrette Dorothy Dickson; former Carl Rosa Opera Welsh principal contralto Olive Gilbert; and popular Welsh tenor Trefor Jones, all of whom ensured that Ivor’s vocally demanding songs were performed brilliantly.
Ivor was unique as a composer in that not only did he conceive and create his whole musical dramas (with lyrics usually by Chris Hassall, who later collaborated with William Walton on his opera Troilus and Cressida), but, as an experienced stage and film actor (starring in 22 mono films and writing and starring in 27 plays), he chose to take leading acting roles in his operettas into the bargain!
However, for someone who’d been a successful boy soprano in a world class choir, Ivor chose not to sing in any of his shows with one exception – his second show, Careless Rapture, where he accompanied himself on a stage piano, duetting with soprano Dorothy Dickson in 'Used To You'. For his performance he came under such criticism for the awful sound he made compared with the rest of his trained singers, he decided he would never sing in public again! (There remains an archive original cast recording to support this!)
A celebration of Ivor Novello: marking 75 years since his death
Sadly, many of Novello’s songs are forgotten today, but on the 75th anniversary of his death, on Friday 6 March 2026, A Celebration of Ivor Novello! is to be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 at 7.30pm, from his birth City of Cardiff (at BBC Hoddinott Hall), featuring the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and three former finalists from the BBC Cardiff Singer of The World competition: Jessica Robinson (soprano), Claire Barnett-Jones (mezzo) and Trystan Llyr Griffiths (tenor), conducted by former music director of the Carl Rosa Opera Company and operetta specialist, Ian McMillan-Davidson.
Do tune in to BBC Radio 3’s longest running live music programme, Friday Night is Music Night, on 6 March to celebrate and remember Ivor Novello’s glorious song legacy.