Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns

by David Margolick

Once again, Burns’s greatest solace came from music. As he told the Hagens, he’d turned into “a Diaghileff”;e his letters are filled with details of the concerts, recitals, musicales, and jam sessions he organized, conducted, accompanied, or performed by himself—productions of unimaginable refinement and sophistication, particularly in a military outfit, particularly in so remote a place. Under his supervision, the music of Fauré, Respighi, Duparc, Handel, Palestrina, Bach, and Gilbert and Sullivan (and “some Victor Herbert for the rabble”) filled the North African air. So did Burns’s own compositions: once, he sang his own setting of the Edward Arlington Robinson poem “Richard Cory,” the one about the suicide of a prosperous businessman (who, he claimed, was actually the father of a friend). According to the mimeographed program, the selections for the CPI’s Fifth Musical Evening on December 2, 1943, featured Lieutenant John Horne Burns, baritone, singing two ardent and extremely difficult songs, Schubert’s “Der Erlkönig” and Schumann’s “Ich Grolle Nicht,” along with an Irish air. Then, following intermission, Burns played Brahms’s Hungarian Dances on the piano. But not all the performances were public, as he explained to Catherine Burns in January 1944. What a war! If General Patton ever got wind of some of our evenings here … somebody’s mother sent him two volumes of the Harvard University Glee Club Collection, and tonight after dinner four of us—Charles Bacharach, Bob ...