Jeffrey Mark

Jeffrey Mark (1898 – December 1965) was an English composer, folk song collector and writer. Life and career Mark was born in Carlisle, Cumberland, the son of a cabinet maker, and in 1909 won a scholarship to the Carlisle Grammar School. At 16 he joined Martin’s Bank in Carlisle. He enlisted in the war at the age of 17 as a gunnery officer, rising to the rank of first lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery. But he was gassed in France and hospitalised for a year. The medical consequences and trauma affected him for the rest of his life. In 1924 Mark moved to the US, where for three years he was head of the New York Public Library’s Music Department. While there he worked on the manuscripts of Orlando Gibbons held by the library. During his time in New York, he also studied the self-transformation ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff, under the guidance of A.R. Orage. A nervous breakdown led him to return to England. His Four North Country Songs, concert arrangements of dialect songs – including Sally Gray, L’al Dinah Grayson, Barley Broth and Auld Jobby Dixon – were first performed and broadcast in 1927, and published by OUP in 1928. They also acquired local popularity through performances by