Gerald Finzi
Encyclopedia
Gerald Raphael Finzi was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a song-writer, but also wrote in other genres. Large-scale compositions by Finzi include the cantata Dies natalis
for solo voice and string orchestra, and his concertos for cello and clarinet.
Finzi's father, a successful shipbroker
, died just a fortnight short of his son's eighth birthday. Finzi was educated privately. During World War I
the family settled in Harrogate
, and Finzi began to study music at Christ Church, High Harrogate
under Ernest Farrar
— whose death at the Western Front
affected him deeply. During these formative years he also suffered the loss of three of his brothers. These adversities contributed to Finzi's bleak outlook on life, but he found solace in the poetry of Thomas Traherne
and his favourite, Thomas Hardy
, whose poems, as well as those by Christina Rossetti
, he began to set to music. In the poetry of Hardy, Traherne, and later William Wordsworth
, Finzi was attracted by the recurrent motif of the innocence of childhood corrupted by adult experience. From the very beginning, most of his music was elegiac
in tone.
with the organist and choirmaster Edward Bairstow
, a strict teacher compared to Farrar. In 1922, following five years of study with Bairstow, Finzi moved to Painswick
in Gloucestershire
, where he began composing in earnest. His first Hardy settings and the orchestral piece A Severn Rhapsody were soon performed in London to favourable reviews.
In 1925, at the suggestion of Adrian Boult
, Finzi took a course in counterpoint
with R. O. Morris
and then moved to London, where he became friendly with Howard Ferguson and Edmund Rubbra
. He was also introduced to Gustav Holst
, Arthur Bliss
and Ralph Vaughan Williams
, and Vaughan Williams obtained for him a teaching post (1930–1933) at the Royal Academy of Music
.
, settled with her in Aldbourne
, Wiltshire
, where he devoted himself to composing and apple-growing, saving a number of rare English apple
varieties from extinction. He also amassed a valuable library of some 3000 volumes of English poetry, philosophy and literature, now in the library of the University of Reading
, and a fine collection (some 700 volumes including books, manuscripts and printed scores) of 18th-century English music, now at the University of St Andrews.
During the 1930s, Finzi composed only a few works, but it was in these works, notably the cantata
Dies natalis
(1939) to texts by Traherne, that his fully mature style developed. He also worked on behalf of the poet-composer Ivor Gurney
, who had been committed to an institution. Finzi and his wife catalogued and edited Gurney's works for publication. They also studied and published English folk music
and music by older English composers such as William Boyce, Richard Capel Bond, John Garth
, Richard Mudge, John Stanley
and Charles Wesley
.
In 1939 the Finzis moved to Ashmansworth
, near Newbury
, where he founded the Newbury String Players, an amateur chamber orchestra which he conducted until his death, reviving eighteenth century string music as well as giving premieres of works by his contemporaries, and offering chances of performance for talented young musicians such as Julian Bream
and Kenneth Leighton
.
delayed the first performance of Dies natalis at the Three Choirs Festival
, an event that could have established Finzi as a major composer. He worked for the Ministry of War Transport and lodged German and Czech refugees in his home. After the war, he became somewhat more productive than before, writing several choral works as well as the Clarinet Concerto (1949), perhaps his most popular work.
By now, Finzi's works were being performed frequently at the Three Choirs Festival and elsewhere. But this happiness was not to last. In 1951, Finzi learned that he was suffering from the then incurable Hodgkin's disease and had at most ten years to live. Something of his feelings after this revelation is probably reflected in the agonized first movement of the deeply moving Cello Concerto
(1955), his last major work, although its second movement, originally intended as a musical portrait of his wife, is of greatest serenity.
In 1956, following an excursion near Gloucester
with Vaughan Williams, probably as a result of immune suppression
caused by Hodgkin's disease, Finzi developed shingles
. Biographies refer to him subsequently developing chickenpox
, which developed into a "severe brain inflammation
". What this probably means, in modern medical language, is that the shingles
developed into disseminated shingles
, which resembled chickenpox, and was complicated by encephalitis
. He died not much later in an Oxford
hospital, the first performance of his Cello Concerto on the radio having been given the night before.
settings in the cycle Let Us Garlands Bring (1942) are the best known. He also wrote incidental music to Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (1946). For voice and orchestra he composed the above-mentioned Dies natalis, a work profoundly mystic, and the pacifist Farewell to Arms (1944).
Finzi’s choral music includes the popular anthems Lo, the full, final sacrifice
and God is gone up as well as unaccompanied partsongs, but he also wrote larger-scale choral works such as For St. Cecilia (text by Edmund Blunden
), Intimations of Immortality (William Wordsworth
) and the Christmas scene In terra pax (Robert Bridges
and the Gospel of Luke
), all from the last ten years of his life.
The number of Finzi’s purely instrumental works is small even though he took great pains over them in the early part of his career. He began what is believed to have been intended as a piano concerto. This was never finished or given a title, but after his death his publisher gave two of the individual movements names and published them as the separate works Eclogue and Grand Fantasia and Toccata. The latter demonstrates Finzi’s admiration for Johann Sebastian Bach
as well as the Swiss American Jewish composer Ernest Bloch
. He also completed a violin concerto which was performed in London under the baton of Vaughan Williams, but was not satisfied with it and withdrew the two outer movements; the surviving middle movement is called Introit. This concerto thus received only its second performance in 1999 and its first recording is now on Chandos. The clarinet concerto is possibly his most famous instrumental work, with its infectious lyricism and charm coupled with a strong emotional core, but the cello concerto is even more dramatic and is perhaps his greatest work – in it Finzi manages to resolve all his compositional issues to produce a work of astounding drama, beauty, nobility and a sense of melancholic nostalgia which is so characteristic of his work.
Of Finzi's few chamber works, only the Five Bagatelles for clarinet and piano have survived in the regular repertoire.
Finzi had a long friendship with the composer Howard Ferguson
and, as well as offering advice on his works during his life, Ferguson helped with the editing of several of Finzi's works published posthumously.
, Hubert Parry
and Charles Villiers Stanford
, which made his music seem unfashionable in his lifetime. One can’t really speak about experimentation, let alone modernity, in the case of Finzi, even though some of his lesser-known works completely contradict his popular image of a lyrical pastoralist. He did, however, have a distinctive voice of his own, most evident in the sensitive songs and choral works which show an unfailing response to and unity with each poet’s words, resulting from his thorough knowledge of English literature. In this respect, he resembles Gurney, Roger Quilter
and other English song composers of the early twentieth century, though works such as the Cello Concerto and Intimations of Immortality
show him more than a miniaturist.
Finzi’s son, Christopher
, inherited his pacifist sympathies as well as his musical talent and became a noted conductor and an exponent of his father’s music. Thanks to him and other enthusiasts, as well as the work of the Finzi Trust
and the Finzi Friends Finzi’s music enjoyed a great resurgence from the late twentieth century onwards.
Dies natalis
Dies natalis is a five-movement work by Gerald Finzi, setting texts by Thomas Traherne, for solo soprano or tenor and string orchestra.-History:Dies Natalis is a cantata for solo voice and string orchestra...
for solo voice and string orchestra, and his concertos for cello and clarinet.
Life
Born in London, son of John Abraham (Jack) Finzi (of Italian Jewish descent) and Eliza Emma (Lizzie) Leverson (daughter of Montague Leverson, of German Jewish descent), Finzi nevertheless became one of the most characteristically "English" composers of his generation. Despite being an agnostic, he wrote some inspired and imposing Christian choral music.Finzi's father, a successful shipbroker
Shipbroking
Shipbroking is a financial service, which forms part of the global shipping industry. Shipbrokers are specialist intermediaries/negotiators between shipowners and charterers who use ships to transport cargo, or between buyers and sellers of ships.Some brokerage firms have developed into large...
, died just a fortnight short of his son's eighth birthday. Finzi was educated privately. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
the family settled in Harrogate
Harrogate
Harrogate is a spa town in North Yorkshire, England. The town is a tourist destination and its visitor attractions include its spa waters, RHS Harlow Carr gardens, and Betty's Tea Rooms. From the town one can explore the nearby Yorkshire Dales national park. Harrogate originated in the 17th...
, and Finzi began to study music at Christ Church, High Harrogate
Christ Church, High Harrogate
Christ Church, High Harrogate is a parish church in the Church of England located in Harrogate. It was the first church building to be built in Harrogate and is today home to a thriving congregation and - along with the attached Parish Centre - an important focus of community...
under Ernest Farrar
Ernest Farrar
Ernest Bristow Farrar was an English composer, pianist and organist-Life:Ernest Farrar was born in Lewisham, London. The son of a clergyman, he was educated at Leeds Grammar School, where he began organ studies and in May 1905 won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music...
— whose death at the Western Front
Western Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
affected him deeply. During these formative years he also suffered the loss of three of his brothers. These adversities contributed to Finzi's bleak outlook on life, but he found solace in the poetry of Thomas Traherne
Thomas Traherne
Thomas Traherne, MA was an English poet and religious writer. His style is often considered Metaphysical.-Life:...
and his favourite, Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
, whose poems, as well as those by Christina Rossetti
Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems...
, he began to set to music. In the poetry of Hardy, Traherne, and later William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
, Finzi was attracted by the recurrent motif of the innocence of childhood corrupted by adult experience. From the very beginning, most of his music was elegiac
Elegy
In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.-History:The Greek term elegeia originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaphs for tombs...
in tone.
1918–1933: Studies and early compositions
After Farrar's death, Finzi studied privately at York MinsterYork Minster
York Minster is a Gothic cathedral in York, England and is one of the largest of its kind in Northern Europe alongside Cologne Cathedral. The minster is the seat of the Archbishop of York, the second-highest office of the Church of England, and is the cathedral for the Diocese of York; it is run by...
with the organist and choirmaster Edward Bairstow
Edward Bairstow
Sir Edward Cuthbert Bairstow was born in Huddersfield on 22 August 1874 and died in York on 1 May 1946. He was an English organist and composer in the Anglican church music tradition....
, a strict teacher compared to Farrar. In 1922, following five years of study with Bairstow, Finzi moved to Painswick
Painswick
Painswick is a small town in Gloucestershire, England. Originally the town grew on the wool trade, but it is now best known for its parish church's yew trees and the local Rococo Garden. The town is mainly constructed of locally quarried Cotswold stone...
in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
, where he began composing in earnest. His first Hardy settings and the orchestral piece A Severn Rhapsody were soon performed in London to favourable reviews.
In 1925, at the suggestion of Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
, Finzi took a course in counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
with R. O. Morris
R. O. Morris
Reginald Owen Morris , almost universally cited in sources and referred to even by his friends by his initials, as 'R.O. Morris', was a British composer whose compositions have been overshadowed by his formidable reputation as a teacher.He was born in York...
and then moved to London, where he became friendly with Howard Ferguson and Edmund Rubbra
Edmund Rubbra
Edmund Rubbra was a British composer. He composed both instrumental and vocal works for soloists, chamber groups and full choruses and orchestras. He was greatly esteemed by fellow musicians and was at the peak of his fame in the mid-20th century. The most famous of his pieces are his eleven...
. He was also introduced to Gustav Holst
Gustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....
, Arthur Bliss
Arthur Bliss
Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...
and Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
, and Vaughan Williams obtained for him a teaching post (1930–1933) at the Royal Academy of Music
Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...
.
1933–1939: Musical development
Finzi never felt at home in the city and, having married the artist Joyce BlackJoy Finzi
Joy Finzi was an artist and founder of the Finzi Trust, a foundation named for her deceased husband, composer Gerald Finzi....
, settled with her in Aldbourne
Aldbourne
Aldbourne is a village and civil parish about northeast of Marlborough in Wiltshire, England. It is in a valley in the south slope of the Lambourn Downs, part of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
, Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
, where he devoted himself to composing and apple-growing, saving a number of rare English apple
Apple
The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family . It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans. Apple grow on small, deciduous trees that blossom in the spring...
varieties from extinction. He also amassed a valuable library of some 3000 volumes of English poetry, philosophy and literature, now in the library of the University of Reading
University of Reading
The University of Reading is a university in the English town of Reading, Berkshire. The University was established in 1892 as University College, Reading and received its Royal Charter in 1926. It is based on several campuses in, and around, the town of Reading.The University has a long tradition...
, and a fine collection (some 700 volumes including books, manuscripts and printed scores) of 18th-century English music, now at the University of St Andrews.
During the 1930s, Finzi composed only a few works, but it was in these works, notably the cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
Dies natalis
Dies natalis
Dies natalis is a five-movement work by Gerald Finzi, setting texts by Thomas Traherne, for solo soprano or tenor and string orchestra.-History:Dies Natalis is a cantata for solo voice and string orchestra...
(1939) to texts by Traherne, that his fully mature style developed. He also worked on behalf of the poet-composer Ivor Gurney
Ivor Gurney
Ivor Bertie Gurney was an English composer and poet.-Life:Born at 3 Queen Street, Gloucester in 1890, the second of four children of David Gurney, a tailor, and his wife Florence, a seamstress, Gurney showed musical ability early...
, who had been committed to an institution. Finzi and his wife catalogued and edited Gurney's works for publication. They also studied and published English folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
and music by older English composers such as William Boyce, Richard Capel Bond, John Garth
John Garth (composer)
John Garth was an English composer, born in Harperley, near Witton-le-Wear, Co. Durham.-Life:On 23 June 1742 Garth became a freemason at the lodge meeting at the The Bird and Bush in Saddler Street, Durham....
, Richard Mudge, John Stanley
John Stanley (composer)
Charles John Stanley was an English composer and organist.-Biography:Stanley, who was blind from an early age, studied music with Maurice Greene and held a number of organist appointments in London, such as St Andrew's, Holborn from 1726...
and Charles Wesley
Charles Wesley
Charles Wesley was an English leader of the Methodist movement, son of Anglican clergyman and poet Samuel Wesley, the younger brother of Anglican clergyman John Wesley and Anglican clergyman Samuel Wesley , and father of musician Samuel Wesley, and grandfather of musician Samuel Sebastian Wesley...
.
In 1939 the Finzis moved to Ashmansworth
Ashmansworth
Ashmansworth is a village and civil parish in the Basingstoke and Deane district of the English county of Hampshire.-Location:It is about south of Newbury in Berkshire, and from Andover in Hampshire. The village has the distinction of being not only one of the highest villages in Hampshire, but...
, near Newbury
Newbury, Berkshire
Newbury is a civil parish and the principal town in the west of the county of Berkshire in England. It is situated on the River Kennet and the Kennet and Avon Canal, and has a town centre containing many 17th century buildings. Newbury is best known for its racecourse and the adjoining former USAF...
, where he founded the Newbury String Players, an amateur chamber orchestra which he conducted until his death, reviving eighteenth century string music as well as giving premieres of works by his contemporaries, and offering chances of performance for talented young musicians such as Julian Bream
Julian Bream
Julian Bream, CBE is an English classical guitarist and lutenist and is one of the most distinguished classical guitarists of the 20th century. He has also been successful in renewing popular interest in the Renaissance lute....
and Kenneth Leighton
Kenneth Leighton
Kenneth Leighton was a British composer and pianist. His compositions include much Anglican church music, and many pieces for choir and for piano as well as concertos, symphonies, much chamber music and an opera. He wrote a well-known setting of the Coventry Carol...
.
1939–1956: Growth of reputation
The outbreak of World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
delayed the first performance of Dies natalis at the Three Choirs Festival
Three Choirs Festival
The Three Choirs Festival is a music festival held each August alternately at the cathedrals of the Three Counties and originally featuring their three choirs, which remain central to the week-long programme...
, an event that could have established Finzi as a major composer. He worked for the Ministry of War Transport and lodged German and Czech refugees in his home. After the war, he became somewhat more productive than before, writing several choral works as well as the Clarinet Concerto (1949), perhaps his most popular work.
By now, Finzi's works were being performed frequently at the Three Choirs Festival and elsewhere. But this happiness was not to last. In 1951, Finzi learned that he was suffering from the then incurable Hodgkin's disease and had at most ten years to live. Something of his feelings after this revelation is probably reflected in the agonized first movement of the deeply moving Cello Concerto
Cello Concerto (Finzi)
The Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 40, was composed by Gerald Finzi in 1955.The piece is in three movements:*I. Allegro moderato*II. Andante quieto*III...
(1955), his last major work, although its second movement, originally intended as a musical portrait of his wife, is of greatest serenity.
In 1956, following an excursion near Gloucester
Gloucester
Gloucester is a city, district and county town of Gloucestershire in the South West region of England. Gloucester lies close to the Welsh border, and on the River Severn, approximately north-east of Bristol, and south-southwest of Birmingham....
with Vaughan Williams, probably as a result of immune suppression
Immunosuppression
Immunosuppression involves an act that reduces the activation or efficacy of the immune system. Some portions of the immune system itself have immuno-suppressive effects on other parts of the immune system, and immunosuppression may occur as an adverse reaction to treatment of other...
caused by Hodgkin's disease, Finzi developed shingles
Herpes zoster
Herpes zoster , commonly known as shingles and also known as zona, is a viral disease characterized by a painful skin rash with blisters in a limited area on one side of the body, often in a stripe...
. Biographies refer to him subsequently developing chickenpox
Chickenpox
Chickenpox or chicken pox is a highly contagious illness caused by primary infection with varicella zoster virus . It usually starts with vesicular skin rash mainly on the body and head rather than at the periphery and becomes itchy, raw pockmarks, which mostly heal without scarring...
, which developed into a "severe brain inflammation
Inflammation
Inflammation is part of the complex biological response of vascular tissues to harmful stimuli, such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants. Inflammation is a protective attempt by the organism to remove the injurious stimuli and to initiate the healing process...
". What this probably means, in modern medical language, is that the shingles
Herpes zoster
Herpes zoster , commonly known as shingles and also known as zona, is a viral disease characterized by a painful skin rash with blisters in a limited area on one side of the body, often in a stripe...
developed into disseminated shingles
Disseminated herpes zoster
Disseminated herpes zoster is an infection caused by the Herpes varicella zoster virus. This is the same virus that causes herpes zoster and chickenpox...
, which resembled chickenpox, and was complicated by encephalitis
Encephalitis
Encephalitis is an acute inflammation of the brain. Encephalitis with meningitis is known as meningoencephalitis. Symptoms include headache, fever, confusion, drowsiness, and fatigue...
. He died not much later in an Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
hospital, the first performance of his Cello Concerto on the radio having been given the night before.
Works
Finzi’s output includes nine song cycles, six of them on the poems of Thomas Hardy. The first of these, By Footpath and Stile (1922), is for voice and string quartet, the others, including A Young Man’s Exhortation and Earth and Air and Rain, for voice and piano. Among his other songs, the charming ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
settings in the cycle Let Us Garlands Bring (1942) are the best known. He also wrote incidental music to Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (1946). For voice and orchestra he composed the above-mentioned Dies natalis, a work profoundly mystic, and the pacifist Farewell to Arms (1944).
Finzi’s choral music includes the popular anthems Lo, the full, final sacrifice
Lo, the full, final sacrifice
Lo, the full, final sacrifice is a festival anthem for SATB choir and organ, composed by Gerald Finzi in 1946. The work was commissioned by the Revd Walter Hussey for the 53rd anniversary of the consecration of St Matthew's Church, Northampton. Finzi orchestrated the piece for its performance at...
and God is gone up as well as unaccompanied partsongs, but he also wrote larger-scale choral works such as For St. Cecilia (text by Edmund Blunden
Edmund Blunden
Edmund Charles Blunden, MC was an English poet, author and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and later Hong Kong...
), Intimations of Immortality (William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
) and the Christmas scene In terra pax (Robert Bridges
Robert Bridges
Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, was a British poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.-Personal and professional life:...
and the Gospel of Luke
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...
), all from the last ten years of his life.
The number of Finzi’s purely instrumental works is small even though he took great pains over them in the early part of his career. He began what is believed to have been intended as a piano concerto. This was never finished or given a title, but after his death his publisher gave two of the individual movements names and published them as the separate works Eclogue and Grand Fantasia and Toccata. The latter demonstrates Finzi’s admiration for Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
as well as the Swiss American Jewish composer Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...
. He also completed a violin concerto which was performed in London under the baton of Vaughan Williams, but was not satisfied with it and withdrew the two outer movements; the surviving middle movement is called Introit. This concerto thus received only its second performance in 1999 and its first recording is now on Chandos. The clarinet concerto is possibly his most famous instrumental work, with its infectious lyricism and charm coupled with a strong emotional core, but the cello concerto is even more dramatic and is perhaps his greatest work – in it Finzi manages to resolve all his compositional issues to produce a work of astounding drama, beauty, nobility and a sense of melancholic nostalgia which is so characteristic of his work.
Of Finzi's few chamber works, only the Five Bagatelles for clarinet and piano have survived in the regular repertoire.
Finzi had a long friendship with the composer Howard Ferguson
Howard Ferguson (composer)
Howard Ferguson was a British composer and musicologist. He composed instrumental, chamber, orchestral and choral works. While his music is not widely-known today, his Piano Sonata in F Minor and his Five Bagatelles for piano are still performed...
and, as well as offering advice on his works during his life, Ferguson helped with the editing of several of Finzi's works published posthumously.
Conclusion
Through Farrar and Vaughan Williams, Finzi belongs to the firm tradition of ElgarEdward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
, Hubert Parry
Hubert Parry
Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet was an English composer, teacher and historian of music.Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is best known for the choral song "Jerusalem", the coronation anthem "I was glad" and the hymn tune "Repton", which sets the words...
and Charles Villiers Stanford
Charles Villiers Stanford
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer who was particularly notable for his choral music. He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.- Life :...
, which made his music seem unfashionable in his lifetime. One can’t really speak about experimentation, let alone modernity, in the case of Finzi, even though some of his lesser-known works completely contradict his popular image of a lyrical pastoralist. He did, however, have a distinctive voice of his own, most evident in the sensitive songs and choral works which show an unfailing response to and unity with each poet’s words, resulting from his thorough knowledge of English literature. In this respect, he resembles Gurney, Roger Quilter
Roger Quilter
Roger Quilter was an English composer, known particularly for his songs.-Biography:Born in Hove, Sussex, Quilter was a younger son of Sir William Quilter, 1st Baronet, who was a noted art collector...
and other English song composers of the early twentieth century, though works such as the Cello Concerto and Intimations of Immortality
Intimations of Immortality
Intimations of Immortality, Op. 29, an ode for tenor, chorus, and orchestra, is one of the best-known works by English composer Gerald Finzi. It is a setting of nine of the eleven stanzas of William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality", cast as a single continuous movement...
show him more than a miniaturist.
Finzi’s son, Christopher
Christopher Finzi
Christopher "Kiffer" Finzi is a British orchestral conductor.He is the son of composer Gerald Finzi. Like his father, the younger Finzi became a pacifist; he refused to do his National Service, and was briefly imprisoned. After his father's death in 1956, he helped his mother, Joy Finzi, to...
, inherited his pacifist sympathies as well as his musical talent and became a noted conductor and an exponent of his father’s music. Thanks to him and other enthusiasts, as well as the work of the Finzi Trust
Finzi Trust
The Finzi Trust was founded in 1969 and seeks to further the music, ideals and work of Gerald Finzi. It has assisted individuals and organisations in a variety of ways and has initiated many projects reflecting the Trust's policy of encouraging young artists and composers.Recording projects have...
and the Finzi Friends Finzi’s music enjoyed a great resurgence from the late twentieth century onwards.
Complete opus list
- 1. Ten Children’s Songs
- 2. By Footpath and Stile
- 3. English Pastorals and Elegies
- a) A Severn Rhapsody
- b) Requiem da camera
- 4. Psalms for unaccompanied SATB
- 5. Three Short Elegies
- 6. Introit (Violin Concerto)
- 7. New Year Music
- 8. Dies natalisDies natalisDies natalis is a five-movement work by Gerald Finzi, setting texts by Thomas Traherne, for solo soprano or tenor and string orchestra.-History:Dies Natalis is a cantata for solo voice and string orchestra...
- 9. Farewell to Arms
- 10. Eclogue for piano and strings
- 11. Romance for String Orchestra
- 12. Two Sonnets by John Milton
- 13a. To a Poet
- 13b. Oh Fair to See
- 14. A Young Man’s Exhortation
- 15. Earth and Air and Rain
- 16. Before and After Summer
- 17. Seven Partsongs – Poems by Robert Bridges
- 1. I praise the tender flower
- 2. I have loved flowers that fade
- 3. My spirit sang all day
- 4. Clear and gentle stream
- 5. Nightingales
- 6. Haste on, my joys!
- 7. Wherefore tonight so full of care
- 18. Let Us Garlands Bring
- 19a. Till Earth Outwears
- 19b. I Said to Love
- 20. The Fall of the Leaf
- 21. Interlude
- 22. Elegy
- 23. Five Bagatelles for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 23a. Orchestrated by Lawrence Ashmore
- 24. Prelude and Fugue
- 25. Prelude for strings
- 26. Lo, the full, final sacrificeLo, the full, final sacrificeLo, the full, final sacrifice is a festival anthem for SATB choir and organ, composed by Gerald Finzi in 1946. The work was commissioned by the Revd Walter Hussey for the 53rd anniversary of the consecration of St Matthew's Church, Northampton. Finzi orchestrated the piece for its performance at...
- 27. Three Anthems
- 1. ‘My lovely one’
- 2. ‘God is gone up’
- 3. ‘Welcome sweet and sacred feast’
- 28a. Love’s Labour’s Lost- songs
- 28b Love’s Labour’s Lost- suite
- 29. Intimations of ImmortalityIntimations of ImmortalityIntimations of Immortality, Op. 29, an ode for tenor, chorus, and orchestra, is one of the best-known works by English composer Gerald Finzi. It is a setting of nine of the eleven stanzas of William Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality", cast as a single continuous movement...
- 30. For St Cecilia
- 31. Clarinet Concerto
- 32. Thou didst delight my eyes
- 33. All this night
- 34. Muses and Graces
- 35. Let us now praise famous men
- 36. Magnificat
- 37. White-flowering days
- 38. Grand Fantasia and Toccata
- 39. In terra pax
- 40. Cello ConcertoCello Concerto (Finzi)The Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 40, was composed by Gerald Finzi in 1955.The piece is in three movements:*I. Allegro moderato*II. Andante quieto*III...
External links
- The official Gerald Finzi website, created for the composer's family and including latest news of concerts featuring Finzi's works.
- A Finzi page on the website of his publisher Boosey & Hawkes, including a complete list of works published by Boosey & Hawkes and a discography.
- A Finzi Page at MusicWeb International by John France.
- The Finzi Trust, the official Finzi Trust website: listen to Finzi's music and read about his life and works, the Trust's work and the Finzi Travel Scholarships.
- Finzi Friends
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jan/27/gerald-finzi-mark-padmore