Gerald Finzi

Gerald Raphael Finzi(14 July 1901 – 27 September 1956) was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a choral composer, but also wrote in other genres. Large-scale compositions by Finzi include thecantataDies natalisfor solo voice and string orchestra, and his concertos for cello and clarinet.

Portrait of Gerald Finzi, byAngus McBean

Life

Gerald Finzi was born in London, the son of John Abraham (Jack) Finzi and Eliza Emma (Lizzie) Leverson. Finzi became one of the most characteristically English composers of his generation. Despite his being anagnosticof Jewish descent, several of his choral works incorporate Christian texts.

Finzi's father, a successfulshipbroker,died a fortnight before his son's eighth birthday.Finzi was educated privately. DuringWorld War Ithe family settled inHarrogate,and Finzi began to study music atChrist Church, High Harrogate,underErnest Farrarfrom 1915.Farrar, a former pupil ofCharles Villiers Stanford,was then aged thirty and he described Finzi as "very shy, but full of poetry".Finzi found him a sympathetic teacher,and Farrar's death at theWestern Frontaffected him deeply.

During those formative years, Finzi also suffered the loss of all three of his brothers, adversities that contributed to Finzi's bleak outlook on life.He found solace in the poetry ofThomas Traherneand his favourite,Thomas Hardy,whose poems, as well as those byChristina Rossetti,he began to set to music. In the poetry of Hardy, Traherne, and laterWilliam 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 waselegiacin tone.

Finzi was, at one time, avegetarianbut gave it up and favoured eggs, fish and sometimes bacon or chicken.

1918–33: Studies and early compositions

After Farrar's death, Finzi studied privately atYork Minsterwith the organist and choirmasterEdward Bairstow,a strict teacher compared with Farrar. In 1922, after five years of study with Bairstow, Finzi moved toPainswickinGloucestershire,where he began composing in earnest. His first Hardy settings, and the orchestral pieceA Severn Rhapsody,were soon performed in London to favourable reviews.

In 1925, at the suggestion ofAdrian Boult,Finzi took a course incounterpointwithR. O. Morrisand then moved to London, where he became friendly withHoward FergusonandEdmund Rubbra.He was also introduced toGustav Holst,Arthur BlissandRalph Vaughan Williams.Vaughan Williams obtained a teaching post (1930–1933) for him at theRoyal Academy of Music.

1933–39: Musical development

Finzi never felt at home in London and, having married the artistJoyce Black,settled with her inAldbourne,Wiltshire,where he devoted himself to composing and apple-growing, saving a number of rare Englishapplevarieties from extinction. He also amassed a large library of some 3,000 volumes of English poetry, philosophy and literature, now kept at theUniversity of Reading,and a collection (some 700 volumes including books, manuscripts and printed scores) of 18th-century English music, now held by theUniversity of St Andrews.

During the 1930s, Finzi composed only a few works, but it was in them, notably thecantataDies natalis(1939) to texts byThomas Traherne,that his fully mature style developed. He also worked on behalf of the poet-composerIvor Gurney,who had been committed to a mental hospital. Finzi and his wife catalogued and edited Gurney's works for publication. They also studied and published Englishfolk musicand music by older English composers such asWilliam Boyce,Capel Bond,John Garth,Richard Mudge,John StanleyandCharles Wesley.

In 1939, the Finzis moved toAshmansworthinHampshire,where he founded theNewbury String Players,an amateurchamber orchestrathat he conducted until his death, reviving 18th-century string music, as well as giving premieres of works by his contemporaries and offering talented young musicians such asJulian BreamandKenneth Leightonthe chance to perform.

1939–56: Growth of reputation

The outbreak ofWorld War IIdelayed the first performance ofDies natalisat theThree Choirs Festival,an event that could have established Finzi as a major composer. He was directed to work at theMinistry of War Transportand 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 today.

By then, Finzi's works were being performed frequently at the Three Choirs Festival and elsewhere. But that happiness was not to last. In 1951, he learned that he was suffering from the then incurableHodgkin's diseaseand had ten years to live, at most. His feelings after that revelation are probably reflected in the agonized first movement of hisCello Concerto(1955), Finzi's last major work. However its second movement, originally intended as a musical portrait of his wife, is more serene.

In 1956, following an excursion nearGloucesterwith Vaughan Williams, Finzi developedshingles,probably as a result ofimmune suppressioncaused by Hodgkin's disease. Biographies refer to him subsequently developingchickenpox,which developed into a "severe braininflammation".That probably means that his shingles developed intodisseminated shingles,which resembles chickenpox, and was complicated byencephalitis.He died soon afterwards, aged 55, in theRadcliffe Infirmary,Oxford, the first performance of his Cello Concerto having been given on the radio the night before. His ashes were scattered onMay Hillnear Gloucester in 1973.

Works

See also:List of compositions by Gerald Finzi

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, includingA Young Man’s ExhortationandEarth and Air and Rain,for voice and piano. Among his other songs, the settings ofShakespearepoems in the cycleLet Us Garlands Bring(1942) are the best known. He also wrote incidental music to Shakespeare’sLove’s Labour’s Lost(1946). For voice and orchestra he composed the above-mentionedDies natalis,and the pacifistFarewell to Arms(1944).

Finzi’s choral music includes the popular anthemsLo, the full, final sacrificeandGod is gone upas well as unaccompanied partsongs, but he also wrote larger-scale choral works such asFor St. Cecilia(text byEdmund Blunden),Intimations of Immortality(William Wordsworth) and the Christmas sceneIn terra pax(Robert Bridgesand theGospel 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 worksEclogueandGrand Fantasia and Toccata.The latter demonstrates Finzi’s admiration forJohann Sebastian Bachas well as the Swiss-American composerErnest 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 calledIntroit.This concerto thus received only its second performance in 1999 and its first recording is now on Chandos. Finzi's Clarinet Concerto and his Cello Concerto are possibly his most famous and frequently performed instrumental works, with recordings of these works done by clarinetist John Denman and a youngYo-Yo Ma.

Of Finzi's few chamber works, only theFive Bagatellesfor clarinet and piano, published in 1945, have survived in the regular repertoire. The Prelude and Fugue for string trio (1938) is his only piece for string chamber ensemble. It was written as a tribute to R O Morris, and shares the austere and melancholy mood of his teacher's music.

Finzi had a long-standing friendship with the composerHoward Fergusonwho, as well as offering advice on his works during his life, helped with the editing of several of Finzi's posthumous works.

Legacy

Finzi's elder son,Christopher,became a conductor and exponent of his father's music. Finzi's younger son Nigel was a violinist, and worked closely with their mother in promoting his father's music.

References

• Banfield, Stephen.Gerald Finzi: An English Composer(Faber, 1997)ISBN0-571-16269-X
• Dressler, John C.Gerald Finzi: A Bio-Bibliography(Greenwood, 1997)ISBN0-313-28693-0
• Jordan, Rolf.The Clock of the Years: A Gerald and Joy Finzi Anthology(Chosen Press, 2007)ISBN978-0-9556373-0-8
• McVeagh, Diana.Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music(Boydell, 2006)ISBN1-84383-170-8

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 pageon the website of his publisher Boosey & Hawkes, including a complete list of works published by Boosey & Hawkes and a discography.
• A Finzi Pageat 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
• "Gerald Finzi: the quiet man of British classical music"-article by Mark Padmore in The Guardian
• Free scores by Gerald Finziat theInternational Music Score Library Project(IMSLP)