Gerald Raphael Finzi (July 14, 1901 – September 27, 1956) was a British composer, whose popularity has increased considerably in the years since his death. is the 195th day of the year (196th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1901 (MCMI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday [1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... is the 270th day of the year (271st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... A composer is a person who writes music. ...

Life

Born in London, son of an Italian Jewish father and a German Jewish mother, 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. This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... For other uses, see Jew (disambiguation). ... The term agnosticism and the related agnostic were coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869. ... Christianity percentage by country, purple is highest, orange is lowest Topics in Christianity Movements · Denominations Ecumenism · Preaching · Prayer Music · Liturgy · Calendar Symbols · Art · Criticism Important figures Apostle Paul · Church Fathers Constantine · Athanasius · Augustine Anselm · Aquinas · Palamas · Wycliffe Tyndale · Luther · Calvin · Wesley Arius · Marcion of Sinope Pope · Archbishop of Canterbury Patriarch...

Finzi's father, a successful shipbroker, died when his son was seven. Gerald was educated privately. During World War I the family settled in Harrogate, and Gerald began to study music 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. “The Great War ” redirects here. ... , Harrogate is a large town in North Yorkshire, England. ... Ernest Bristow Farrar (July 7, 1885 - 1918) was an English composer, pianist and organist, born in Lewisham. ... Western Front was a term used during the First and Second World Wars to describe the contested armed frontier between lands controlled by Germany to the East and the Allies to the West. ... The Chinese poem Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong (Song Dynasty) Poetry (from the Greek , poiesis, a making or creating) is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning. ... Thomas Traherne (1636 or 1637 - October 10, 1674) was an English poet and religious writer. ... Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy, OM (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) — an English novelist, short story writer, and poet of the naturalist movement — delineated characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. ... Christina Rossetti Christina Georgina Rossetti (December 5, 1830 – December 29, 1894) was an English poet. ... William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850) was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads. ... Elegy was originally used for a type of poetic metre (Elegiac metre), but is also used for a poem of mourning, from the Greek elegos, a reflection on the death of someone or on a sorrow generally. ...

1918-1933: Studies and early compositions

After Farrar's death, Finzi studied privately at York Minster with the organist and choirmaster Edward Bairstow, a strict teacher compared with 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. York Minster is the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe and is situated in the city of York in Northern England. ... Sir Edward Cuthbert Bairstow was born in Huddersfield on August 22, 1874 and died in York on May 1, 1946. ... Painswick Beacon, and part of the view from it. ... Gloucestershire (pronounced ; GLOSS-ter-sher) is a county in South West England. ...

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. Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH (April 8, 1889 – February 22, 1983) was an English conductor. ... In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm, and interdependent in harmony. ... Reginald Owen Morris (March 3, 1886 – December 14, 1948), 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. ... Edmund Rubbra (23 May 1901–14 February 1986) was a British composer. ... Gustav Holst Gustav Holst (September 21, 1874, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire - May 25, 1934, London) [1] [2] was an English composer and was a music teacher for over 20 years. ... Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO (August 2, 1891 - March 27, 1975) was a British composer. ... A statue of Ralph Vaughan Williams in Dorking. ... The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) is a constituent college of the University of London, and is one of the worlds leading music institutions. ...

1933-1939: Musical development

Finzi never felt at home in the city and, having married the artist Joyce Black, 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 collected a valuable library of some 3000 volumes of English poetry, philosophy and literature, now in the library of the University of Reading. Joy Finzi (March 3, 1907 - June 14, 1991) was an artist, the wife of composer Gerald Finzi, and founder of the Finzi Trust. ... Wiltshire (abbreviated Wilts) is a large southern English county. ... Binomial name Borkh. ... The University of Reading is a Red brick, campus university in the English town of Reading, UK. Established in 1892, receiving its Royal Charter in 1926, the University has a long tradition of research, education and training at a local, national and international level. ...

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 old English composers such as William Boyce, Richard Capel Bond, John Garth, Richard Mudge, John Stanley and Charles Wesley. Face The 1930s (years from 1930–1939) were described as an abrupt shift to more radical and conservative lifestyles, as countries were struggling to find a solution to the Great Depression, also known in Europe as the World Depression. ... A cantata (Italian, sung) is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment and generally containing more than one movement. ... Dies natalis (Day of Birth) is a 1939 composition by Gerald Finzi. ... Ivor Gurney (August 28, 1890 - December 26, 1937) was an English composer and poet. ... Folk music can have a number of different meanings, including: Traditional music: The original meaning of the term folk music was synonymous with the term Traditional music, also often including World Music and Roots music; the term Traditional music was given its more specific meaning to distinguish it from the... William Boyce (September 11, 1711 – February 7, 1779) is widely regarded as one of the most important English-born composers of the 18th century. ... Charles John Stanley (January 17, 1712 – May 19, 1786) was an English composer and organist. ... Charles Wesley (12 December 1707 - 29 March 1788) was a leader of the Methodist movement, the younger brother of John 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. Year 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Newbury is a civil parish and the principal town in the west of the county of Berkshire in England. ... An orchestra is a musical ensemble used most often in classical music. ... Madame Villa-Lobos and Julien Bream at the presentation of the Villa-Lobos Gold Medal, officially awarded to Julian Bream in 1976. ... Kenneth Leighton ( Wakefield, October 2, 1929 Edinburgh, August 24, 1988) was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire. ...

1939-1956: Growth of reputation

The outbreak of World War II 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. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... The Three Choirs Festival is a British music festival, held each August alternately at the cathedrals of Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester and originally featuring their three choirs, which remain central to the week-long programme. ...

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 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. A violoncello concerto is a concerto for solo violoncello with orchestra or, very occasionally, smaller groups of instruments. ...

In 1956, on an excursion near Gloucester with Vaughan Williams, Finzi contracted chickenpox which was too much for his weakened state, causing severe brain inflammation. 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. Gloucester (pronounced ) is a city and district in the English county of Gloucestershire, close to the Welsh border. ... Chickenpox, also spelled chicken pox, is the common name for Varicella zoster, classically one of the childhood infectious diseases caught and survived by almost every child. ... An abscess on the skin, showing the redness and swelling characteristic of inflammation. ... Oxford is a city and local government district in Oxfordshire, England, with a population of 134,248 (2001 census). ...

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 Shakespeare 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). Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

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. Lo, the full, final sacrifice (Op. ... Edmund Charles Blunden (November 1, 1896 - January 20, 1974), although not one of the top trio of English World War I writers, was an important and influential poet, author and critic. ... William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850) was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads. ... Bridges on the cover of Time in 1929 Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, (October 23, 1844 – April 21, 1930) was an English poet, holder of the honour of poet laureate from 1913. ... The Gospel of Luke (literally, according to Luke; Greek, Κατά Λουκαν, Kata Loukan) is a synoptic Gospel, and the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels of the New Testament. ...

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 a piano concerto which was never finished, but material from its individual movements found its way into the gentle Eclogue and the vigorous Grand Fantasia and Toccata which 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. Bach in a 1748 portrait by Haussmann Johann Sebastian Bach (pronounced ) (21 March 1685 O.S. – 28 July 1750 N.S.) was a prolific German composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it... Ernest Bloch with children This article is about the composer. ...

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. George Howard Ferguson, PC (June 18, 1870-February 21, 1946) was a Conservative politician and Premier of Ontario, Canada, from 1923 to 1930. ...

Conclusion

Through Farrar and Vaughan Williams, Finzi belongs to the firm tradition of Elgar, 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. Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO (2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English Romantic composer. ... Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (February 27, 1848 – October 7, 1918) was an English composer, probably best known for his setting of William Blakes poem, Jerusalem. ... Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (September 30, 1852 – 29 March 1924) was an Irish composer. ... Roger Quilter (1877–1953) was an English composer. ...

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. Christopher Kiffer Finzi, (born 1934), is a British orchestral conductor. ... The Finzi Trust was founded in 1969 and seeks to further the music, ideals and work of Gerald Finzi. ...

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 Natalis
• 9. Farewell to Arms
• 10. Eclogue for piano and strings
• 11. Romance
• 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 Poems of Robert Bridges
• 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
• 24. Prelude and Fugue
• 25. Prelude for strings
• 26. Lo, the full, final sacrifice
• 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 Immortality
• 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 Concerto

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.
• Gerald Finzi at Classical Music Web, 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.