Gerald Finzi: His life and music

Gerald Finzi is one of the best-known modern English composers. While he is especially famous as a song-writer, for his sensitive settings of poets such as Hardy and Wordsworth, he also wrote in other genres; notable works include the exquisite cantata Dies Natalis, and his cello concerto. He also exerted a major influence in the musical world as a whole, championing the neglected Ivor Gurney and reviving eighteenth-century composers with the amateur orchestra he founded.

In this lively and sensitive study of his life and works, Diana McVeagh, the renowned Elgar and Finzi scholar, has made use of interviews with the main figures in his life, correspondence with contemporaries such as Vaughan Williams, Edmund Blunden, Arthur Bliss, Edmund Rubbra, Howard Ferguson and Herbert Howells, and her access to previously unpublished material in the form of his widow, Joy's, unpublished journal. The Finzi that emerges is a multi-faceted and complex character. The author shows how he developed from a solitary, introverted youth into a man with strong views and a myriad of interests: everything from education, pacifism, vegetarianism, to the Arts and Crafts movement, the English pastoral tradition, English apple varieties, and the significance of ancestry, friendship and marriage in an artist's life. She also discusses every work within the narrative of Finzi's life, and shows what makes his output so outstanding.

CONTENIDO:

List of Illustrations
Preface, Editorial Conventions, and Acknowledgements
Prologue

1. London and Yorkshire 1901-22
2. Gloucestershire 1922-26
Early songs; By Footpath and Stile; Motets; Severn Rhapsody,
Requiem da Camera; Only the Wanderer
3. London 1926-28
Nocturne, Prelude,Drummond Elegies; A Young Man?s Exhortation;
Dies Natalis I; Violin Concerto
4. Midhurst and Marriage 1928-35
Milton Sonnets; Grand Fantasia
5. Beech Knoll 1935-38
Oboe Interlude, Bridges Partsongs; Earth and Air and Rain
6. The Munich Crisis 1938-39
Dies Natalis II
7. Ashmansworth 1939-41
Single songs
8. At the Ministry 1941-45
Prelude and Fugue, Elegy, Bagatelles; Let us Garlands Bring;
Farewell to Arms
9. For St Cecilia 1945-47
Lo, the Full, Final Sacrifice; Love?s Labour?s Lost I; For St Cecilia
10. Consolidation 1947-48
Before and After Summer
11. Intimations of Immortality 1948-50
Clarinet Concerto 179; Intimations of Immortality
12. ...and of Mortality 1950-51
13. Speculation 1952-53
Magnificat, Anthems; White-flowering Days
14. Men of Goodwill 1953-54
Love?s Labour?s Lost II; Grand Fantasia and Toccata; Eclogue,
Romance; In Terra Pax
15. Return to Chosen Hill 1955-56
Cello Concerto
16. Epilogue

Late Harvest

Appendices
1 Catalogue of Works
2 Bibliography
3 Newbury String Players? Repertory
4 Joy Finzi?s Memoir of Gerald

General Index
Index of Finzi?s Compositions