Product Description
'A Song outlasts a Dynasty.' Gerald Finzi's maxim embodies his creed. As a song writer, his affinity with Thomas Hardy is stronger even than Fauré's with Verlaine, or Wolf's with Mörike. His most famous work is his exquisite cantata Dies Natalis. His Intimations of Immortality is worthy of Wordsworth's poem, and his Cello Concerto is a big turbulent work. From being a solitary introverted young man, he developed into a great activator. He held strong views on education, pacifism, vegetarianism, the nature/nurture debate, the Arts and Crafts movement, the English pastoral tradition, English apple varieties, the significance of ancestry, friendship and marriage in an artist's life. His country home became a centre from which his influence radiated widely. He championed the neglected Ivor Gurney, and revived 18th-century composers with the amateur orchestra he founded. Most of his output is recorded and he is increasingly performed in the USA. McVeagh is known as an Elgar scholar and for her articles and sleevenotes on Finzi. His widow Joy asked her to write the book; she knew Joy well and quotes often from her unpublished journal. She interviews the main figures in Finzi's life, so has exclusive stories, many of them very funny. She quotes too from his correspondence with Vaughan Williams, Edmund Blunden, Arthur Bliss, Edmund Rubbra, Howard Ferguson and Herbert Howells. She discusses every work within the narrative of Finzi's life, and shows what makes his output individual. ... Read more

Book Description
The first biography of the life and works of one of Britain's best-loved composers.

Gerald Finzi, best known for the cantata Dies Natalis and the Clarinet Concerto, was one of Britain's most adored composers. His music is rooted in the tradition of Elgar, Sir Charles Parry, Vaughan Williams, and early twentieth-century composers who, like Ivor Gurney, revered songwriting as their principal means of expression.

In this witty and engaging biography, Stephen Banfield reveals the modest, quintessentially English composer as a more complex figure than he is often given credit for being. Finzi's ambiguous relationship with his craft, his affluent and intellectual family, and his struggles with his Jewishness lent a mysterious and troubled quality to his life and work that, through the course of this challenging biography, invite us to question the notions of Englishness that he both so cherished and represented. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The First Finzi Biography -- Overdue and Well-Done
Who was Gerald Finzi? It is a more important question than it might initially seem for Stephen Banfield in his recent biography of the English composer. The author asks it as part of an attempt to evaluate Finzi's cultural identity as well as artistic attainment in a life that was too short but filled with significant music.

For the classical music lover of more than average discernment, discovery of Finzi's work casts him in the role of visionary. The world can seem forever changed after a first listening to Finzi's vocal works (above all the superb Dies Natalis). He is that remarkable rarity, a relatively unknown composer who provides something like a gift of divine revelation.

For the official histories, on the other hand, he is usually little more than a second- or third-rate member of the English pastoral tradition (less kindly known as the "cow-pat school") that asserted itself between the two world wars, the big names in which were Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Delius. Seen from this more detached viewpoint, Finzi was a close friend of Vaughan Williams as well as a familiar of Bliss, but a composer of nowhere near their abilities -- most characteristically, a man who did small things well, as in his settings of poems by Hardy, Wordsworth, and Traherne.

In this first major biography of Finzi, Banfield (who has a long record of devotion to researching the composer's career for musicology publications) does an excellent job of attempting to place Finzi into perspective between the two views of him from the small and the large ends of the telescope.

Banfield also attempts, more notably, to come to terms with Finzi's peculiar position as a member of an impressive family with ancient Italian Jewish roots (yes, probably related in some way to the Finzi-Continis of movie fame) who made the personal choice to mix with nationalistic English musicians, even arguing in print for the virtues of embracing a strong English cultural identity.

Those who find themselves intrigued by current debates about the role played by ethnic culture in determining personal identity will also be interested by Banfield's treatment of Finzi's dilemma.

But it is to those of us who see Finzi through the magnifying lens, and who have come to feel personally touched by his music, that Banfield has most to say.

How did Finzi live his life? (Quite well, as a person who seemed almost saintly in his abilities to rise above the usual pettiness and indecorous weaknesses of most notables in the arts.) Who did he rub shoulders with? (Many, many fascinating figures in the early twentieth century revival of English music, though not all are well known.)Why should he be remembered at all, beyond the Hardy songs and Dies Natalis? (Among the many activities that this compulsive conservator undertook, he almost single-handedly revived forgotten English composers from the era of Handel.)

And finally -- for fans of the film "Hilary and Jackie" -- was he any relation to the dashing Kiffer Finzi who swept Hilary off her feet? (Indeed, Gerald Finzi was Kiffer's father, though you'd never know it from the film's silence about the father's big cello concerto.)

Personal note: as one of those collectors of English music who have never forgotten the moment of revelation as Dies Natalis (conducted, incidentally, by Kiffer Finzi) made the transition to the turntable after discovery in an obscure record bin, I find it an indispensible service from Banfield to have all the personal lore about the composer between two covers, and nicely written for the most part.

One small warning, though: this is one of those extremely conscientious studies of national musical figures that Faber and Faber do so well. That means that much of its500-plus-pages bulk is taken up with detailed musicological analysis, for the most part closely woven in with the biographical narrative and tending to overshadow it. If you've allowed yourself to become rusty on your key relationships, or if you don't happen to have the complete run of Finzi recordings (or even more helpfully, the scores) at hand, the book will be slow going, even for dedicated page-skippers.

But the book should provide many new insights for the general reader with a curiosity about both musical matters and general English artistic life in the first half of the recent century (Finzi's dates were 1901-1956). And who, having discovered and then fallen in love with Finzi's rapturous vocal revelations, would not wish to have this thorough a portrait of him, crotchets and quavers and all? ... Read more

Book Description
For the first time, the lovely songs of British composer Gerald Finzi (1904-1956) are collected together in one volume, in two keys. This new collection includes some first time transpositions as well. Contents: I SAID TO LOVE: I need no go * At middle-Field Gate in February * Two Lips * In five-score Summers * For Life I had never cared greatly * I said to Love. LET US GARLANDS BRING: Come away, come away, death * Who is Sylvia? * Fear no more the heat o' the sun * O Mistress Mine * It was a lover and his lass. LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST: Songs for Heims and Ver (Song for Moth) * Riddle Song * False Colcolinel. O FAIR TO SEE: I say I'll seek her * O fair to see * As I lay in the early sun * Only the wanderer * To Joy * Harvest * Since we loved. TILL EARTH OUTWEARS: Let me enjoy the earth * In years defaced * The Market-Girl * I look into my glass * It never looks like summer * At a lunar Eclipse * Life Laughs Onward. TO A POET: To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence * On Parent Knees * Intrada * The Birthnight * June on Castle Hill * Ode on the rejection of St. Cecelia. A YOUNG MAN'S EXHORTATION: Part I A Young Man's Exhortation * Ditty * Budmouth * Dears * Her Temple * The Comet at Yell'ham * Part II Shortening Days * The Sigh * Former Beauties * Transformations * The Dance Continued. ... Read more

Book Description
The letters that passed, on an almost daily basis, between the composers Howard Ferguson and Gerald Finzi provide not only a fascinating commentary on the British musical scene of the period 1926-1956, but also what amounts to a unique dual-biography of two remarkable, though very different, personalities. Their lives, their loves, their enthusiasms and their prejudices are laid bare with a rare degree of candour, so that we learn not only what it was like to be witness to an art that was enjoying an unprecedented explosion of creative vitality, but also how they came to explore and consolidate their own exceptional talents. Biographical background narratives provide links that make clear what intimate correspondents inevitably take for granted, and explanations are given for references that the passage of time has made obscure. Their lives are thus revealed in all their diversity - tragedy and comedy, achievement and frustration, justifiable pride and unreasoning prejudice playing equal parts in this absorbing tale of two outstanding musical personalities of the twentieth century. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Midstream, published by Theodor Herzl Foundation on January 1, 2001. The length of the article is 859 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Gerald Finzi: An English Composer.(Review) (book review)
Author: George Jochnowitz
Publication: Midstream (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2001
Publisher: Theodor Herzl Foundation
Volume: 47Issue: 1Page: 42

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) was a British composer, editor, author, and outdoorsman/agrarian. Many of his works (a body of fewer than 50) are choral or solo vocal in nature. At the heart of his musical contributions is a unique blend of the metaphysical and mystical with a true love for everything English. Typical of many of the volumes in the Greenwood Press series, this work serves as an awareness tool, introducing an important 20th-century composer labeled variously as a miniaturist, a pastoral composer, and a minor Edwardian musician--but with a singular style that differed from his contemporaries' yet reflected in part the English tradition of Elgar, Parry, and Vaughan Williams in particular. Growing up with the music of these composers as models, Finzi quickly succeeded in the art of writing songs. His work is just now beginning to receive wider publicity through recordings and public performance. A set of 15 anecdotes contributed by major artists is assembled in this work, containing the artists' reactions to Finzi and his compositions. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on September 1, 2002. The length of the article is 1050 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Letters of Gerald Finzi and Howard Ferguson. (Book Reviews: Letters).
Author: Byron Adams
Publication: Notes (Refereed)
Date: September 1, 2002
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: 59Issue: 1Page: 87(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
Contetns: BEFORE AND AFTER SUMMER: Childhood among the Ferns * Before and after Summer * The Self-unseeing * Overlooking the River * Channel Firing * In the Mind's Eye * The Too Short Time * Epeisodia * Amabel * He Abjures Love. EARTH AND AIR AND RAIN: Summer Schemes * When I set out for Lyonnesse * Waiting for Both * The Phantom * So I have fared * Rollicum-Rorum * To Lizbie * The Clock of the Years * In a Churchyard * Proud Songsters. I SAID TO LOVE: I need not go * At Middle-Field Gate in February * Two Lips * In five-score * Summers * For Life I had never cared greatly * I said to Love. LET US GARLANDS BRING: Come away, come away, death * Who is Sylvia? * Fear no more the heat o' the sun * O Mistress Mine * It was a lover and his lass. LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST: Songs for Heims and Ver (Song for Moth) * Riddle Song * False Colcolinel. OH FAIR TO SEE: I say I'll seek her * Oh fair to see * As I lay in the early sun * Only the wanderer * To Joy * Harvest * Since we loved. TILL EARTH OUTWEARS: Let me enjoy the earth * In years defaced * The Market-Girl * I look into my glass * It never looks like summer * At a lunar Eclipse * Life Laughs Onward. TO A POET: To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence * On Parent Knees * Intrada * The Birthnight * June on Castle Hill * Ode on the rejection of St. Cecelia. ... Read more

Book Description
Contents: Cello Concerto, Op. 40 * Clarinet Concerto, Op. 31 * Violin Concerto. ... Read more

Book Description
The Clock of the Years is an anthology compiled to celebrate 25 years of the Finzi Friends Newsletter. It includes freshly edited and revised pieces that have been long out of print or only available to society members, with many new pieces appearing in print for the first time. The collection is enhanced by fascinating archive material from private collections, including many previously unseen photographs of Finzi and his circle.Contents include: Anthony Boden on Finzi at the 3 Choirs Festival; Joy Finzi on Ralph Vaughan Williams; Kenneth Leighton's memories of Finzi; Stephen Banfield on writing his biography of the composer; Philip Thomas on Finzi's Clarinet Concerto; Christopher Stunt on Finzi and Thomas Hardy; Hugh Cobbe on the correspondence of Finzi and Vaughan Williams; Diana McVeagh, Myfanwy Thomas and Ursula Vaughan Williams on Joy Finzi; Howard Ferguson on Elgar; Philip Langridge on Intimations of Immortality; Christopher Finzi on recording Dies natalis; etc. ... Read more

Product Description
Contents: "Let Me Enjoy the Earth"; "In Years Defaced"; "The Market-Girl"; "I look Into My Glass"; "It Never Looks Like Summer"; "At a Lunar Eclipse"; "Life Laughs Onward" ... Read more