Gerald Finzi

Started by tjguitar, April 16, 2007, 02:08:51 PM

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J.Z. Herrenberg

I bought the Lyrita recording (a twofer) of Finzi's Hardy settings today, through Musicweb (not only because Calyptorhynchus made me curious, I am deep into Hardy's poetry at the moment). Can't wait to listen to them.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

calyptorhynchus

I came across some Finzi I didn't know before. It's from a BBC broadcast of the music to Love Labours Lost available to download from the Unsung Composers downloads sections (free, but you need to register).

While it includes the Suite as recorded and issued a couple of times it includes three or four songs from the play I haven't heard before, these include the cuckoo song (can't remember the first line) and 'When icicles hang by the wall', all beautiful settings for tenor and orchestra. The recording quality is good and the playing of the Suite is, for my money, better than the Nimbus recording which I know, more chamber-music quality and more intimate.

Go forth and download.
'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton

calyptorhynchus

A thought on Finzi.

I have always been troubled by Banfield's thesis in his biography/study, that Finzi missed being a great composer through suppressing his Jewish roots and generally holding back on his emotions.

Some of us read haiku and value restrained emotions.

[Sips green tea].

Anyway, that aside, I have thought that sometimes Finzi's Jewishness is expressed in his music, albeit slyly. For example in his Magnificat there is the over-repetition of "Abraham" (far more repeats than the music needs). But the best example is in the Cello Concerto. I got this insight from listening to David Diamond's Kaddish, a piece for cello and orchestra from the 1980s. This, as the name suggests, is a piece founded on traditional synagogue melodies (Diamond's Kol Nidrei). What is remarkable about it is how reminiscent this music is of the melodic material from the Finzi Cello Concerto first movement. In other words, here Finzi, in some of the most turbulent passages of music he penned, brought back memories of synagogue music from his childhood.. to brilliant effect.
'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton

J.Z. Herrenberg

I never knew Finzi was Jewish... Which demonstrates that I still have a long way go in Finzi country. I am waiting for the moment when I feel like listening to his Hardy songs (2 CDs, Lyrita). I must be in the right (receptive) frame of mind for new (to me) music.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

calyptorhynchus

"I never knew Finzi was Jewish".

The Finzis were an old Italian Jewish family* and Gerald's ancestors arrived in England around 1800 I believe. He had a very unhappy childhood, his father died when he was young, two of his brothers died in WW1, Earnest Farrar, whom he studied with, also died in the War. Finzi after his adolescence never 'identified' as being Jewish, maybe as a way of coping with this loss, maybe he just preferred being 'English'. Stephen Banfield goes into it a lot in his book, and he thinks this is all part of the emotional repression that stopped Finzi writing longer and more numerous works and stifled the creativity in the ones he did write. I happen to think that everyone who knew Finzi knew perfectly well what his ancestry was, but didn't mention it, not because of anti-Jewishness, but because they respected Gerald's right to choose how he represented himself.

*I've ordered some music by Aldo Finzi, who is probably a very distant relative of Gerald. He was an Italian Jewish composer who died in 1945. I think the story is that his family had to live in hiding and the stress of this caused his early death in February 1945. Who knows, I might start a thread on his music (which is hard to find, just a few CDs, no downloads).
'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton

J.Z. Herrenberg

Very interesting. Thank you!
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

calyptorhynchus

More thoughts on Finzi, Diamond and Jewish music.

In Kaddish, written in 1980, Diamond could easily have been alluding to Finzi's Cello Concerto, made available in the 1975 Yo Yo Ma recording. However in som e of his music of the 1930s (such as the slow movements of the
Third Symphony and Rounds for String Orchestra), he was already writing music that sounds like Finzi's even though he couldn't have heard any at the time.

This suggests that Diamond and Finzi had a common musical heritage, presumably in synagogue music they heard as children. It would be tremendously ironic if the very English style of Finzi actually had a source in synagogue music, and only sounds English because they both have a modal, rather than tonal, flavour.
'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton

vandermolen

#107
Finzi, I believe came from the same family as that portrayed in the film 'The Garden of the Finzi Contini'. I have not seen it but think that it was about a Jewish family in wartime Fascist Italy (I may have got this wrong).

Finzi was very highly strung and nervous. He hated his prep school and spent four years in the same form.  He fabricated fainting fits and was, according to himself rescued from a nervous breakdown by his marriage. Dies Natalis is a great favourite of mine and the old EMI CD linking the classic Wilfrid Brown version with Howells's 'Hymnus Paradisi' (Willcocks) is one of my all time Desert Island Discs.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

snyprrr

bump for pretty music

Karl Henning

Quote from: vandermolen on September 23, 2012, 08:56:37 AM
Dies Natalis is a great favourite of mine and the old EMI CD linking the classic Wilfrid Brown version with Howells's 'Hymnus Paradisi' (Willcocks) is one of my all time Desert Island Discs.

Hmm, I have a reissue compilation with the Dies natalis, but not the Howells . . . which is another piece I am inclined to think would interest me.

Oh, the blessings and the torments of the reissues . . . .
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

kyjo

Quote from: karlhenning on October 21, 2013, 10:59:06 AM
Hmm, I have a reissue compilation with the Dies natalis, but not the Howells . . . which is another piece I am inclined to think would interest me.

Oh, the blessings and the torments of the reissues . . . .

Karl, the Howells Hymnus Paradisi is a most moving work - one of the most beautiful choral works I know!

Karl Henning

We sang a set of Canticles of Howells's (I know he wrote a slew of 'em . . . forget just which were the ones we sang) for an Evensong at St Paul's here in Boston, back in the day.  Great writing; so in the back of my mind, investigating some more music of his has always been a good-ish idea.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

vandermolen

Quote from: karlhenning on October 21, 2013, 10:59:06 AM
Hmm, I have a reissue compilation with the Dies natalis, but not the Howells . . . which is another piece I am inclined to think would interest me.

Oh, the blessings and the torments of the reissues . . . .

You have to listen to the Howells Karl.

Totally coincidentally I happened to be playing a Decca CD of Dies Natalis when I came across this thread. Am very pleased as I got a second hand copy of it dirt cheap on Amazon. The CD also features the lovely 'In terra Pax', 'Magnificat' and 'For St Cecilia' a lovely disc.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Tsaraslondon

Quote from: vandermolen on October 21, 2013, 11:36:33 AM
You have to listen to the Howells Karl.

Totally coincidentally I happened to be playing a Decca CD of Dies Natalis when I came across this thread. Am very pleased as I got a second hand copy of it dirt cheap on Amazon. The CD also features the lovely 'In terra Pax', 'Magnificat' and 'For St Cecilia' a lovely disc.

Is that the one conducted by Richard Hickox? If so, how lucky you are to have a copy as it is now deleted. I had it on LP, and wish now I had bought the CD when it was briefly available. The performance of "In Terra Pax" is superior, IMO, to the one at present available in the Decca catalogue.

\"A beautiful voice is not enough.\" Maria Callas

vandermolen

Quote from: Tsaraslondon on October 23, 2013, 11:44:28 PM
Is that the one conducted by Richard Hickox? If so, how lucky you are to have a copy as it is now deleted. I had it on LP, and wish now I had bought the CD when it was briefly available. The performance of "In Terra Pax" is superior, IMO, to the one at present available in the Decca catalogue.

Yes, that's the one. I was lucky to find a second hand copy very cheaply on the UK Amazon site recently. I had the LP featuring 'In Terra Pax' - a most lovely work. My favourite version of 'Dies Natalis' is the one sung by Wilfred Brown on EMI but Philip Langridge gives a very fine performance too. This has to be my favourite Finzi disc as I like every work on it. 'For St Cecilia' is a comparatively new discovery and I find the 'Magnificat' to be very moving - one of my favourite works by Finzi and in its best performance I think.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Octave

Since the thread is active again, have any of the Finzians here heard this collection of song cycles on Hyperion? 

[asin]B002DJOU4S[/asin]
Finzi: SONGS CYCLES TO WORDS BY THOMAS HARDY (Hyperion, 2cd)
Earth and Air and Rain; Till Earth Outwears; I Said to Love; A Young Man's Exhortation; Before and after the Summer.
Martyn Hill w/Stephen Varcoe and Clifford Benson
Help support GMG by purchasing items from Amazon through this link.

vandermolen

Quote from: Octave on October 24, 2013, 02:43:25 AM
Since the thread is active again, have any of the Finzians here heard this collection of song cycles on Hyperion? 

[asin]B002DJOU4S[/asin]
Finzi: SONGS CYCLES TO WORDS BY THOMAS HARDY (Hyperion, 2cd)
Earth and Air and Rain; Till Earth Outwears; I Said to Love; A Young Man's Exhortation; Before and after the Summer.
Martyn Hill w/Stephen Varcoe and Clifford Benson

No, but I bet it's good!
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

calyptorhynchus

The Hyperion Hardy Songs set is the one I grew up listening to. The alternative (apart from various separate recordings of the 6 individual Hardy song-cycles) is the Naxos set of three or four discs (which includes a seventh cycle "By Footpath and Stile" for baritone and string quartet).

For my money either set will do, they are both very good.

I was at university with Roderick Williams (singer on some of the Naxos discs) in the mid 1980s and he was giving Finzi recitals then!
'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton

vandermolen

Quote from: calyptorhynchus on October 24, 2013, 07:17:21 PM
The Hyperion Hardy Songs set is the one I grew up listening to. The alternative (apart from various separate recordings of the 6 individual Hardy song-cycles) is the Naxos set of three or four discs (which includes a seventh cycle "By Footpath and Stile" for baritone and string quartet).

For my money either set will do, they are both very good.

I was at university with Roderick Williams (singer on some of the Naxos discs) in the mid 1980s and he was giving Finzi recitals then!

Roderick Williams is a wonderful singer. I was lucky to hear him in the staged version of Pilgrim's Progress by Vaughan Williams in London.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

calyptorhynchus

I've just finished listening to the complete Finzi song-cycles on the Naxos three-disc set with baritone Roderick Williams and tenor John Mark Ainslie.

"Sigh", the man was a genius, I can't think of any other song writer who combines such good choices of text and just melodic and harmonic wizardry. I suspect that if I was a German speaker I might say the same about several of the lieder writers, but as I can only "understand" the texts, ie not appreciate the level of language, the connotations and so forth, I can't really appreciate them to the same extent. The same would be the case with Nielsen and other Scandinavian song-writers.

Can anyone suggest other writers of songs in English that they think have Finzi's gift (I like Butterworth's songs, and VW's Songs of Travel, and some of Gurney's (though I prefer Finzi's setting of "Only the Wanderer"), and various disks of English folk-songs I have come across (inc Britten settings), but most other song-writers in English seem to be writers of art-songs rather than songs).
'Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth.' Robert Burton