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Gerald Raphael Finzi ( July 14, 1901 - September 27, 1956) was a British composer, whose popularity has increased considerably in the years since his death.1 Life
Born in London, son of an Italian Jewish father and a German Jewish mother, Finzi was to belie his heritage by becoming one of the most characteristically "English" composers of his generation. Despite being an agnostic, he wrote some inspired and imposing Christian choral music.
Finzi's father, a successful shipbroker, died when his son was seven, and 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 poetryPoetry is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its use of Thomas TraherneThomas Traherne (1636 or 1637 October 10, 1674) was an English poet and religious writer. He was born in Hereford, son of a shoemaker, and got the name Traherne from a wealthy innkeeper who raised him after his parents’ death. He entered Brasenose College and his favourite, Thomas HardyThis article is about the British novelist. For other people with the same name, please see Thomas Hardy (disambiguation). Thomas Masterson Hardy ( 2 June, 1840 11 January, 1928) was a novelist and poet, generally regarded as one of the greatest figures i, whose poems, as well as those by Christina RossettiChristina Georgina Rossetti ( December 5, 1830 December 29, 1894) was an English poet and the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Their father, Gabriele Rossetti, was a political asylum seeker from Naples, and their mother, Frances Polidori, was the sister, he began to set to music. In the poetry of Hardy, Traherne, and later William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth ( April 7, 1770 April 23, 1850) was an English poet who with Samuel Taylor Coleridge launched the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 publication of Lyrical Ballads''. His masterpiece is generally considered to be The Prelu, 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 elegiacOriginally used for a type of poetic metre ( Elegiac metre), the term is also used for a poem of mourning, from the Greek elegos a reflection on the death of someone or on a sorrow generally. Some notable elegies include: The Elegies of Propertius Thomas in tone.
1.1 1918-1933: Studies and early compositions
After Farrar's death, Finzi studied privately at York MinsterYork Minster is an imposing Gothic cathedral in York, northern England. It has a very wide Decorated Gothic nave and chapter house, a Perpendicular Gothic choir and east end, and Early English north and south transepts. The nave contains the West Window, 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 PainswickPainswick is a small town in Gloucestershire, England. Originally, the town grew on the wool trade, but it is now best known for its church's yew trees and the local Rococo Garden. Towns in Gloucestershire. 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.
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 him a teaching popst (1930-1933) at the Royal Academy of Music.
