The Christmas and Winter Music of Gerald Finzi

 Gerald Finzi. Credit: Finzi Trust.

The Christmas and Winter Music of Gerald Finzi

Gerald Finzi was London born in 1901. Although being of Jewish decent, he used Christian texts and influences in his work and was fond of poets like Christina Rossetti.

When Finzi was child, he lost his father and his family moved to Harrogate. In 1915, he began studying music at Christ Church, High Arrogate under Ernest Farrar. Farrar had been a student of Charles Stanford. Farrar would teach Finzni until he left to World War I where he would die. Farrar's death greatly affected Finzi. Adding to that, Finzi also lost his three brothers, which turned him to poetry which is well reflected in his works. (1). He collected a massive amount of poetry books in his lifetime.

Finzi continued his musical studies privately at York Minster with Edward Bairstow. In 1922, Finzi moved to Painswick, Gloucestershire where he wrote his first compositions, of which some gained performance.  Finzi then studied counterpoint with R.O. Morris.

Finzi moved to London in the mid-1920s making acquaintance with Howard Ferguson and Edmund Rubbra. There he also met Gustave Holst, Arthur Bliss, and Ralph Vaughn Williams. Vaughn Williams was able to get Finzi a teaching post at the Royal Academy of Music. However, Finzi soon married and left for Albourne, Wiltshire. Finzi and his wife Joyce Black, began editing and publishing music, especially folk music and that of older composers.

The family moved to Ashmansworth in Hampshire, there founding the Newbury Sting Players. An interesting note is that his ensemble gave Julian Bream and Kenneth Leighton, young musicians at that time, a chance to first perform their works.  Finzi was to premiere Dies natalis at the Three Choir Festival, but the outbreak of World War II interrupted that premiere.  Finzi entered war service, but continued composing and premiering works, and by the late 1940s his works were frequently performed at the Three Choirs Festival. 

Finzi's works are few considering he died particularly young at 55. His opus count only goes to 40. Nevertheless, he composed two major Christmas works, and had a magnificent run of song cycles.

One can read more about Finzi's life at the Finzi's Trust's website, as well as see a timeline.

Christmas

Finzi wrote Thomas Hardy's "The Oxen" to music as part of the six-song cycle By Footpath and Stile (1921):

                     The Oxen

By Thomas Hardy

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

“Now they are all on their knees,”

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,”

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

Below is the Finzi Quartet performing it:

Nocturne (New Year Music) for Orchestra in C-Sharp Minor (1926 , rev. 1940s), performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra:

Dies natalis, Op. 8 (cantata for strings and solo voice), written in mid-1920s, 1938–1939, was first performed in 1940. The cantata is a five-movement solo cantata scored for a solo soprano or tenor accompanied by string orchestra. It features settings of four texts by Thomas Traherne (1636/37–1674), a seventeenth-century English Metaphysical poet, priest and theologian:

I. Intrada

II. Rhapsody

Will you see the infancy of this sublime and celestial greatness? I was a stranger, which at my entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys: my knowledge was divine. I was entertained like an angel with the works of God in their splendour and glory. Heaven and Earth did sing my Creator's praises, and could not make more melody to Adam than to me. Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world than I. All appeared new, and strange at first, inexpressibly rare and delightful and beautiful. All things were spotless and pure and glorious.

The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The green trees, when I saw them first, transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things.

O what venerable creatures did the aged seem! Immortal cherubims! and the young men glittering and sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! I knew not that they were born or should die ; but all things abided eternally. I knew not that there were sins or complaints or laws. I dreamed not of poverties, contentions or vices. All tears and quarrels were hidden from mine eyes. I saw all in the peace of Eden. Everything was at rest, free and immortal. 

III. The Rapture

Sweet Infancy!
O heavenly fire! O sacred Light!
How fair and bright!
How great am I
Whom the whole world doth magnify!

O heavenly Joy!
O great and sacred blessedness
Which I possess!
So great a joy
Who did into my arms convey?

From God above
Being sent, the gift doth me enflame,
To praise His Name.
The stars do move,
The sun doth shine, to show His Love.

O how divine
Am I! To all this sacred wealth
This life and health,
Who rais'd? Who mine
Did make the same! What hand divine! 

IV. Wonder

How like an angel came I down!

How bright are all things here!

When first among His works I did appear

O how their glory did me crown!

The world resembled His Eternity

In which my soul did walk;

And every thing that I did see

Did with me talk.

The skies in their magnificence

The lovely, lively air,

O how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!

The stars did entertain my sense;

And all the works of God, so bright and pure,

So rich and great, did seem,

As if they ever must endure

In my esteem.

A native health and innocence

Within my bones did grow,

And while my God did all His Glories show,

I felt a vigour in my sense

That was all Spirit. I within did flow

With seas of life, like wine;

I nothing in the world did know

But 'twas Divine. 

 V. Salutation

These little limbs, these eyes and hands which here I find,

This panting heart wherewith my life begins;

Where have ye been? Behind what curtain were ye from me hid so long?

Where was, in what abyss, my new-made tongue?

When silent I, so many thousand, thousand years

Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie, how could I smiles, or tears,

Or lips, or hands, or eyes, or ears perceive?

Welcome, ye treasures which I now receive.

From dust I rise and out of nothing now awake,

These brighter regions which salute my eyes,

A gift from God I take, the earth, the seas, the light, the lofty skies,

The sun and stars are mine: if these I prize.

A stranger here, strange things doth meet, strange glory see,

Strange treasures lodged in this fair world appear,

Strange, all, and new to me: But that they mine should be who nothing was,

That strangest is of all; yet brought to pass. 

___________

  As stated above, the settings are very metaphysical and may be too much for some audiences, and some may not even consider it a Christmas piece. An interesting fact regarding the first recording of Dies natales, was that it was one of two of his compositions that were recorded in his lifetime. Also, Finzi was not happy that an opera singer would sing the soprano role, and the soprano chosen was Joan Cross who had an association for Benjamin Britten. Finzi was not a fan of Britten's work. (2)

First recording of Dies natales with Joan Cross

  In 1949, he wrote the choral motet "All this Night." Boosey & Hawkes describes it as:

    A colourful Christmas fanfare which makes a dramatic addition to any programme of festive music or liturgical celebration. The text describes the cockerel ‘chanticleer’ crowing all night with joy at the birth of Christ. As with all of Finzi’s music, the tuning in this unaccompanied motet is crucially important and, given the amount of divisi writing, it does present choirs with a considerable challenge. It repays the study amply, however, and also makes an excellent foil to Finzi’s more lyrical, reflective music with which most people are familiar. (3).

In 1953, Finzi wrote his grandest and probably most-performed Christmas work, either in whole, or in part: In tierra pax, Op. 39:

Finzi scored the piece for soprano and baritone soloists, chorus, strings, harp and cymbal. He set it on text from English poet Robert Bridges and the Gospel of Luke.

Winter

Finzi has many songs dedicated to winter and the cold. Two of them are based on of poems by Christina Rossetti and were his first compositions. These two are included in Finzi's Ten Songs for Children, Op. 1, and they are "Dead in the Cold" and "There's Snow on the Fields."

Here is a reading of Rossetti's text for "There's Snow on the Fields":

There's snow on the fields,

And cold in the cottage,

While I sit in the chimney nook

Supping hot pottage.

My clothes are soft and warm,

Fold upon fold,

But I'm so sorry for the poor

Out in the cold.  

I could not find a performance of these two songs on video. I did find "Dead in the Cold" by another composer:

Dead in the cold, a song-singing thrush,

Dead at the foot of a snowberry bush, -

Weave him a coffin of rush,

Dig him a grave where the soft mosses grow,

Raise him a tombstone of snow.  

In his song cycle A Young Man’s Exhortation, Op. 14 (1928), based on poems by Thomas Hardy, one of the texts is "Shortening Days" based on Hardy's poem "Shortening Days at the Homestead." It does refer to the coming of fall and winter and lesser sunlight. We will not go into the analogies of the text: 

Finzi wrote songs on William Shakespeare's text several times. He wrote "When icicles hang by the wall" (Song of Hiems)" which is number two in Finzi's Love Labour's Lost (songs). Unfortunately, I could not find a video of this piece, at least the voice version.

Part 4 of Five Bagatelles for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 23 (1933-36) is called "Carol." I could not decipher if this is an original composition or based on an already-existing carol. If it was placed on an existing carol, I could neither place which carol it was, nor see if it was a Christmas carol:

Other sacred music

In 1928, as part of his To a Poet, Op. 13a song cycle, he wrote 6. "Ode on the rejection of Saint Cecilia":

Finzi also composed the anthem "Lo, the full, final sacrifice" (1946). It was commissioned by Walter Hussey for the 53rd anniversary of the consecration of St Matthew's Church, Northampton:

Finzi assembled the text from two poems of Richard Crashaw (c. 1613-1649), an English poet of the Metaphysical tradition of John Donne and Thomas Traherne. These two poems, Crashaw's "Adoro Te" and "Lauda Sion Salvatorem", themselves constitute poetic translations of Latin hymns by St Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274).

Lo, the full, final sacrifice

On which all figures fix’d their eyes,

The ransom’d Isaac, and his ram;

The Manna, and the Paschal lamb.

Jesu Master, just and true!

Our Food, and faithful Shepherd too!

O let that love which thus makes thee

Mix with our low Mortality,

Lift our lean Souls, and set us up

Convictors of thine own full cup,

Coheirs of Saints. That so all may

Drink the same wine; and the same way.

Nor change the Pasture, but the Place

To feed of Thee in thine own Face.

O dear Memorial of that Death

Which lives still, and allows us breath!

Rich, Royal food! Bountiful Bread!

Whose use denies us to the dead!

Live ever Bread of loves, and be

My life, my soul, my surer self to me.

Help Lord, my Faith, my Hope increase;

And fill my portion in thy peace.

Give love for life; nor let my days

Grow, but in new powers to thy name and praise.

Rise, Royal Sion! rise and sing

Thy soul's kind shepherd, thy heart's King.

Stretch all thy powers; call if you can

Harps of heaven to hands of man.

This sovereign subject sits above

The best ambition of thy love.

Lo the Bread of Life, this day's

Triumphant Text provokes thy praise.

The living and life-giving bread,

To the great twelve distributed

When Life, himself, at point to die

Of love, was his own Legacy.

O soft self-wounding Pelican!

Whose breast weeps Balm for wounded man.

All this way bend thy benign flood

To a bleeding Heart that gasps for blood.

That blood, whose least drops sovereign be

To wash my worlds of sins from me.

Come love! Come Lord! and that long day

For which I languish, come away.

When this dry soul those eyes shall see,

And drink the unseal'd source of thee.

When Glory's sun faith's shades shall chase,

And for thy veil give me thy Face.

Amen.

In Three Anthems, No. 2 is "God had gone up," (1951) Setting of a text by Edward Taylor, 1646?-1729:

In 1947, he wrote To St. Cecilia, which was Commissioned by the St Cecilia’s Day Festival Committee for the 1947 celebration of music’s patron saint. It is for tenor, chorus, and orchestra:

In 1949, the wrote a Magnificat:

In 1951, Finzi was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease and physicians gave him ten years to live. This realization of impending death can be seen in some of the works after 1951, which we have mentioned above. Finzi died in 1956. Finzi's son Christopher Finzi was a conductor before settling into apple farming.(4) Finzi's son Nigel was a violinist and he and his mother developed the Finzi Trust.

Finzi's legacy can be seen in the many posthumous honors and charities including the Finzi Trust, Finzi Friends, and various ensembles after his name.

Notes

1. It is not implied here that Finzi's brothers died in World War I. At this time, we do not have that information.

2. See https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Gerald-Finzi-All-This-Night/4808. Accessed December 1, 2022. 

3. See Finzi confessed he was "allergic" to Britten's works, which he found "derelict & dead": see Diana McVeagh. Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music. Boydell Press, 2005: p. 145. Amusingly, and somewhat ironically, the ensemble called the Finzi Signers has made more than one recording on Britten's choral works.

4. In fact, Gerald Finzi also farmed apples and is noted for saving many apple varieties from going extinct.