Editing Gerald Finzi (section)

==Life==
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Gerald Finzi was born in London, the son of John Abraham (Jack) Finzi and Eliza Emma (Lizzie) Leverson. Finzi became one of the most characteristically English composers of his generation. Despite his being an [[agnostic]] of Jewish descent, several of his choral works incorporate Christian texts.

Finzi's father, a successful [[shipbroking|shipbroker]], died a fortnight before his son's eighth birthday.<ref>McVeagh, p. 6</ref> Finzi was educated privately. During [[World War I]] the family settled in [[Harrogate]], and Finzi began to study music at [[Christ Church, High Harrogate]], under [[Ernest Farrar]] from 1915.<ref name=McVeagh9>McVeagh, p. 9</ref> Farrar, a former pupil of [[Charles Villiers Stanford]], was then aged thirty and he described Finzi as "very shy, but full of poetry".<ref name=McVeagh9/> Finzi found him a sympathetic teacher,<ref name=McVeagh9/> and Farrar's death on the [[Western Front (World War I)|Western Front]] affected him deeply. 

During those formative years, Finzi also suffered the loss of all three of his brothers, adversities that contributed to Finzi's bleak outlook on life.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Jupin |first=Richard Michael |date=December 2005 |title=GERALD FINZI AND JOHN IRELAND: A STYLISTIC COMPARISON OF COMPOSITIONAL APPROACHES IN THE CONTEXT OF TEN SELECTED POEMS BY THOMAS HARDY |url=https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1060&context=fac_dis |journal=Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College}}</ref> He found solace in the poetry of [[Thomas Traherne]] and his favourite, [[Thomas Hardy]], whose poems, as well as those by [[Christina Rossetti]], he began to set to music. In the poetry of Hardy, Traherne, and later [[William Wordsworth]], 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 [[elegy|elegiac]] in tone.

Finzi was, at one time, a [[vegetarianism|vegetarian]] but gave it up and favoured eggs, fish and sometimes bacon or chicken.<ref>McVeagh, Diana. (2013). ''Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music''. Boydell Press. p. 74; {{ISBN|978-1843836025}}</ref>

===1918–33: Studies and early compositions===
After Farrar's death, Finzi studied privately at [[York Minster]] with the organist and choirmaster [[Edward Bairstow]], a strict teacher compared with Farrar. In 1922, after five years of study with Bairstow, Finzi moved to [[Painswick]] 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 (composer)|Howard Ferguson]] and [[Edmund Rubbra]].<ref>[[Michael Hurd (composer)|Michael Hurd]] and Howard Ferguson (ed). ''[https://boydellandbrewer.com/9780851158235/letters-of-gerald-finzi-and-howard-ferguson/ Letters of Gerald Finzi and Howard Ferguson]'' (2001)</ref> He was also introduced to [[Gustav Holst]], [[Arthur Bliss]] and [[Ralph Vaughan Williams]]. Vaughan Williams obtained a teaching post (1930–1933) for him at the [[Royal Academy of Music]].

===1933–39: Musical development===
Finzi never felt at home in London and, having married the artist [[Joy Finzi|Joyce Black]], settled with her in [[Aldbourne]], [[Wiltshire]], where he devoted himself to composing and apple-growing, saving a number of rare English [[apple]] varieties from extinction. He also amassed a large library of some 3,000 volumes of English poetry, philosophy and literature, which is now kept at the [[University of Reading]]. His collection of about 700 volumes of 18th-century English music, including books, manuscripts and printed scores, is now held by the [[University of St Andrews]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/specialcollections/Rarebooks/Namedspecialcollections/FinziCollection/ |title=Finzi Collection |publisher=University of St Andrews |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081212081050/http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/specialcollections/Rarebooks/Namedspecialcollections/FinziCollection/ |access-date=3 May 2018|archive-date=12 December 2008 }}</ref>

During the 1930s, Finzi composed only a few works, but it was in them, notably the [[cantata]] ''[[Dies Natalis (cantata)|Dies natalis]]'' (1939) to texts by [[Thomas Traherne]], that his fully mature style developed. He also worked on behalf of the poet-composer [[Ivor Gurney]], who had been committed to a mental hospital. Finzi and his wife catalogued and edited Gurney's works for publication. They also studied and published English [[folk music]] and music by older English composers such as [[William Boyce (composer)|William Boyce]], [[Capel Bond]], [[John Garth (composer)|John Garth]], [[Richard Mudge]], [[John Stanley (composer)|John Stanley]] and [[Charles Wesley]].

In 1939, the Finzis moved to [[Ashmansworth]] in [[Hampshire]], where he founded the [[Newbury String Players]], an amateur [[chamber orchestra]] that he conducted until his death, reviving 18th-century string music, as well as giving premieres of works by his contemporaries and offering talented young musicians such as [[Julian Bream]] and [[Kenneth Leighton]] the chance to perform.

===1939–56: Growth of reputation===
The outbreak of [[World War II]] delayed the first performance of ''Dies natalis'' at the [[Three Choirs Festival]], an event that could have established Finzi as a major composer. He was directed to work at the [[Ministry of War Transport]] and lodged German and Czech refugees in his home. After the war, he became somewhat more productive than before, writing several choral works as well as the Clarinet Concerto (1949), perhaps his most popular work today.

By then, Finzi's works were being performed frequently at the Three Choirs Festival and elsewhere. But that happiness was not to last. In 1951, he learned that he was suffering from the then incurable [[Hodgkin lymphoma|Hodgkin's disease]] and had ten years to live, at most. His feelings after that revelation are probably reflected in the agonized first movement of his [[Cello Concerto (Finzi)|Cello Concerto]] (1955), Finzi's last major work. However its second movement, originally intended as a musical portrait of his wife, is more serene.

In 1956, following an excursion near [[Gloucester]] with Vaughan Williams, Finzi developed [[shingles]], probably as a result of [[immunosuppression|immune suppression]] caused by Hodgkin's disease. Biographies refer to him subsequently developing [[chickenpox]], which developed into a "severe brain [[inflammation]]". That probably means that his shingles developed into [[Shingles#Disseminated_shingles|disseminated shingles]], which resembles chickenpox, and was complicated by [[encephalitis]]. He died soon afterwards, aged 55, in the [[Radcliffe Infirmary]], Oxford, the first performance of his Cello Concerto having been given on the radio the night before. His ashes were scattered on [[May Hill, Gloucestershire|May Hill]] near Gloucester in 1973.<ref>Diana M. McVeagh: ''Gerald Finzi: his life and music'' (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2005), p. 251.</ref>