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
shipbroker, died a fortnight before his son's eighth birthday. 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. Farrar, a former pupil of
Charles Villiers Stanford, was then aged thirty and he described Finzi as "very shy, but full of poetry". 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
elegiac in tone. Finzi was, at one time, a
vegetarian but gave it up and favoured eggs, fish and sometimes bacon or chicken.
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 and
Edmund Rubbra. 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
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. During the 1930s, Finzi composed only a few works, but it was in them, notably the
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,
Capel Bond,
John Garth,
Richard Mudge,
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. However, that happiness was not to last. In 1951, he learned that he was suffering from the then incurable
Hodgkin's disease and had ten years to live, at most. His feelings after that revelation are probably reflected in the agonised first movement of his
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
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
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 near Gloucester in 1973. ==Works==