Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] 83

Finsterbusch, (Daniel) Reinhold

(b Mittweida, 27 Dec 1825; d Glauchau, 14 Sept 1902). German Kantor, composer and bass. He studied with A.F. Anacker at the Freiberg Seminary from 1840 to 1845, then became an assistant teacher in Chemnitz, the first of a number of teaching posts he held. In 1857 he succeeded Adolph Trube in a lifelong appointment as Kantor, music director and organist in Glauchau; his sacred music programmes, in which skilled soloists took part, were highly esteemed, and his direction of secular choral societies was noteworthy. Trained by Götze in Leipzig, he was also an excellent solo singer as well as being active as a poet, critic and politician. His output as a composer is dominated by vocal music. The large-scale sacred works include hymns, motets, psalm settings and an oratorio Jesu Tod und Begräbnis. He made significant contributions to smaller vocal genres, including the ballad, the male chorus and the mixed chorus.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PazdírekH [incl. list of pubd works]

E. Eckardt: Chronik von Glauchau (Glauchau, 1882), 289–90, 367

R. Vollhardt: Geschichte der Cantoren und Organisten von den Städten im Königreich Sachsen (Berlin, 1899, rev. 2/1978 by E. Stimme), 131

Festschrift zum 200jährigen Jubiläum der Hauptkirche zu St. Georgen (Glauchau, 1928), 34, 58, 60

H. Germann: Die Geschichte des Musikalischen Kränzchens in Glauchau und seiner Mitglieder (Leipzig, 1935), 57, 224, 294

F. Nagler: Das klingende Land (Leipzig, 1936), 338

W. Hüttel: ‘Zur Geschichte des Musikverlags im südwestlichen Sachsen’, Quellenstudien zur Musik: Wolfgang Schmieder zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. K. Dorfmüller and G. von Dadelsen (Frankfurt, 1972), 95–102

W. Hüttel: Musikgeschichte von Glauchau und Umgebung (Glauchau, 1995), 21, 34, 157–8, 172, 211, 257–8, 291–3

WALTER HÜTTEL

Finsterer, Mary

(b Canberra, 25 Aug 1962). Australian composer. She studied composition at the University of Melbourne (BMus, 1987; MMus, 1994) and with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Since 1985 she has worked in Melbourne as a freelance composer, teacher and pianist. Finsterer’s music draws on extra-musical elements in its expression of extremes of dramatic effect. Madam He (1988), based on Samuel Beckett’s play, presents two sharply defined protagonists (‘He’ and ‘She’) through the use of a single soprano supported by chamber ensemble. The soprano is required to sing in a low, halting style as a male character and with tumultuous exuberance as a female. In Ruisselant, composed for Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne’s ‘Forum 91’ competition, the three formal sections are delineated by incessant streams of timbral, textural and gestural contrasts. Ruisselant was a prize-winner at the 1992 Paris Rostrum and was performed at the 1995 ISCM World Music Days in Essen. Finsterer exploited the traditions of polychoral brass writing in Nextwave Fanfare (1992) for orchestra. This work attempts to engender a childlike sense of wonder, excitement and awe in a burst of energetic colours and shapes. Constans (1994), with its static harmonic fields interspersed with explosions of filigree, made a direct and powerful impact at its 1996 Adelaide Festival première.

WORKS

(selective list)

Orch: Atlas, 1988; Continuum, 1989; Ruisselant, chbr orch, 1991; Scat, chromatic harmonica, orch, 1991; Nextwave Fanfare, 1992; Ceres di Lingua, chbr orch, 1994; Constans, 1994; Cor, 1994; Nyx, fl, b cl, pf, chbr orch, 1996; Quicksilver, chbr orch, 1997

Chbr and solo inst: Cyme, gui, perc, 1988; Catch, s sax, b cl, pf, 1992; Tract, vc, 1993; Scimmia, str, 1994; Ether, fl, 1997; Magnet, tuba, tape, 1997; Monkey, vn, va, 2 vc, db, 1997

Vocal: Sentence for Dinner (J. Lamont), S, fl, 1986; Madam He (after S. Beckett), S, ob, vc, pf, 1988; Omaggio alla Pietà (J. le Plastrier), 6vv, db, perc, 1993

Principal publisher: Ricordi

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. Broadstock, ed.: Sound Ideas (Sydney, 1995)

M. Finsterer: ‘An Emotional Geography of Australian Composition II’, Sounds Australian, no.46 (1995), 15–16

MICHAEL BARKL

Finzi, Gerald (Raphael)

(b London, 14 July 1901; d Oxford, 27 Sept 1956). English composer. The son of a shipbroker, he was educated privately, and studied music with Ernest Farrar (1915–16) then, when Farrar joined the army, with Edward Bairstow at York (1917–22). Finzi’s shock when Farrar was killed in France, following his own father’s death when he was eight, and that of his three elder brothers, confirmed his introspective bent, his recourse to literature, and the sense of urgency in his dedication to music. In 1922, drawn to the countryside of Elgar, Gurney and Vaughan Williams, he moved to Painswick in Gloucestershire, working (as in a deeper sense he always did) in isolation. On advice from Boult he took a course in counterpoint from R.O. Morris in 1925, then settled in London, moving for the first time in a circle of young musicians which included Arthur Bliss, Howard Ferguson, Robin Milford and Edmund Rubbra, meeting Holst and Vaughan Williams, and avidly going to concerts, exhibitions and the theatre. From 1930 to 1933 he taught at the RAM. Some of his freshest, most individual music was written at this time, as well as some weaker pieces: he later withdrew the Severn Rhapsody (Carnegie Award), a Violin Concerto conducted (1928) by Vaughan Williams and some songs. (His habit of revising compositions years later makes dating them problematic).

In 1933 Finzi married Joyce Black (1907–91), herself an artist, whose liberating warmth and practical efficiency eased his way; in 1935 they retired to Aldbourne in Wiltshire. Acutely aware of life’s transience, Finzi had always a need to consolidate, collect and cultivate. In 1937 the Finzis found a 16-acre site on the Hampshire hills at Ashmansworth, and built a house designed to work in. Living frugally by worldly standards, there he composed, assembled a library and an orchard of rare apple trees, took such adjudicating, examining and committee work as came his way, and gave hospitality to friends drawn by his zest and sense of endeavour. His first published Hardy sets of songs attracted quiet admiration. More positive recognition was due when Dies natalis was to be performed at the 1939 Three Choirs Festival; war caused the festival to be cancelled, and the first performance took place modestly at the Wigmore Hall on 26 January 1940.

For all his carefully created environment, Finzi was politically alert, and, though he was an agnostic, his parents were Jewish (his father’s forebears moved to England from Italy in the mid-18th century). By instinct and reason he was a pacifist, with a distrust of dogmas and creeds (an attitude that drew him to Hardy, as did his preoccupation with time, its changes, chances and continuities). His reluctant admission of the necessity for the 1939–45 war deepened his conviction that the creative artist is the prime representative of a civilization. In December 1940 he founded the Newbury String Players, a mainly amateur group which performed in local churches, schools and village halls, and kept the group going when he worked in London at the Ministry of War Transport from 1941 to 1945, and afterwards (when he died, his son Christopher took them over). Finzi was not a fluent pianist, and never a singer. This orchestra became his instrument; through it he gave many a hearing to young performers and composers, and fiercely involved himself in reviving 18th-century English works, his scholarly and practical research resulting in published editions. He also collected and catalogued Parry’s scattered autograph manuscripts. He worked selflessly, too, for Ivor Gurney (they never met), being a force behind the Music & Letters Gurney issue in 1938 and the publication of his songs and poems.

The first performance of Finzi’s Intimations of Immortality at the 1950 Three Choirs Festival brought discussion about whether Wordsworth’s ode was suitable for musical setting, a controversy bound to pursue a composer who had also chosen texts from Traherne and Milton. Finzi’s principle was that no words were too fine or too familiar to be inherently unsettable by a composer who wished to identify himself with their substance. He developed and formulated his ideas in the Crees lectures, a knowledgeable, stimulating and on occasion provocative survey of the history and aesthetics of English song.

In 1951 Finzi learnt that he was suffering from Hodgkin’s Disease, and had at most ten years to live. He kept the knowledge within his family, and, between treatments, simply continued to work. During the 1956 Gloucester Festival he took Vaughan Williams up to nearby Chosen Hill church, where as a young man he had heard the New Year rung in (those bells peal through the exquisite In terra pax). The sexton’s children had chickenpox, which Finzi caught; weakened by his disease, he suffered brain inflammation and died. In 1965 his library of music from about 1740 to 1780, considered the finest of its period assembled privately in England at that time, went to St Andrews University, Fife. His library of English literature, his sustenance and inspiration, is housed in the Finzi Book Room at Reading University Library. The Finzi Trust, formed in 1969, promotes recordings, concerts, festivals and publications of the music of Finzi and other English composers.

Finzi unerringly found the live centre of his vocal texts, fusing vital declamation with a lyrical impulse in supple, poised lines. He was little concerned with word-painting, and his songs are virtually syllabic (in contrast with Britten’s and Tippett’s). Hardy’s tricky, sometimes intractable verse released his creativity, and his settings range from the loving Her Temple through the Wolfian bite of I look into my glass, and the distanced serenity of At a Lunar Eclipse to the dramatic Channel Firing. Few of his songs are plainly strophic; many are cast in an arioso style which can be colloquial or intense. Some, apparently improvisational, reveal a firm underlying structure. Finzi’s sense of tonality and form was idiosyncratic. The accompaniments, not obviously pianistic, work excellently with the voice; often they are formed from the kind of close imitative texture much used in his shorter orchestral pieces. Some of his movements, meticulous in detail, are less sure in overall grasp, and his limited idiom and the regularity of his harmonic pace can become monotonous. These drawbacks are balanced in the Clarinet Concerto by the fertility and gaiety of the thematic invention, and in the Cello Concerto by a deeper passion – the turbulence of its first movement suggests a line of development cut short by his death.

Melodically and harmonically Finzi owed something to Elgar and Vaughan Williams; as well as occasional flashes of Bliss and Walton, Finzi’s love and knowledge of Parry can be discerned. To none of these composers was he in debt for the finesse of his response to the English language and imagery, or for his vision of a world unsullied by sophistication or nostalgia. The adult’s sense of loss at his exclusion from this Eden inspires some of Finzi’s strongest sustained passages, from the melancholy grandeur that informs Intimations to the brooding power of Lo, the full, final sacrifice. Personal, too, is what he drew from Bach: in the Grand Fantasia the duality sets up a challenging tension, and in the aria movements from Farewell to Arms and Dies natalis the rare marriage of disciplined contrapuntal accompaniment and winged voice is logical and ecstatic. Dies natalis, a song cycle shaped like a Bach cantata to verse and poetic prose by Traherne, is a minor masterpiece of English music.

WORKS

WRITINGS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DIANA McVEAGH

Finzi, Gerald

WORKS

orchestral

op.

3	A Severn Rhapsody, d, chbr orch, 1923
—	Violin Concerto, 1925–7, previously withdrawn
6	Introit, F, vn, small orch, 1925, rev. 1935, rev. 1942 [from Violin Concerto]
7	New Year Music, nocturne, c, 1926, rev. 1945–6
10	Eclogue, F, pf, str, late 1920s, rev. 1940s
11	Romance, E, str, 1928, rev. ?1951
20	The Fall of the Leaf, elegy, d, 1929, rev. 1939–41, orchestration completed by H. Ferguson
25	Prelude, f, str, 1920s
28	Love’s Labour’s Lost (incid music for a broadcast, W. Shakespeare), small orch, 1946
28a	Love’s Labour’s Lost, suite, 1952–5; Introduction; Moth; Nocturne; The Hunt; Dance; Quodlibet; Soliloquies I–III; Finale
31	Clarinet Concerto, c, cl, str, 1948–9
38	Grand Fantasia and Toccata, d, pf, orch: Grand Fantasia, 1928, rev. 1953; Toccata, 1953
40	Cello Concerto, a, 1951–5

choral

1	Ten Children’s Songs (Songs to Poems by C. Rossetti), S, 2S, pf, 1920–21, rev. 1940
—	Up to those bright and gladsome hills (H. Vaughan), chorus, org, 1922
—	The brightness of this day (Vaughan), Bar, chorus, orch/org, ?1923
—	Requiem da camera, Bar, chorus, chbr orch, 1923–5; Prelude; August, 1914 (J. Masefield); In time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’ (T. Hardy), 2 versions; Lament (W. Gibson)
—	The Recovery (T. Traherne), chorus, orch/org, ?1925
5	Three Short Elegies (W. Drummond), SATB, 1926: Life a right shadow is; This world a-hunting is; This life, which seems so fair
17	Seven Partsongs (R. Bridges), 1934–7: I praise the tender flower, SATB; I have loved flowers that fade, SAT; My spirit sang all day, SATB; Clear and gentle stream, SATB; Nightingales, SSATB; Haste on, my joys!, SSATB; Wherefore tonight so full of care, SATB
26	Lo, the full, final sacrifice (R. Crashaw, after T. Aquinas), chorus, org, 1946, arr. with orch, 1947
27	Three Anthems: My lovely one (E. Taylor), SATB, org, 1948; God is gone up (Taylor), SATB, org/(str, org), 1951; Welcome sweet and sacred feast (Vaughan), SATB, org, 1953
29	Intimations of Immortality (Ode) (W. Wordsworth), T, chorus, orch, 1936–8, 1949–50
30	For St Cecilia (E. Blunden), ceremonial ode, T, chorus, orch, 1947
32	Thou didst delight my eyes (Bridges), TBB, 1952
33	All this night (W. Austin), SATB, 1951
34	Muses and Graces (U. Wood), S/Tr chorus, pf/str, 1951
35	Let us now praise famous men (Apocrypha: Ecclesiasticus), TB, pf, 1951
36	Magnificat, chorus, org, 1952, arr. with orch, 1956
37	White-flowering days (Blunden), SATB, 1952–3
39	In terra pax (Bridges, Bible: Luke), S, Bar, chorus, str, hp, cymbals, 1951–4, arr. with full orch, 1956

solo vocal

with orchestra or ensemble

2	By Footpath and Stile (Hardy), Bar, str qt, 1921–2: I went by footpath and by stile, rev. 1941; Where the picnic was; The Oxen, rev. 1941; The Master and the Leaves; Voices from things growing in a churchyard; Exeunt omnes
8	Dies natalis (Traherne), S/T, str orch, 1925–39: Intrada; Rhapsody; The Rapture; Wonder; The Salutation
9	Farewell to Arms, T, small orch/str orch: Introduction (R. Knevet), 1944; Aria ‘His golden locks’ (G. Peele), 1926
12	Two Sonnets (J. Milton), T/S, small orch, 1926–8: When I consider; How soon hath time
18	Let us garlands bring [alternative version of song cycle], Bar, str orch, 1929–42
28a	Music for ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (Shakespeare, anon.), lv, small orch, 1946: Songs of Hiems and Ver; Songs for Moth

with piano

—	Before the paling of the stars (C. Rossetti), 1920
—	Ceremonies (R. Herrick), 1920
—	The Fairies (Herrick), 1921
—	The Cupboard (R. Graves), 1922
13a	To a Poet, A/Bar, pf: To a Poet (J.E. Flecker), 1920s; On parent knees (attrib. W. Jones), 1935; Intrada (Traherne); The Birthnight (W. de la Mare), 1956; June on Castle Hill (F.L. Lucas), 1940; Ode on the Rejection of St Cecilia (G. Barker), 1948
13	Oh fair to see, S/T, pf: I say ‘I’ll seek her side’ (Hardy), 1929, rev. ?1950s; Oh fair to see (Rossetti), 1921; As I lay in the early sun (E. Shanks), 1921, rev. 1956; Only the wanderer (I. Gurney), 1925; To Joy (Blunden), 1931; Harvest (Blunden), 1956; Since we loved (Bridges), 1956
14	A Young Man’s Exhortation (Hardy), T, pf: A Young Man’s Exhortation, 1926; Ditty, 1928; Budmouth Dears, 1929; Her Temple, 1927; The Comet at Yell’ham, 1927; Shortening Days, 1928; The Sigh, 1928; Former Beauties, 1927; Transformations, 1929; The dance continued
15	Earth and Air and Rain (Hardy), Bar, pf: Summer Schemes; When I set out for Lyonnesse, 1932–5, also arr. Bar, small orch; Waiting both, 1929; The Phantom, 1932; So I have fared, 1928; Rollicum-Rorum; To Lizbie Browne; The Clock of the Years; In a Churchyard, 1932; Proud Songsters, ?1932
16	Before and after Summer (Hardy), Bar, pf: Childhood among the Ferns; Before and after Summer, 1949; The Self-Unseeing, 1949; Overlooking the River; Channel Firing, 1940; In the Mind’s Eye, 1949; The too short time, 1949; Epeisodia, ?1932; Amabel, 1932; He abjures love, 1938
18	Let us garlands bring (Shakespeare), Bar, pf: Come away, death, 1938; Who is Sylvia?, 1938; Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, 1929; O mistress mine, 1942; It was a lover, 1940
19	Till Earth Outwears (Hardy), S/T, pf: Let me enjoy the earth, before 1936; In years defaced, 1936; The Market Girl, 1927, rev. 1942; I look into my glass, ?1937; It never looks like summer here, 1956; At a Lunar Eclipse, 1929; Life laughs onwards, 1955
—	I said to love (Hardy), Bar, pf: I need not go, before 1936; At Middle-Field Gate in February, 1956; Two Lips, 1928; In Five-Score Summers, 1956; For life I never cared greatly; I said to love, 1956

chamber

21	Interlude, a, ob, str qt, 1933–6
22	Elegy, F, vn, pf, 1940s
23	Five Bagatelles, cl, pf, 1920s, 1941–3
24	Prelude and Fugue, a, str trio, 1938

editions

all published in London

J. Stanley: 6 Concertos, op.2, str/(pf/org/hpd), str (1949–55)

J. Stanley: Welcome Death, B solo, kbd/str/(kbd, str) (1953)

C. Wesley: String Quartets no.1, F, no.2, D, no.5, B (1953)

J. Garth: Concerto no.2, B, vc, str, cont (1954)

R. Mudge: Concerto no.4, d, str, cont (1954)

J. Stanley: Solo in D, op.4, no.5, fl, pf (1954)

C. Wesley: Concerto no.4, C (pf/org/hpd), str, opt. obs (1956)

R.C. Bond: Concerto no.6, B, bn, str, cont (1957)

W. Boyce: Overtures (1957)

R. Mudge: Concerto no.6, F, org, str (1957)

R.C. Bond: Concerto no.1, D, tpt, str, cont (1959)

R. Mudge: Concerto no.1, D, tpt, str, cont (1975)

arrangements

I. Gurney: Under the Greenwood Tree, Orpheus, Spring, Sleep, 1v, str

H. Parry: Chorale Fantasia on ‘When I survey the wondrous Cross’, str

Principal publisher: Boosey & Hawkes

MSS in GB-Lbl, Ob

Finzi, Gerald

WRITINGS

‘Folk-Songs from Newfoundland’, JEFDSS, i (1932–4), 157 only [review]

‘Hubert Parry: a Revaluation’, Making Music, no.10 (1949), 4 only

‘R.O. Morris, Obituary’, R.C.M. Magazine, xlv (1949), 54–6

‘Environment and Music’, Mercury, no.7 (1950), 25 only

‘John Stanley, 1713–1786’, PRMA, lxxvii (1950–51), 63–75

‘Music and the Amateur’, Making Music, no.17 (1951), 13–14

‘Vaughan Williams: the Roots and the Tree’, Philharmonic Post, vi/6 (1952), 64 only

‘John Stanley (1713–1786)’, Tempo, no.27 (1953), 21–6

‘Herbert Howells’, MT, xcv (1954), 180–83; repr. in MT, cxxxviii/Dec (1997), 26–9

‘The Composer's Use of Words’, Crees Lectures (MS, 1955, GB-ALb)

Finzi, Gerald

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Duncan-Rubbra: ‘Gerald Finzi’, MMR, lix (1929), 193–4

J. Russell: ‘Gerald Finzi: an English Composer’, Tempo, no.33 (1954), 9–15

C.M. Boyd: ‘Gerald Finzi and the Solo Song’, Tempo, no.33 (1954), 15–18

A. Bliss and A. Scott: ‘Gerald Finzi: an Appreciation’, Tempo, no.42 (1956–7), 5–6

H. Ferguson: ‘Gerald Finzi, 1901–1956’, Hallé Magazine, no.100 (1957), 8–11 [on The Fall of the Leaf]

H. Ferguson: ‘Gerald Finzi (1901–56)’, ML, xxxviii (1957), 130–35

A. Walker: ‘Gerald Finzi (1901–1956)’, Tempo, no.52 (1959), 6–10

M.C. Crum: ‘Working Papers of Twentieth-Century British Composers’, Bodleian Library Record, viii/2 (1968), 101–3

H. Ferguson: disc notes, Lyrita SRCS 38 (1968), 51 (1971)

S. Banfield: ‘The Immortality Odes of Finzi and Somervell’, MT, cxvi (1975), 527–31

D. McVeagh: disc notes, Lyrita SRCS 75 (1975), 92 (1977)

M. Hurd: The Ordeal of Ivor Gurney (Oxford, 1978), 181–90

D. McVeagh: disc notes, Lyrita SRCS 84 (1978), 93, 112 (1979); Argo ZRG 896, 909 (1979)

D. McVeagh: ‘Gerald Finzi’, Records & Recording, xxiii/4 (1979–80), 30–33 [with discography]

P. Dingley: The Finzi Book Room at the University of Reading: a Catalogue (Reading, 1981) [with introduction by A. Ceasar]

D. McVeagh: disc notes, Hyperion A66015 (1981)

D. McVeagh: ‘Gerald Finzi, 1901–1956’, World of Church Music (1981), 16–20

C. Thorpe Davie: Catalogue of the Finzi Collection (St Andrews, 1982)

Finzi Trust Friends Newsletter (1983)

S. Banfield: ‘Time and Destiny: the Hardy Songs of Gerald Finzi’, Sensibility and English Song (Cambridge, 1985), 275–300

D. McVeagh: disc notes, Hyperion A66161, A66162 (1985)

A. Burn: ‘Quiet Composure’, Country Life, clxxxi/29 (1987), 118–19 [on Finzi’s library at Reading U.]

J. Finzi: In that Place: the Drawings of Joy Finzi (Marlborough, 1987)

S. Banfield: Gerald Finzi: an English Composer (London, 1997)

J.C. Dressler: Gerald Finzi: a Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT, 1997) [incl. list of unpubd MS]

S. Banfield: ‘Vaughan Williams and Gerald Finzi’, Vaughan Williams in Perspective, ed. L. Foreman (Colchester, 1998), 202–21