Gerald Finzi

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1956, the English composer Gerald Finzi died in Oxford. He was just 55 years old. Finzi suffered from Hodgkin’s disease, and three weeks before his death had caught chickenpox from some children he had visited, and the infection proved fatal.

Finzi was born into a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family. His mother was musical, and an amateur composer. Even with talent, wealth, support from the likes of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Bernard Herrmann, and several golden opportunities for career advancement, Finzi proved to be a rather diffident soul who seemed to prefer to work in seclusion and relative obscurity.

He collected rare books and scores by 18th century English composers, but is most famous for his settings of poems by Thomas Hardy, a contemporary of his parent’s generation.

Himself an agnostic, Finzi produced a small body of sacred choral works, and two instrumental pieces that have endeared him to clarinetists: a set of clarinet “Bagatelles” from 1943 and his Clarinet Concerto from 1949.

Although never completely forgotten, a serious revival of interest in Finzi’s music had to wait for several decades after his death. The British critic Norman Lebrecht offers this assessment of Finzi’s appeal: “a confluence of Elgar without bluffness and Vaughan Williams at his most delicate. His concerto for clarinet and strings is a light and lovely lament for lost times.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Gerald Finzi (1901 – 1956) Clarinet Concerto Richard Stoltzman, clarinet; Guildhall String Ensemble; Robert Slater, cond. BMG 60437

On This Day

Births

• 1879 - English composer Cyril Scott, in Oxton, Cheshire;

• 1898 - American composer Vincent Youmans, in New York City;

• 1903 - Russian-born American composer and songwriter Vernon Duke (Vladimir Dukelsky), in Parfianovka (Pskov) (Gregorian date: Oct. 10);

Deaths

• 1921 - German composer Engelbert Humperdinck, age 67, in Neustrelitz;

• 1956 - British composer Gerald Finzi, age 55, in Oxford;

Premieres

• 1960 - Stravinsky: "Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD annum" (three madrigals by Gesualdo transcribed for orchestra), in Venice, with the composer conducting;

Others

• 1827 - At a private party in Vienna, Franz Schubert performs selections from his last piano sonatas;

• 1892 - Czech composer Antonin Dvorák arrives in New York City to take up a position at the National Conservatory.