Finzi’s letters published in Diana McVeagh’s new book
The letters of composer Gerald Finzi are collected together for the first time in a new book by Diana McVeagh, published this month by Boydell Press. The collection positions the composer in the British musical world between the 1920s and 1950s, revealing new aspects of his personality and compositional life.
Diana McVeagh, Gerald Finzi's biographer, brings together more than 1600 letters from and to Finzi, spanning the composer's life from the early 1920s until his untimely death in 1956. His more than 160 correspondents include Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, Edmund Rubbra, Arthur Bliss and Howard Ferguson, Michael Tippett, Benjamin Britten and Sir John Barbirolli, the poet Edmund Blunden, and the artist John Aldridge, making this a portrait not only of Gerald Finzi but also of his group of composer, musician and artist friends in the first half of the twentieth century.
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In these mostly unpublished letters Finzi emerges as a multi-faceted and complex character, developing from a solitary, introverted youth into a man with strong views and wide interests: education, pacifism, vegetarianism, the Arts and Crafts movement and the English pastoral tradition, among others. From amusing trivia to the deeply serious ideas and principles Finzi set out at the onset of war and in the 1950s, these letters allow for first-hand insights into his personality and background. This definitive edition is fully annotated, offering context with substantial commentaries on the correspondence, illustrations by Joy Finzi, a chronology, bibliography and a catalogue of works.
Gerald Finzi's (1901-1956) masterpiece is the radiant and touching cantata Dies Natalis. He is also highly regarded for his Thomas Hardy song-settings, for his Intimations of Immortality, and for his fine cello and clarinet concertos. As a scholar, he championed the then neglected composers Hubert Parry and Ivor Gurney, and the eighteenth-century John Stanley, William Boyce and Richard Mudge, composers he revived with the amateur orchestra he founded.
Finzi’s complete musical output is published by Boosey & Hawkes, fruits of a relationship between composer and publisher spanning the last two decades of his life from 1936 to 1956. The partnership, both creative and commercial, did not always run smoothly, as revealed in fascinating detail in a selection of the letters in the new collection.
Diana McVeagh is a Vice-President of the Elgar Society. Her interests range from Josquin to Birtwistle, but she writes mostly about English Romantics. She is the author of Elgar: His Life and Music (Dent, 1955), and the highly acclaimed Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music (Boydell, 2005 and 2010), and Elgar: The Music Maker (Boydell, 2007). She has contributed to the New Grove (1980, 2001) and the Dictionary of National Biography.
Hardcover, 1080 Pages, 24 x 17 cm
34 b/w Illustrations
Published by Boydell Press
ISBSN: 9781783275724
Publication date: 21 May 2021
Price: £70.00 / $99.00
