SRCD.237 STEREO **DDD ADD

GERALD FINZI (1901-1956) Music for 13 3 Fear no more the heat o’ the sun (5’29”) ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ ** (28’33”) 14 4 O mistress mine (2’05”) 1 1 Introduction (4’23”) 15 5 It was a lover and his lass (2’43”) 2 2 Moth (2’00”) Two Sonnets by John Milton * 3 3 Nocturne (3’27”) for Tenor and small Orchestra 4 4 The Hunt (2’23”) 16 1 When I consider (5’09”) 5 5 Dance (5’06”) 17 2 How soon hath time (3’23”) 6 6 Clowns (2’23”) 7 7 Soliloquy I (1’42”) Farewell to Arms * 8 8 Soliloquy II (1’41”) for Tenor and small Orchestra 9 9 Soliloquy III (1’46”) 18 1 Introduction (3’56”) 10 10 Finale (3’42”) 19 2 Aria (5’04”)

Let us Garlands bring Op. 1 8 † (14’58”) 20 In terra pax (Christmas Scene) (16’21”) Five Shakespeare Songs for Baritone for Soprano, Baritone, and String Orchestra Chorus and Orchestra 11 1 Come away death (3’15”) (77’38”) 12 2 Who is Sylvia? (1’26”) Royal Philharmonic Orchestra** John Carol Case, baritone †, Ian Partridge, tenor* Jane Manning, soprano, John Noble, baritone, John Alldis Choir New conducted by Vernon Handley

The above individual timings will normally each include two pauses. One before the beginning of each movement or work, and one after the end. ** ൿ 2007 ൿ 1979 The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by Lyrita Recorded Edition, England This compilation and digital remastering ൿ 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England © 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England. Lyrita is a registered trade mark. Made in the UK LYRITA RECORDED EDITION. Produced under an exclusive license from Lyrita by Wyastone Estate Ltd, PO Box 87, Monmouth NP25 3WX, UK Other works by GERALD FINZI available on Lyrita: Intimations of Immortality* & PATRICK HADLEY The Trees so High** *Ian Partridge, Guildford Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra **Thomas Allen, Guildford Philharmonic Choir, New Philharmonia Orchestra conducted byVernon Handley…………………………………………………………………SRCD.238

A Severn Rhapsody, Nocturne (NewYear Music), 3 Soliloquies (Love’s Labours Lost), Romance, Prelude,The Fall of the Leaf, Introit*, Eclogue**, Grand Fantasia & Toccata** *Rodney Friend, London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir **Peter Katin, **New Philharmonia Orchestra conducted byVernon Handley………SRCD.239

Cello Concerto, Clarinet Concerto Yo-Yo Ma, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, John Denman, New Philharmonia Orchestra conducted byVernon Handley…………………………………………………………………SRCD.236

WARNING Copyright subsists in all Lyrita Recordings. Any unauthorised broadcasting. public performance, copying, rental or re-recording thereof in any manner whatsoever will constitute an infringement of such copyright. In the United Kingdom licences for the use of recordings for public performance may be obtained from Phonographic Performance Ltd., 1 Upper James Street, London, W1F 9DE 15 n 1946 Noel Iliff was to produce Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost for the BBC IHome Service His wife, Simona Pakenham, was adapting it. She was musician enough to be writing a book on Vaughan Williams, and to have recognized Finzi’s gifts. He agreed to compose incidental music for sixteen players. As he was a slow worker, he was shocked to find he had only three weeks. But ‘I rather wanted to do it,’ he wrote to a friend, ‘just to show myself that I cd do it.’ He was stimulated to compose some of his most vivid music. He realized it had to take second place to the words, and might be cut and pulled about in rehearsal. There was no space for his usual ruminative style, since brief pieces need a sharp profile. It is airily scored, as though Finzi thought about what would come through best for a broadcast. He produced a ‘patchwork to be unpicked’, a ‘quarry from which to dig.’ His innovation was to provide background music for the lovers’ sonnets, three gentle open-textured soliloquies. He composed noble and gracious music for the two royal groups, pipe and tabor for the rustics, dances, and ‘gesture’ music for the masque. He turned the pieces into a Suite in 1952 for the BBC Light Music Festival, then in 1953, for an open-air production of the play he added fanfares, the Hunt, and the Nocturne. From all this he made the final orchestral Suite.

Finzi brought out Let us Garlands bring , five Shakespeare songs, ‘for on his birthday, Oct 12, 1942’. Their first performance for voice and piano was on that day at a National Gallery Concert, by Robert Irwin and Howard www.lyrita.co.uk Ferguson (the string version here recorded was broad cast a week later, October 18, Notes ©1979 & 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England with Irwin again singing and Raybould conducting). Vaughan Williams was present at Cover: Laurence Whistler’s engraving for the window in celebration of English music as a the National Gallery, when the revised version of his own Double String Trio was also memorial to Gerald Finzi, at St James Church, Ashmansworth, is reproduced by kind performed. permission of the artist. As always with Finzi, much from long past had gone into the shaping of that Based on an original design by Keith Hensby. day. His veneration for Vaughan Williams had led as early as 1921 to his visiting VW’s Original recordings of Let us Garlands Bring, Two Milton Sonnets, Farewell to Arms and In birthplace: ‘many will make the pilgrimage’, Finzi wrote at the time, ‘but we are the terra pax made in association with the FINZI TRUST. first’. And his personal relationship with the older composer began a few years after. Also, from long past dated the earliest of the Shakespeare songs. Many of the issues Digital Remastering Engineer: Simon Gibson that concerned Finzi deeply can be traced back to his twenties, and publication dates in his case are usually misleading. On this disc for example, ‘Fear no more’ was com - 14 3 posed in 1929; the Milton Sonnets in (almost certainly) 1928; and the Aria from Soprano Solo Farewell to Arms between 1926 and 1928. A reading of these poems side by side, from three separate compositions, shows an obsession with life’s brevity, with the need to Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a use time and talents fully, to catch the flower before it fades: sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

all must. . . come to dust Chorus

O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. My hasting days fly on with full career Baritone Solo But my late spring no bud or blossom sheweth. But to me heard afar ‘Fear no more’ is a superb song. Bitter regret wells up in aching phrases over it was starry music the strangely comforting lullaby rhythm. The dissonances in the generally diatonic Angels’ song, comforting chords stab to the heart. Most pathetic of all is the falter, the break in the voice: as the comfort of Christ ‘Golden lads and girls—all must . . .’. Finzi has caught for ever the ambiguity of the When he spake tenderly to his sorrowful flock: poem in which relief that life can no longer scathe is negated by that thudding, The old words came to me disillusioned refrain: ‘. . . come to dust’. by the riches of time Next of the Shakespeare songs to be composed was ‘Come away, death’ (1938); Mellow’d and transfigured then ‘It was a lover’ (1940) or ‘Silvia’ (?); and last ‘O mistress mine’ to complete the as I stood on the hill set, in 1942. By then Finzi was working in the Ministry of War Transport; hating the Heark’ning in the aspect war as a humanist for the appalling suffering it brought, and as an artist for its of th’ eternal silence. wastefulness: Chorus I have managed to do a pleasant light, troubadourish setting of ‘O mistress mine’. . . . But it has taken me more than 3 months to do its four pages. So and on earth peace, good will toward men. you’ll know that I’m still baulked, thwarted, fretted, tired, good for nothing Robert Bridges and St Luke II, 8-14 and utterly wasting my time in this dismal occupation.

Acknowledgement: The words from Noel Christmas Eve,1913 by Robert Bridges are Three months it might have taken, but if ever a song’s seeming spontaneity reproduced from The Poetical Works of Robert Bridges by permission of Oxford University conceals a cunning art, it is ‘O mistress mine’. Finzi is sometimes praised for his Press. word-setting, his loyalty to the poet, as if he did little more than transcribe the verbal values into pitch. But a study of this song reveals a quite dashing high-handedness. The two verses are simple, in regular metre. Finzi plays with the words, setting 4 13 In terra pax quantity against stress to bring out their liveliness and meaning. For instance, he makes one hear the different position of the question mark in the first lines of each Baritone Solo verse. Then again, the feeling in the words of the second verse is much the more acute. Finzi, after dallying happily through the first verse, slashes two whole bars out of the A frosty Christmas Eve when the stars were shining second (‘What’s to come is still unsure: in delay there lies no plenty’) and yet pulls out Fared I forth alone ‘delay‘ into the longest mid-phrase note in the whole song. And at the end he stretches where westward falls the hill, ‘then come kiss me’ up a ninth instead of the previous seventh. All this with an And from many a village enchanting, debonair touch. in the water’d valley No slavish loyalty, then, to a great poet by a meek composer. The principle came Distant music reach’d me into question when Finzi set two of Milton’s best known sonnets. Their first peals of bells aringing: performance was given by Steuart Wilson at an Iris Lemare concert at the Mercury The constellated sounds ran sprinkling on earth’s floor Theatre, London, on 6 February 1936. Their publication later that year brought a long As the dark vault above review in the Musical Times chiding a composer ‘who “adds” to Milton Sonnets’ and with stars was spangled o’er. concluding that he had ‘attempted a task which he should not have set himself.’ The critic made the fair point that ‘an “abstract” poem shifts its local habitation from Then sped my thoughts to keep thought to thought, unlike a simple lyric which maintains the same atmosphere that first Christmas of all through a whole string of images.’ This called from Finzi a spirited defence in a letter When the shepherds watching by their folds ere the dawn to a friend: Heard music in the fields I do hate the bilge and bunkum about composers trying to ‘add’ to a poem; and marveling could not tell that a fine poem is complete in itself, and to set it is only to gild the lily ... the Whether it were angels first and last thing is that a composer is (presum ably) moved by a poem and or the bright stars singing. wishes to identify himself with it and share it. ... I don’t think everyone realises the difference between choosing a text and being chosen by one. Chorus So what caused a young man with private means, following his chosen vocation, to And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their identify himself with a poet confronting his blindness? Too naive and literal a flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone question, perhaps, for it is the mark of an artist to be able to enter imaginatively an round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, unknown experience. But the work was probably composed in 1928, and in that year Finzi was diagnosed as having tuberculosis (a disease with more serious consequences then than now) and spent some time in Midhurst Sanatorium before being passed as fit. To a man of utter dedication to his art, such a crisis must have produced inner turmoil. Added to that, he felt himself a slow, inarticulate worker, perhaps one in whose ‘late spring no bud or blossom sheweth’. So much is speculation; but ten years later Finzi did call the Sonnets ‘rather gnarled and 12 5 Farewell to Arms uncompromising’ and described himself as having been ‘in a queer state’ when he composed them. In overall effect they are powerful and sombre. Mark, in the first, the Introduction Aria desolate opening, the exultant climax, the unselfconscious simplicity of the famous The helmet now an hive for bees becomes, His golden locks time hath to silver turned; last line; and, in the second, the strong, stern resolve. These are big emotions, not met And hilts of swords may serve for spiders’ looms; O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing. with again in Finzi until the Cello Concerto. Sharp pikes may make His youth ‘gainst time and age hath ever spurned, If in the Milton Sonnets there is an adventurous feeling of form and content Teeth for a rake; But spurned in vain; youth waneth by increasing: And the keen blade, th’arch enemy of life, Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen; being at odds, Farewell to Arms is a perfectly realised work. Amazingly so, since the Shall be degraded to a pruning knife. Duty, faith, love, are roots and ever green. Aria was composed in the 1920s, the Introduction in the 1940s. The sonnet ‘His golden The rustic spade locks’ was published in George Peele’s Polyhymnia of 1590 (and set by Dowland nine Which first was made His helmet now shall make a hive for bees, years later). Polyhymnia is an occasional poem describing the tilt tournament held For honest agriculture, shall retake And lovers’ sonnets turn to holy psalms: before Elizabeth I, when the Queen’s champion and master of armour resigned on Its primitive employment, and forsake A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees, account of increasing age. By May 1929 Finzi had called his Aria Farewell to Arms The rampires steep And feed on prayers, which are age’s alms: And trenches deep. But though from court to cottage he depart, (Hemingway’s novel was published the same year) and in February 1936 the Aria Tame conies in our brazen guns shall breed, His saint is sure of his unspotted heart. alone was performed in the same concert as the Milton Sonnets. In 1941 Finzi’s Or gentle doves their young ones there shall feed. publishers turned it down, with the understandable comment that the time hardly In musket barrels George Peele (1558?-1597?) seemed apt for it! Finzi replied that the title referred to old age rather than to war (he Mice shall raise quarrels may have been a trifle disingenuous here). Some time in the next couple of years he For their quarters. The ventriloquious drum, came across The helmet now’ by Knevet (1600-71) and was delighted at the matching Like lawyers in vacations, shall be dumb. Now all recruits, thought in the two poems, even to the common image of the helmet and the beehive. But those of fruits, The Introduction shaped itself into a quasi recitative, and the complete work was Shall be forgot; and th’unarmed soldier performed by Eric Greene and the BBC Northern Orchestra under Shall only boast of what he did whilere, in Manchester on 30 March 1945. In chimneys’ ends Writing recitative of course came naturally to one of Finzi’s bent. This has all Among his friends. his characteristic melancholy, the softly rounded phrases easing on to unemphatic Ralph Knevet (1600-1671) cadences. Then in the Aria the poignancy is heightened. It is generally compared to a chorale prelude such as Bach’s ‘Sleepers, Wake’ since the accompaniment is continuous, patterned and self-contained, and the voice rides over it, striking in line by line with words phrased as freely as a poet would read them. So the Aria becomes at once an illustration and a reflection of Time’s inexorability, and the pull between time’s actual passing and the anguished perception of its passing, in the magnificently sustained flight of lyrical counterpoint, is so intense that Finzi is driven to repeat (rare practice with him) the opening couplet to close the work: ‘O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing.’ 6 11 Two Milton Sonnets In terra pax wa s first performed at the 1954 Christmas concert of the Newbury String Players which Finzi had founded and conducted; the full orchestra version 1 When I consider (recorded here) was given on 6 September 1956 at the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival, with Elsie Morrison and Bruce Boyce under Finzi. The piece is sub-titled Whe n I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, Christmas scene, but it has no crib, no baby, no virgin. Here instead in Bridges’ poem And that one talent which is death to hide, is a solitary walker on a hill overlooking a valley, hearing churchbells in the frosty, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent starry night. Finzi has brought the scene in St Luke II on the hills outside Bethlehem To serve therewith my Maker, and present to familiar countryside, probably to the Gloucestershire hills where he spent his early My true account, lest He returning chide; twenties. (There he began another composition, his instrumental Nocturne Op 7, ‘Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?‘ which also bears a motto from this same Bridges poem: ‘when the stars were shining I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent Fared I forth alone.’) In In terra pax the baritone sings Bridges’ words That murmur, soon replies, ‘God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best conversationally, companionably. Bells and a strain of carol sound through the music. Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best; His state The chorus takes up St Luke’s words and reaches a glorious full peal at ‘Glory to God’. Is Kingly. Thousands at His bidding speed Here Finzi’s life comes full circle. This music was inspired by his hearing as a young And post o’er land and ocean without rest; man the bells ring in the new year in the tiny church perched on Chosen Hill near They also serve who only stand and wait.’ Gloucester; and it was to show this place to Vaughan Williams that Finzi went back there after conducting In terra pax in 1956, and caught from the sexton’s children the 2 How soon hath Time chickenpox virus that caused his death, severely weakened as he was by leukaemia. How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, So In terra pax was the last music he conducted. And in its last words can be Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year! found the key to this untraditional Christmas work and indeed to Finzi’s life. He was My hasting days fly on with full career, in principle a pacifist, a man who rated tolerance among the highest human virtues. But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th. The words in the earlier Farewell to Arms may have been occasioned by increasing Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, age rather than hatred of war, but there was more than humour in Finzi’s gesture of That I to manhood am arrived so near; And inward ripeness doth much less appear, laying a copy of it on his chief’s desk the day he left the Ministry of War Transport. That some more timely-happy spirits indu’th. Finzi’s copy of Bridges’ poems is now in the Finzi Book Room at Reading University Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, Library. Into the pages of ‘Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913’ Finzi tucked a letter clipped It shall be still in strictest measure even, from a newspaper; the writer asks why ‘in terra pax, hominibus bonae voluntatis’ is To that same lot, however mean, or high, translated ‘peace on earth, goodwill towards men’ when it appears to mean ‘to men Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven; of goodwill’. Finzi himself was above all a man of goodwill, and In terra pax is his All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great task-master’s eye. testament. DIANA McVEAGH

10 7 Let us Garlands bring (Shakespeare) 4 O mistress mine 5 It was a lover and his lass

1 Come away, come away Death Then to Silvia let us sing, O Mistress mine, where are you roaming? It was a lover and his lass, That Silvia is excelling; O, stay and hear; your true love’s coming, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino Com e away, come away, death, She excels each mortal thing That can sing both high and low: That o’er the green cornfield did pass And in sad cypress let me be laid; Upon the dull earth dwelling: Trip no further pretty sweeting; In spring time, the only pretty ring time, Fly away, fly away, breath; To her let us garlands bring. Journeys end in lovers’ meeting, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding a ding: I am slain by a fair cruel maid. Every wise man’s son doth know. Sweet lovers love the spring. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, 3 Fear no more the heat o’ the Sun O, prepare it! What is love? ‘tis not hereafter; Between the acres of the rye, My part of death, no one so true Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Present mirth hath present laughter; With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, Did share it. Not the furious winter’s rages; What’s to come is still unsure: These pretty country folks would lie, Thou thy worldly task hast done, In delay there lies no plenty, In spring time, the only pretty ring time, Not a flower, not a flower sweet, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages: Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding a ding: On my black coffin let there be strown; Golden lads and girls all must, Youth’s a stuff will not endure. Sweet lovers love the spring. Not a friend, not a friend greet As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. My poor corpse, where my bones shall be This carol they began that hour, thrown: Fear no more the frown o’ the great; With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, A thousand thousand sighs to save, Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke: How that life was but a flower Lay me, O, where Care no more to clothe and eat; In spring time, the only pretty ring time, Sad true lover never find my grave, To thee the reed is as the oak: When birds do sing, hey ding a ding a ding: To weep there! The sceptre, learning, physic, must Sweet lovers love the spring. All follow this, and come to dust. 2 Who is Silvia? And therefore take the present time, Fear no more the lightning-flash, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, Who is Silvia? what is she, Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone; For love is crowned with the prime That all our swains commend her? Fear not slander, censure rash; In spring time, the only pretty ring time, Holy, fair, and wise is she; Thou hast finished joy and moan: When birds do sing, hey ding a ding a ding: The heaven such grace did lend her, All lovers young, all lovers must Sweet lovers love the spring. That she might admired be. Consign to thee, and come to dust.

Is she kind as she is fair? No exorciser harm thee! For beauty lives with kindness. Nor no witchcraft charm thee! Love doth to her eyes repair, Ghost unlaid forbear thee! To help him of his blindness; Nothing ill come near thee! And, being helped, inhabits there. Quiet consummation have; And renowned be thy grave!

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FINZI: LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST CAROL CASE / PARTRIDGE / NOBLE LYRITA LET US GARLANDS BRING… MANNING / NPO / RPO / HANDLEY SRCD.237