™ Exeunt omnes Folk all fade. And whither, DDD Everybody else, then, going, As I wait alone where the fair was? And I still left where the fair was?... Into the clammy and numbing night-fog The English Song Series • 15 8.557963 Much have I seen of neighbour loungers Whence they entered hither. Making a lusty showing, Soon one more goes thither! Each now past all knowing. FINZI There is an air of blankness In the street and the littered spaces; Thoroughfare, steeple, bridge and highway Tracks 14-16 © Copyright 1965 by Boosey & Co Ltd Earth and Air and Rain Wizen themselves to lankness; Reproduced by permission of Kennels dribble dankness. Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd By Footpath and Stile • To a Poet Roderick Williams, Baritone Iain Burnside, Piano • Sacconi Quartet 8.557963 20 Page XX Page XX PMS PMS 000 000 0 Gerald Finzi (1901–1956) And faster then and faster All night eerily! Earth and Air and Rain • To a Poet • By Footpath and Stile Shall seek our rooty bed, All wasted in disaster! - The Lady Gertrude, proud, high-bred, Earth and Air and Rain, Op. 15 31:39 But you lift not your head. Sir or Madam, 1 Summer Schemes 2:34 Am I—this laurel that shades your head; 2 When I set out for Lyonesse 2:06 “I mark your early going, Into its veins I have stilly sped, 3 Waiting both 3:24 And that you’ll soon be clay, And made them of me; and my leaves now shine, 4 The phantom 3:45 I have seen your summer showing As did my satins superfine, 5 So I have fared 2:49 As in my youthful day; All day cheerily, 6 Rollicum-Rorum 1:41 But why I seem unknowing All night eerily! 7 To Lizbie Browne 4:01 Is too sunk in to say!” 8 The Clock of the Years 4:24 - I, who as innocent withwind climb, 9 In a churchyard 3:51 ¡ Voices from things growing in a churchyard Sir or Madam. 0 Proud Songsters 3:05 These flowers are I, poor Fanny Hurd, Am one Eve Greensleeves, in olden time Sir or Madam, Kissed by men from many a clime, To a Poet, Op. 13a 17:02 A little girl here sepultured. Beneath sun, stars, in blaze, in breeze, ! To a poet a thousand years hence 5:02 Once I flit-fluttered like a bird As now by glowworms and by bees, @ On parent knees 1:33 Above the grass, as now I wave All day cheerily, # Intrada 1:34 In daisy shapes above my grave, All night eerily! $ The birthnight 1:45 All day cheerily, % June on Castle Hill 2:01 All night eerily! - I’m old Squire Audeley Grey, who grew, ^ Ode on the rejection of St Cecilia 5:07 Sir or Madam, - I am one Bachelor Bowring, “Gent,” Aweary of life, and in scorn withdrew; By Footpath and Stile, Op. 2 23:14 Sir or Madam; Till anon I clambered up anew & Paying calls 3:47 In shingled oak my bones were pent; As ivy-green, when my ache was stayed, * Where the picnic was 4:04 Hence more than a hundred years I spent And in that attire I have longtime gayed ( The oxen 2:42 In my feat of change from a coffin-thrall All day cheerily, ) The master and the leaves 2:49 To a dancer in green as leaves on a wall. All night eerily! ¡ Voices from things growing in a churchyard 6:34 All day cheerily, ™ Exeunt omnes 3:17 All night eerily! - And so they breathe, these masks, to each Sir or Madam - I, these berries of juice and gloss, Who lingers there, and their lively speech Sir or Madam, Affords an interpreter much to teach, Roderick Williams, Baritone Am clean forgotten as Thomas Voss; As their murmurous accents seem to come Iain Burnside, Piano (1-^) • Sacconi Quartet (&-™) Thin-urned, I have burrowed away from the moss Thence hitheraround in a radiant hum, That covers my sod, and have entered this yew, All day cheerily, And turned to clusters ruddy of view, All night eerily! All day cheerily, 8.557963 2 19 8.557963 Page XX Page XX PMS PMS 000 000 0 I spoke to one and other of them ( The oxen Gerald Finzi (1901–1956) By mound and stone and tree Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. Earth and Air and Rain • To a Poet • By Footpath and Stile Of things we had done ere days were dim, “Now they are all on their knees,” But they spoke not to me. An elder said as we sat in a flock Gerald Finzi studied with Ernest Farrar, Edward much and from earliest days responded, not so much to By the embers in hearthside ease. Bairstow and R.O. Morris. He came to attention with an influence, as to a kinship with him.’ * Where the picnic was works like the orchestral miniature A Severn Rhapsody The songs that comprise Earth and Air and Rain Where we made the fire, We pictured the meek mild creatures where (1923) and a song-cycle to poems by Thomas Hardy, By were composed between 1928 and 1932 and published in In the summer time, They dwelt in their strawy pen, Footpath and Stile (1921-2). Finzi’s reputation grew 1936. Several songs were performed individually, or in Of branch and briar Nor did it occur to one of us there during the 1930s with performances of two groups of groups, but it was not until 1943 that the first complete On the hill to the sea To doubt they were kneeling then. Hardy settings, A Young Man’s Exhortation (1926-9) and performance took place on 23rd March with Robert I slowly climb Earth and Air and Rain (1928-32), and was consolidated Irwin, accompanied by Howard Ferguson. The work Through winter mire, So fair a fancy few would weave with the première in 1940 of his cantata Dies Natalis marks a significant step forward in Finzi’s development And scan and trace In these years! Yet, I feel, (1925-39). During World War II Finzi worked at the as his mature voice comes to the fore in the impressive The forsaken place If someone said on Christmas Eve, Ministry of War Transport and founded a fine, mainly range of emotions tackled. Quite readily. “Come; see the oxen kneel amateur, orchestra, the Newbury String Players. Two of In Summer Schemes, Finzi aptly captures the contrast his most popular works appeared during the war, the Five between the eager anticipation of the summer idylls that Now a cold wind blows, “In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Bagatelles for clarinet (1920s, 1941-3), and the the poet dreams he and his sweetheart will share, and the And the grass is gray, Our childhood used to know,” Shakespeare settings, Let us garlands bring (1938-40). measured caution of the caveat in the final lines of each But the spot still shows I should go with him in the gloom, To the post-war years belong the festival anthem Lo, verse – so long as fate does not intervene. When I set out As a burnt circle — aye, Hoping it might be so. the Full, Final Sacrifice (1946), the ceremonial ode For for Lyonesse, recalls Hardy’s visit to Cornwall as a young And stick-ends, charred, St Cecilia (1947) and a further Hardy song set Before and man when he fell in love with Emma Gifford who Still strew the sward ) The master and the leaves After Summer (1932-49), the Clarinet Concerto (1948-9) became his first wife. Its brisk march rhythm creates a Whereon I stand, We are budding, Master, budding, and Intimations of Immortality for chorus and orchestra sense of adventure and the song culminates radiantly as Last relic of the band We of your favourite tree; (late 1936-8, 1949-50). Although the final years of his the poet returns with ‘magic’ in his eyes. Who came that day! March drought and April flooding life were lived under the shadow of an incurable illness, Waiting both is an imaginary conversation between Arouse us merrily, he completed the Christmas scene In Terra Pax (1951-4) the poet and a star, each pondering on the meaning of Yes, I am here Our stemlets newly studding; and the Cello Concerto (1951-5). existence, with Finzi evoking the vastness of eternity Just as last year, And yet you do not see! Song-writing is at the heart of Finzi’s output and he through the use of the extremes of the piano’s range. The And the sea breathes brine made a significant contribution to British twentieth- phantom is Hardy’s recollection, after the death of his From its strange straight line We are fully woven for summer century music in this genre, especially the settings of first wife, of her as a young woman riding along the Up hither, the same In stuff of limpest green, Thomas Hardy, his favourite poet, whom he set more Cornish cliffs during their courtship. Finzi reflects this As when we four came. The twitterer and the hummer than any other. His volume of Hardy’s Collected Poems image in the cantering gait of the accompaniment, which — But two have wandered far Here rest of nights, unseen, was a treasured possession; as he wrote to a friend: ‘If I by the final verse, with its chromatic inflections in the From this grassy rise While like a long-roll drummer had to be cut off from everything that would be the one vocal line, has become an obsessive fixation in the poet’s Into urban roar The nightjar thrills the treen.