Gerald Finzi: An English Composer [Anglais] [Broché]

In Britain, the works of Finzi (1901-56) are generally admired and oft-recorded, but his Anglophilic musical landscapes have not resonated as strongly with American audiences. Despite his native popularity, it has taken over 40 years for a full-length biography of the composer to be published. (John C. Dressler's Gerald Finzi, part of Greenwood's "Biobibliographies in Music" series, serves to introduce the composer's work. ) The Finzi Trust commissioned this work, but it retains a welcome tone of objectivity. Banfield (music, Univ. of Birmingham, UK) uses a staggering number of letters to and from Finzi, which shed light on a personality and artistic temperament more complex than often thought. Finzi's compositions reflect a strain of English Romanticism born of his love for the Hampshire countryside, yet his lifelong attempt to reconcile his "Englishness" with his Italian Jewish heritage led to an undercurrent of mystery and pathos in much of his work. Banfield's text proceeds chronologically, with numerous musical examples embedded throughout. Readers should come away with a greater appreciation of Finzi's large and varied output but may find the wealth of detail tedious. Recommended for larger undergraduate and graduate collections.DLarry Lipkis, Moravian Coll., Bethlehem, PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"[A] long-needed and doubly welcome book."

The first biography of the life and works of one of Britain's best-loved composers.

Gerald Finzi, best known for the cantata Dies Natalis and the Clarinet Concerto, was one of Britain's most adored composers. His music is rooted in the tradition of Elgar, Sir Charles Parry, Vaughan Williams, and early twentieth-century composers who, like Ivor Gurney, revered songwriting as their principal means of expression.

In this witty and engaging biography, Stephen Banfield reveals the modest, quintessentially English composer as a more complex figure than he is often given credit for being. Finzi's ambiguous relationship with his craft, his affluent and intellectual family, and his struggles with his Jewishness lent a mysterious and troubled quality to his life and work that, through the course of this challenging biography, invite us to question the notions of Englishness that he both so cherished and represented.

Stephen Banfield is Elgar Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Sensibility and English Song and Sondheim's Broadway Musicals, and editor of the twentieth-century volume of The Blackwell History of Music in Britain.