IDAGIO | Finzi: Love's Labour's Lost - Let us garlands bring - 2 Sonnets - Farewell to Arms

Featuring

Vernon Handley
John Carol Case
Ian Partridge
Jane Manning
John Noble
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

New Philharmonia Orchestra
The John Alldis Choir
Gerald Finzi

Did you know?

1/7

Compositional Technique

For the Love's Labour's Lost music, Gerald Finzi used an airy scoring, brief pieces with sharp profiles, and background music for sonnets, pipe and tabor for rustics, and 'gesture' music for the masque.

Composition History

Gerald Finzi, the composer, agreed to write incidental music for a BBC Home Service production of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost in only three weeks, despite being a slow worker.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Gerald Finzi defended his settings of fine poetry, stating that a composer is moved by a poem and wishes to identify with it and share it, rather than merely 'adding' to it.

Composition History

Gerald Finzi's final conducted work, In terra pax, was inspired by hearing bells ring in the new year on Chosen Hill near Gloucester as a young man.

Composer Biography

Gerald Finzi, a pacifist, died from chickenpox contracted after conducting In terra pax in 1956, while showing Vaughan Williams the inspirational Chosen Hill.

Composer Biography

Gerald Finzi was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1928, the same year he likely composed the Milton Sonnets, a period he described as being 'in a queer state'.

Composer Biography

Gerald Finzi's deep veneration for Ralph Vaughan Williams, a prominent English composer, led him to visit Vaughan Williams' birthplace as early as 1921.