The Story Tenor: Songs by Gerald Finzi by John Beaumont & Charles Matthews - The Story Tenor [STORY001] FLAC download included with physical items

The Story Tenor: Songs by Gerald Finzi

A 24 track vocal album (58m 48s) — released August 4th 2014 on The Story Tenor

Gerald Finzi's particular synthesis of stylistic influences and his special sensitivity to English verse (notably, but by no means exclusively, that of Thomas Hardy) make him a unique figure, and certainly a towering presence in the English song repertory, regarded by some as a distinctly minority interest when compared to the French Romantic melodie, let alone the German Lied.

There is some truth in this, for all that it undervalues such masters as Purcell and Britten. Finzi felt little sympathy with the latter's work, but his own finest songs certainly hold their own in such company. As his biographer Diana McVeagh has written, his own word-setting idiom was closer to Dowland than Purcell, and he never displayed the virtuosic brilliance of Britten. With a compositional language firmly based in tonality, he often stresses that bedrock of Western music through the use of modality, bitonality, and his favourite device, the false relation. But even in such a strange song as "The comet at Yellham", the rock never crumbles.

Finzi loved the English countryside, living in it for many years, but his representation of its many aspects in his music is never sentimental, though often tinged with regret and nostalgia (as, for example, in 'Harvest' and 'The Market Girl'). Such emotions also spill over into those other overarching themes of his: love, both triumphant and lost (the latter remarkable for someone with as blissfully happy a marriage as Finzi had), the inevitable passage of time, and the ending of everything in death. For someone whose own life was ended prematurely by disease, the vision of bitterness in old age found in such a song as "I look into my glass" is truly remarkable.

  • Kudos happily ship all items worldwide.
  • Shipping costs and delivery times are available here.
  • UK items are sent tracked as standard at no extra cost.
  • We aim to dispatch orders placed before 2pm on the same day.
  • We are unable to ship orders on weekends or Bank Holidays.
  • If you purchase a pre-order item amongst an order of in-stock releases, we will typically hold your order until all items are in ready to send.
  • Although we use all reasonable means to ensure that your order is delivered within a specified time, we cannot accept any responsibility for late deliveries due to circumstances outside of our control. We will do our best to inform you of any unexpected delay.