Gerald Finzi * Intimations of Immortality op. 29

[@renzo6490]

This man’s music is really growing on me!

[@trevorjones2337]

Wonderfully evocative and beautiful. It's a pity pieces like this don't appear in more concerts and music festivals. Richard Hickox was a great advocate for British music. May he rest in peace.

[@wendyhowe3923]

+Trevor Jones If you are in Buxton Derbyshire on March 20th a prestigious amateur choir and orchestra will be performing it.

[@dominicazariah9092]

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[@bodhiarlo6909]

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[@PeterBrowne99]

A great poem, set by a great composer, given an enthralling performance.....this approaches heavenly bliss.

[@terrybarlow2445]

Intimations of intimacy, my friend wisely said, no one can out intimate JESUS. the master of intimacy.

[@thomasromano9321]

This is such a beautiful piece, though quietly reflective. So much of Finzi's music has a melancholy and sadness. It's as though Finzi knew he was dying, and could glimpse moments of glory with the sorrow and anguish of recognizing his mortality. RIP Finzi and Richard Hickox.

[@bathcovers]

I think Finzi's experience of losing his father, after a nasty illness, and three of his four older siblings between 1909 and 1918 would have been the source of the melancholy you note. I think that those events would have been very difficult to move on from.

[@thomasromano9321]

@@bathcovers Good points, Michael. Yes, certainly true. The deaths of three of Finzi's brothers in World War l and the death of another composer and friend, George Butterworth, certainly must have had a profound impact on the composer.

[@robinblankenship9234]

Someone once said that the purpose (or, one of the purposes) of art was to “rob the moment of its impermanence”.

[@andrewcotton2859]

I agree with the sentiments, but English music from Elgar up to the present day is often infused with elements of melancholy - it is a much deeper trait which is very difficult to attribute directly to specific events.

[@shodanart]

Finzi finality and pathos~ You’ve done a masterful job of the art and music- the flowerscape at “Rainy day” - all the art, as an artist myself I find lovely and nuanced “Earth fill her lips...” a “Fall” oil; I’ll have to see if anyone has identified each oil you’ve posted. Oh joy! that in our embers - tree portrait - nice you’ve included the text... Leeside farm~ all of the art ! Thank you!

[@germanquintero10121946]

sin duda una de las mas preciosas del autor

[@MichaelConwayBaker]

A lovely, poignant tone poem.

[@MrAjomase]

With this work, Finzi stands head and shoulders up there with the other English beasts Elgar, Bliss, Williams, etc. et. etc.

[@sapper82]

A tragedy that, was well as dying comparatively young, he never got the chance to develop his talent to the extent that the much inferior Britten had.

[@AntPDC]

+ sapper I do not think that Finzi would agree with you apropos Britten's "inferior" musical talents. On the contrary, Britten had a far broader canvas, a greater musical talent from top to bottom. I do not myself enjoy Britten's music as much as Finzi's, but the facts speak for themselves by any objective analysis. As you say, Finzi died relatively young, but he was not the prodigy that was Britten.

[@thomasromano9321]

That I would definitely agree with. Tragically Finzi died young of Hodgkins disease. This work would prove all too prophetic. So much of Finzi's music, while gorgeous, seems to me to have an air of melancholy, sadness, and resignation about it. Not surprisingly, Finzi's early life was beset by personal tragedy, and it shows in the music. Britten wrestled with his own demons, his homosexuality at odds with the world, but expressed in the personal conflicts in his operas "Peter Grimes" and "Turn of the Screw."

[@daviddavenport9350]

@@thomasromano9321 I wonder if rather than melancholy or resignation, it is more a wistfulness......I hear that a lot in his beautiful music....

[@kuang-licheng402]

great

[@cliffocco]

I love Finzi. Not sure that he should have set this, one of the greatest poems in the English language.

[@JacobFremde]

"I do hate the bilge and bunkum about composers trying to 'add' to a poem - that a fine poem is complete in itself, and to set it is only to gild the lily, and so on ... I rather expected it [over the setting of two Milton Sonnets] and expect it still more when the Intimations [of Immortality] is finished . . . Obviously a poem may be unsatisfactory in itself for setting, but that is a purely musical consideration - that it has no architectural possibilities - no broad vowels where climaxes should be, and so on. But the first and last thing is that a composer is (presumably) moved by a poem and wishes to identify himself with it and share it." Gerald Finzi

[@AntPDC]

A great post Jack, thank you!

[@johnhardman8480]

His colleagues agreed with you and Elgar thought composers should only set minor poets to music. Still good to have this, though it is a bit long.

[@garymelville1538]

@@johnhardman8480 Apropos length of the work, Finzi must have thought so too(!) since he cut a chunk out of the middle. But hey, Guys, the MUSIC is the thing here. Let's just luxuriate in it's beauty. Finzi was on a hiding to nothing here, setting Wordsworth's "Immortality Ode" yet still had the courage to continue on. Thanks to the composer I now understand the full richness of the Poem a lot better.

[@GordonThompson-jk6fk]

Are you sorry he did? Deadly-boring as literature, this was redeemed for me by Finzi's music.