Finzi gerald biography of martin

Gerald Raphael Finzi was born into a fairly prosperous family on 14 th July His father was a successful London shipbroker.

Gerald Finzi was a man drawn

There were four other brothers and sisters. He was descended from Italian Jewish ancestry and his parents were, at that time practising Orthodox Jews. The composer never really acknowledged this religious heritage. In fact he wrote a number of distinctively Christian works including fine setting of the Magnificat. Finzi was educated privately.

However during the First World War his mother moved the family to Yorkshire. There Finzi studied with the young composer Ernest Farrar. After Farrar had received his call up papers, Finzi completed the first part of his musical education with the great organist at York Minster-Edward Bairstow. It was during his early life that Finzi first became aware of the transience of life- one of the major themes of his music.

In the space of a few years his father and three brothers died. Ernest Farrar was killed on the Western Front. This sudden realisation of the harshness of the world recommended the poetry of Thomas Traherne - the great Platonist poet who dwelt on the innocence of the soul of a child and of course William Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality.

In he moved to the Cotswolds and lived at the village of Painswick.