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“The new
Diana McVeagh book on Elgar is first-rate. She's a new name
to me & must be young, but she really has more acumen than
most of the little pip-squeaks who write musical criticism.”
Gerald Finzi to Cedric Thorpe Davie, 19 September 1955
The
Author
Diana McVeagh is the author of Edward Elgar: His Life
and Music; of the entries on Elgar and Finzi for The New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980, 2001); and of
the Finzi entry in The Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography (2004). |
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This long-awaited biography
of one of Britain’s best-loved composers benefits from
previously unseen material supplied by the Finzi family and
astute evaluation of his work. |
Gerald Finzi is one of the best-known
C20th English composers. While he is especially famous as a song-writer,
for his sensitive settings of poets such as Hardy and Wordsworth, he
also wrote in other genres: notable works include the exquisite cantata
Dies Natalis, his cello and clarinet concertos.
In this lively and sensitive study of his life and works, Diana McVeagh,
the renowned Elgar and Finzi scholar, has made use of interviews with
the main figures in his life, correspondence with contemporaries such as
Vaughan Williams, Edmund Blunden, Arthur Bliss, Edmund Rubbra, Howard
Ferguson and Herbert Howells, and her access to previously unpublished
material in the form of his widow, Joy's, unpublished journal. The Finzi
that emerges is a multi-faceted and complex character. The author shows
how he developed from a solitary, introverted youth into a man with
strong views and a myriad of interests: everything from education,
pacifism, vegetarianism, to the Arts and Crafts movement, the English
pastoral tradition, English apple varieties, and the significance of
ancestry, friendship and marriage in an artist's life. She also
discusses every work within the narrative of Finzi's life, and shows
what makes his output so outstanding.
Add this title to your shopping cart
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23.4cm x 15.6cm
352 pages
26 b&w illustrations
Binding: Hardback
ISBN 9781843831709
First published: Sept. 2005
Price: £25.00 / $47.95
Click below to read samples
www.joyfinzi.com
A site dedicated to the life and work of Joy Finzi
www.geraldfinzi.org/
Homepage of the Finzi Trust
www.geraldfinzi.com
A new site
dedicated to the life and works of Gerald Finzi
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Michael Kennedy writes in BBC
Music Magazine: "This has been long in preparation, but the wait has
been worthwhile. Lucky the composer who finds so fair-minded, candid and
scrupulous a biographer and one who writes so well...[McVeagh's]
analyses achieve the rare distinction of being both illuminating and
readable. This is one of the best-written books about a musician to
appear for many years." |
