A Severn Rhapsody, Op. 3

Composer: FINZI, Gerald
  • This is one of Finzi’s earliest pieces, composed 1923.1
  • This piece won the Carnegie Award in 1923. This was a competition for British composers founded in 1917. The winner had his piece published by the “Carnegie Collection of British Music,” which grew to become a significant collection of 20th-century British works, including contributions by Vaughan Williams, Holst, Frank Bridge and Peter Warlock.2
  • The River Severn is runs along the border between England and Wales. The river and its environs inspired other composers of Finzi’s time, resulting in pieces like these:
    • “Severn Meadows” (1917) a nostalgic song about English countryside written in the trenches of WWI, by Ivor Gurney.3 (Finzi was a great supporter of Gurney’s music, and helped prepare his works for publication posthumously.4 Gurney wrote both the poetry and music for this particular song, and Finzi made his own music setting of the text in in Op.13b no. 4)5

Sources

  1. Diana McVeagh, “Finzi, Gerald,”Grove Music Online (2001), accessed October 1, 2019,   https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000009689.
  2. “Carnegie Collection of British Music,” King’s College London, accessed October 1, 2019, https://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/archivespec/special-collections/individualcollections/carnegie.
  3. Michael Hurd, liner notes to Severn Meadows, Paul Agnew, Julius Drake, Hyperion CDA67243, CD, 2001.
  4. McVeagh, “Finzi, Gerald,” Grove Music Online.
  5. “Only the Wanderer,” Lieder.net, accessed October 1, 2019, https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=7121.
  6. Diana McVeagh, “Elgar, Sir Edward,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed October 1, 2019,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000008709.

Cut IDs

16344