Romance for string orchestra Op.11 (1928)

Andante espressivo – più mosso – tempo I

When Gerald Finzi, the essential countryman, completed his Romance for strings – in November 1928 if the date noted at the end of the score is to be taken literally – he was living in London. Although he was born there, into a well-to-do Jewish family in St John’s Wood, and although he stayed there for the first thirteen years of life, London was far from his spiritual home. Yorkshire, where the Finzis moved in 1914, was further still, even though he did receive useful musical tuition from Ernest Farrar in Harrogate and Edward Bairstow in York. Where he belonged, as he knew from his passionate attachment to the music and poetry associated with it, was the West Country of Parry, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Holst and Gurney.

As soon as it was up to him rather than his family where he lived, he moved with his mother to Gloucestershire, settling at King’s Mill House near Painswick in 1922. That is where he wrote his first orchestral piece, Severn Rhapsody, in the English pastoral style of the day, and his first setting of words by Thomas Traherne, whose writings were to inspire one of his greatest works, Dies Natalis. In 1926, however, he had to move back to London, initially to study counterpoint with R.O. Morris, a professor at the Royal College of Music, and by 1930 he was himself teaching at the Royal Academy of Music. Although he stayed in London until 1935, when he made his definitive escape to the countryside, he did not neglect the landscape he loved best, either as a visitor or as a composer.

Tinged with nostalgia but also with a verdant freshness characteristic of the composer, the Romance is a clear and affectionate tribute to the West Country. Technically, it is one of the most accomplished and attractively coloured scores in a distinguished tradition – beginning perhaps with Elgar’s Serenade – of English works for string orchestra. Morris’s instruction in counterpoint has been so thoroughly aborbed that, far from being crowded, even when the orchestra is divided into as many as nine parts at times, Finzi’s textures are vibrant with melodic and rhythmic life. After a short but poetic introduction for upper strings, including a solo violin, Finzi declares his geographical and stylistic allegiance with a lovely, frankly Elgarian melody on first violins. The second main theme is introduced by the solo violin on its re-entry at the beginning of a quicker, still Elgarian and still lyrically expressive middle section. It rises to a fortissimo climax based on a fragment of the violin theme and falls away again for a recall of the first section with a brief echo of the introduction at the very end.