Gerald Finzi: Dies Natalis

Joshua Weilerstein (0:08)

Hello, and welcome to Sticky Notes, The Classical Music Podcast. My name is Joshua Weilerstein. I'm a conductor and I'm the music director of the Orkest Ch'Nasina Adelil and the chief conductor of the Aalborg Symphony. This podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting ready to dive into this amazing world of incredible music. Before we get started, I want to thank my new Patreon sponsors, Carol, Tim, Shayna, Robert, David, Simon, and Jennifer, and all of my other Patreon sponsors for making Season 10 possible. If you'd like to support the show, please head over to patreon.com/stickynotespodcast. If you are a fan of the show, please take a moment to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It is greatly appreciated. I want to mention that this is the second to last episode of Season 10 That is because my wife and I are about to have our second child, and so I'm going to be going on a kind of paternity leave from the podcast. But that doesn't mean the podcast is going to stop entirely. I'm going to be continuing my Schubert mini episodes on Patreon, and I am going to be having all of my Beethoven symphonies episodes remixed by the great Charlie Kosella, who has been working with me on all of the recent episodes of the podcast, and I've gotten a lot of wonderful feedback about the sound now. So we'll be re-releasing those over the next few months. We'll have one more episode in a couple of weeks on Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, and then we'll go on this break, but it won't really feel like a break for you because you'll be hearing lots of Beethoven symphonies again. And then season 11 will be beginning with new episodes, probably in March, maybe a little bit before that. We'll see how things are going. But really in the meantime, you're going to be getting all nine Beethoven symphonies in beautiful, wonderful Charlie Kosella sound. So thank you all so much as always for all of your support of the show. And I can't wait to start season 11 I've got already a lot of really fun episodes planned, some big stuff like Mahler 8, Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, some other stuff that I won't even tell you yet at the moment. But I'm really excited for it. And thank you again for listening to the show. And I'm also very happy to be sharing with you today, Gerald Finzi's Dies Natalis. Thanks.

As I've often said, I love doing Patreon-sponsored episodes, in part because they allow me to discover music I might never have been familiar with otherwise. Today's episode is one of those episodes because the truth is that before I made this show today, I had heard of Finzi, but that was about it. I knew nothing about the circumstances of his life or about his music, and while I knew this was a hole in my musical knowledge, it was one that I hadn't had time to fill. Well, thanks to Jillian, I got the time to explore this wonderful 20th century composer's works. And now I'm ready to tell you about him, since I imagine he is an unfamiliar name to many of you listening. Gerald Finzi was a terrific composer and fascinating figure in 20th century music. He struck out on his own paths, refusing to follow the trends of the times, and therefore his music has a special, unique quality. A bit more modest than someone who was trying to change the world like Schoenberg, but nonetheless music that was deeply human and often inspired by literary interests. Finzi was interested in much more than just music, and amassed a library of over 3000 volumes of English poetry, philosophy and literature, much of which ended up appearing in his music. And this powerful marriage of interests in poetry and music produced Finzi's strongest and most enduring works. And since Jillian left it up to me which work of Finzi's to tell you about today, I decided to lean into this love Finzi had for English poetry, and to take a detailed look at a piece that many consider to be Finzi's masterpiece, Dies Natalis, which translates to Day of Birth. The piece is set to the poetry of the 17th century English metaphysical poet and priest, Thomas Traherne, and discusses the topic of innocence, from the first moments a baby enters to the world, to the tarnishing of that innocence as they grow older. This was a topic that Finzi knew all too well, considering the losses of all three of his brothers during his early years. The piece is a profound yet tender meditation on the joys and sufferings of new life, and I can't wait to share it with you today. All this and more is coming right up on Sticky Notes.