A Young Man's Exhortation
- Unpublished Analysis Excerpts
- Gerhardus Daniël Van der Watt - The Songs of Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) To Poems by Thomas Hardy
- Carl Stanton Rogers - A Stylistic Analysis of A Young Man's Exhortation, Opus 14, by Gerald Finzi to words by Thomas Hardy
- John Keston - Two Gentlemen from Wessex, The Relationship of Thomas Hardy's Poetry to Gerald Finzi's Music
A Young Man's Exhortation was written between 1926-29 and was published in 1933 as opus 14 for tenor and piano. The song set is Finzi's only true song cycle, although he didn't call it a cycle. Finzi divided the set in to two halves of five songs each and included a subtitle for each half. Part I uses Psalm 89 the Vulgate: "Mane floreat, et transeat." The King James translation found in Psalm 90 for verse 6a says: "In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up." Part II of the set is subtitled: "Vespere decidat, induret et arescat" also from the Vulgate, Psalm 89. The King James translation found once again in Psalm 90 verse 6b says: "in the evening it is cut down, and withereth." The subtitles describe the content of the ten songs in that the first five represent youthful vigour whereas the second five represent memories and introspection.
Mark Robert Carlisle writes in his dissertation, "A Young Man's Exhortation is the only group of Finzi's settings of Hardy's poems to be conceived as a cycle rather than a set of songs. Although the poems were taken from various Hardy collections, and written at various times in the poet's life, there is a logical progression of thought and event in this cycle. Only one such as Finzi, who was familiar with the poet's entire body of work, could have chosen poems as appropriate as these and arranged them in such a coherent manner. They express in cyclical fashion the essence of Hardy's experiences and philosophy of life."(Carlisle, 84)
The original song set probably began as fifteen songs before Finzi dropped five of them to give us the present ten. We have some certainty to the dates of composition because Howard Ferguson makes a reference in 1927 to having seen a song about a Comet that apparently Finzi had shown him and Edmund Rubbra in an article dating from 1929 describes what must have been the song cycle.
“In the years 1926-1928 a song-cycle for tenor and piano was completed. It consists of fifteen settings of poems by Thomas Hardy. It is divided into two parts, the first dealing with various moods of youth and love, and the second with philosophical retrospect, under the shadow of age. The cycle is not to be considered as a series of separate songs but as a unity: and unity has been achieved, in spite of the diverse character of the settings.” (Duncan-Rubbra 194) |
Stephen Banfield in his Finzi biography compiled a list of eighteen songs that he suggests could be candidates for the fifteen Edmund Duncan-Rubbra spoke of in his article in the Monthly Musical Record of 1929. The first ten in this list are the songs that were published in the collection. The remaining eight either were included in other collections or were never finished by Finzi. Banfield also places a date beside those that were dated by Finzi. Within the brackets one will find the collection in which the song now resides.
A young man's exhortation |
Unpublished Analysis Excerpts
The following is an excerpt from Samuel Rudolph Germany's dissertation. Dr. Germany extended permission to post this excerpt on December 20th, 2010. His dissertation dated August 1993, is entitled:
The Solo Vocal Collections of Gerald R. Finzi Suitable for Performance by the High Male Voice.
The excerpt begins on page sixty-one and concludes on page sixty-five.
A Young Man's Exhortation
A Young Man's Exhortation received its first performance on December 5, 1933, by Frank Drew and Augustus Lowe, (McVeagh) in Grotrian Hall. (Banfield, 445) Prior to this, Duncan-Rubbra reported in 1929 the completion of "a song-cycle for tenor and piano . . . consisting of fifteen settings of poems by Thomas Hardy." (E. Duncan-Rubbra, 194) By its 1933 publication date, however, A Young Man's Exhortation had lost five songs and was grouped in two equal parts of five songs each. Part I contained "A Young Man's Exhortation," "Ditty," "Budmouth Dears," "Her Temple," and "The Comet at Yell'ham." Part II included "Shortening Days," "The Sigh," "Former Beauties," "Transformations," and "The Dance Continued." The omitted songs may have survived as some of the ten incomplete manuscript sketches from the 1920's, but it is more likely that these included "some of the songs which were eventually published in two posthumous sets, of which 'The Market-Girl' (1927, 'Two Lips' (1928), 'At a Lunar Eclipse' (1929), and 'I Say I'll Seek Her' (1929) are known to date from this period." (Banfield, 291)
Finzi accepted the difficulties of setting Hardy's poems to music. Hardy (1840-1928), as a poet, endeavored to write in a language which closely approximated that of speech, and abhorred elaborate "jeweled lines." He continuously experimented with rhythm, accent, and verse form, avoiding any smooth flow. (Oxford Companion) Hardy resorted frequently to "anti-lyrical factors" in allowing his thoughts to avoid endstopping lines. Often his sentences came to rest within a line or flowed on from one line to another, in some cases from stanza to stanza. (Hold, 310) "The language is by no means always mellifluous. Lines . . . [were] . . . often hard-packed with crusty sounds and sometimes teasing inversion." (McVeagh) These features caused Hardy's poetry to be quite difficult to set to music, yet Finzi set more poems by Hardy than any other poet. Finzi also created more settings by Hardy than did any other composer. At least 50 settings appeared in three collections compiled in his lifetime and in two of the posthumous collections: A Young Man's Exhortation was the first of these collections that Finzi compiled. His copy of Hardy's Collected Poems contained those marked for future setting to music. Perhaps another hundred were intended but never set. (McVeagh)
Speaking of Hardy's Collected Poems, Finzi once commented to a friend that "if I had to be cut off from everything, that would be the one book I should choose." The connection between Finzi and Hardy is indicative of a commitment closer even than Faure's with Verlaine, Schumann's with Heine, or Wolf's with Morike. (McVeagh) Recurring themes in Hardy's writings reflected profound feelings with which Finzi identified strongly. Among these which appeared in the poems of A Young Man's Exhortation were the preoccupation with time, and a focus on feelings and emotion. (McVeagh)
Finzi published A Young Man's Exhortation with the two parts given motto headings. Part I is entitled "Mane floreat, et transeat. Ps. 89," which is translated, "In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up." Part II reads, "Vespere decidat, induret, et arescat. Ps. 89," which is translated as "In the evening it is cut down, and withereth." These quotations are taken from Psalm 90 verse six in the King James translation. (Banfield, 290) The first part contains poems which deal with various moods of young men and love; the second part then deals with philosophical retrospect under the shadow of man's age. This was the only one of his song collections that has such a strong cyclic connection due to the similarity of texts and progression or unity of thought. Duncan-Rubbra reports on the unity of the cycle which has been achieved, in spite of the diverse character of the setting. (Duncan-Rubbra) However, Finzi gives freedom to the performance of these in the index to A Young Man's Exhortation: "although designed as a cycle, the two parts or any of the numbers can be sung separately." (G. Finzi)
The cycle has received criticism for certain of Finzi's characteristic features: the lack of an overall tonal scheme, (Banfield, 291) little tonal cohesion within songs, and nonpianistic writing in the accompaniments. (Ferguson) Yet, its strengths remain in the form of his other typical procedures: strong lyrical imitation between voice and accompaniment, exemplary word-settings, marching bass at mention of passing of time, creative and effective quasi-recitative portions, and striking beauty in simple settings such as "The Sigh." (McVeagh) Hardy's rather free style of poetry, which incorporates lines of unequal length and frequent abandonment of a clearly recognizable end rhyme, is complimented by Finzi's varying phrase lengths and cadence elision. (Parker, 12)
✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦
The following excerpts include: a "Summary" and "Appendix" of the song set A Young Man's Exhortation by Carl Stanton Rogers. Permission to post the excerpts was extended by Dr. Rogers' widow, Mrs. Carl Rogers on March 1st, 2011. Dr. Rogers' thesis dated August 1960, is entitled:
A Stylistic Analysis of A Young Man's Exhortation, Opus 14, by Gerald Finzi to words by Thomas Hardy
The excerpts begin on page sixty-six and conclude on page seventy-one of the thesis. (Rogers, 66-71)
SUMMARY
It has been the purpose of this study to determine the chief stylistic devices employed by Gerald Finzi in the composition of this song cycle. For this purpose, an individual analysis has been made of each of the ten songs which constitute the cycle.
The first stylistic element to be considered is the setting of the texts of the songs. the settings for all of the songs are syllabic throughout, the reason for this being perhaps that the composer wishes the various stresses caused by bar line, pitch, and length of note to accord precisely with the vocal declamation. This contention is borne out by at least two factors:
(a) The setting of individual words containing a short but accented syllable. This type of word is usually given a short note value, such as a sixteenth, and is placed on the accented part of the beat. This is shown particularly in "The Sigh." Other songs containing words of this type are "Ditty," "Shortening Days," and "Former Beauties."
(b) The abandonment of bar lines and the intent of the meter signature, providing the opportunity for vocal declamation of the text. One entire song showing this feature is "The Comet at Yell'ham."
Finzi's early studies in counterpoint are reflected in this cycle. Several of the songs evince a distinctly contrapuntal fabric. The device of stretto, fro example, is used in several songs. Sometimes it occurs in a rather fragmentary way, as in "A Young Man's Exhortation"; at other times, however, imitation is stretto form is used in a rather extensive way between the vocal line and the piano accompaniment, as in "Budmouth Dears," and especially in "Shortening Days." Two other contrapuntal devices, strict imitation and retrograde, are used to a lesser degree.
Another device which demonstrates Finzi's vital concern to enhance the meaning of the poetry as much as possible is his use of changes of meter. Sometimes, as in the song "Ditty," the meter signature is abandoned, and the bar lines are placed so as to accord as nearly as possible with the accents of the words. It has been shown, further, in the song "The Dance Continued" that the metrical character of Finzi's vocal line shows a distinct similarity to the meter of such earlier English music as the madrigal and the lute song, in which bar lines did not exist, the accents in the poetry governing the musical accents completely.
Another influence which is reflected in this cycle is that of English folk song. This influence has been shown to exist in five songs of the cycle, all of which are in a folk-song style. The vocal line of each of these songs is built upon a scale in which one degree of that scale is used only slightly, thus demonstrating the influence of the primitive pentatonic scales of English folk song enumerated by Cecil Sharp. The seventh scale degree is conspicuously neglected in four of the songs ("Ditty," "Her Temple," "The Sigh," and "The Dance Continued") and the sixth degree in one song ("Budmouth Dears"). The composer's vocal lines also demonstrate his reliance on several principles of traditional melodic writing:
(a) Finzi's melodic lines contain no leaps involving augmented or diminished intervals.
(b) No melodic interval greater than the octave is ever used.
(c) Seventy-nine percent of all of the intervals in the vocal lines are not larger than the minor third. (See Appendix)
The composer employs the device of word painting in three principal ways in this cycle:
(a) Through the use of harsh dissonances between the vocal line and the piano accompaniment on single words or on short phrases, usually denoting such negative emotions as pain or deterioration.
(b) Through the use of other devices in the piano accompaniment, such as ostinato figurations in the bass, to evoke the mood of a line or several lines of a poem. This characteristic is shown, for example, in such songs as "A Young Man's Exhortation," "Budmouth Dears," and especially in the song "Transformations," where the repeated use of similar motives conveys the mood of restless energy found throughout the poem.
(c) Through the architecture of the vocal line itself, thus serving to convey the feeling of an entire stanza, as shown in "Her Temple," and "The Comet at Yell'ham."
Baroque music has influenced the texture of some of Finzi's songs. This influence has been shown to consist in the use of two upper voices moving in rather rapid contrapuntal lines supported by a bass part which resembles the figured bass line of the Baroque period, as, for example, in the trio sonata.
The harmony of the songs is largely tertian, and in those songs in which an analysis has been made to determine the chord progression based on the fundamental bass line, there is an unusually large amount of chord progression by the interval of the second, which, as has been pointed out (see "A Young Man's Exhortation," "Ditty," and "Budmount Dears"), is a practice contrary to traditional eighteenth and nineteenth century procedure. The composer also uses occasional progressions of parallel chord structures, as shown in "Shortening Days" and "Former Beauties."
Gerald Finzi's songs, which are the result of fastidious and competent craftsmanship, deserve a far wider hearing than they have thus far enjoyed. Although his output is not large, it is to be hoped that "Finzi's quiet and sensitive music, after attracting a t first the attention only of the more perceptive musicians . . . may become more generally recognized . . ."
(Avery, 136 as quoted by: Rogers, 70)
TABLE OF MELODIC INTERVALS (FREQUENCY OF OCCURRENCE
OF INTERVALS IN THE VOCAL LINES OF
A YOUNG MAN'S EXHORTATION)
Song |
Type of Interval and Number of Occurrences* |
|||||||||
P |
m2 |
M2 |
m3 |
M3 |
P4 |
P5 |
m6 |
M6 |
P8 |
|
Part I, No. 1 |
19 |
25 |
62 |
13 |
12 |
12 |
10 |
1 |
2 |
5 |
Part I, No. 2 |
33 |
39 |
114 |
27 |
8 |
12 |
16 |
2 |
2 |
4 |
Part I, No. 3 |
17 |
41 |
101 |
39 |
17 |
4 |
4 |
0 |
0 |
4 |
Part I, No. 4 |
13 |
6 |
19 |
7 |
3 |
7 |
3 |
4 |
1 |
0 |
Part I, No. 5 |
7 |
6 |
18 |
8 |
1 |
7 |
5 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
Part II, No. 1 |
29 |
11 |
50 |
17 |
5 |
15 |
5 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
Part II, No. 2 |
38 |
25 |
84 |
14 |
9 |
9 |
4 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
Part II, No. 3 |
19 |
14 |
40 |
5 |
4 |
11 |
13 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
Part II, No. 4 |
11 |
10 |
58 |
6 |
11 |
7 |
4 |
4 |
1 |
1 |
Part II, No. 5 |
16 |
32 |
81 |
16 |
15 |
23 |
10 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
Total Number of Occurrences . . . |
202 |
209 |
627 |
152 |
85 |
107 |
74 |
19 |
11 |
19 |
Percent of All Intervals . . . |
13 |
14 |
42 |
10 |
5 |
7 |
4 |
1 |
.7 |
1 |
*Key: |
P - prime m2 - minor second M2 - major second m3 - minor third M3 - major third |
P4 -perfect fourth P5 - perfect fifth m6 - minor sixth M6 - major sixth P8 - perfect octave |
||||||||
John Keston makes the following comments about Finzi's song cycle: A Young Man's Exhortation. Mr. Keston extended permission to post this excerpt from his thesis on September 30th, 2011. His thesis dated May 1981, is entitled:
Two Gentlemen from Wessex: The relationship of Thomas Hardy’s poetry to Gerald Finzi’s music.
This excerpt begins on page thirty-four and concludes on page forty-two of the thesis.
Chapter 3
A YOUNG MAN'S EXHORTATION
Although Finzi's formal education was minimal, having left school at age thirteen, he became an exceptional authority on English literature, demonstrated through the works he chose to set to music.
A TENOR SONG CYCLE
There are ten poems by Thomas Hardy arranged into a song cycle for tenor by Gerald Finzi and entitled A Young Man's Exhortation. "A Young Man's Exhortation" is the first poem in the song cycle and so titled by Hardy as an exhortation to himself which will be explained later. Most of Hardy's poetry is easily understood but much of it is personal. For this reason the lay reader and student must refer to Hardy scholars for a complete understanding and explanation of the more intimate works.
Except when Hardy was presenting matters so personal that he felt concealment necessary, he had no intention of being obscure. He said in 1918: 'it is unfortunate for the cause of present day poetry that a fashion for obscurity rages among young poets, so that much good verse is lost by the simple inability of readers to rack their brains to solve conundrums.' He said again in 1920: 'I am very anxious not to be obscure. It is not fair to one's readers. . . Some of the younger poets are too obscure.' Hardy's poetry is obscure only when he wrote of persons, places, events, or philosophical views that he could not explain except in a long footnote or did not care to explain because of the intimate material. (Bailey, 4)
UNDERSTANDING THE TEN POEMS
Reference is made to J. O. Bailey's The Poetry of Thomas Hardy for insights into what prompted Hardy to write the ten poems of Finzi's song cycle for tenor, A Young Man's Exhortation; who an what each poem was about and the locations involved.
An understanding of backgrounds is especially important in reading Hardy's poems. Florence Emily hardy's The Later Years says: 'Speaking generally, there is more autobiography in a hundred lines of Mr. Hardy's poetry than in all the novels.' He wrote to Clive Holland in August, 1923: 'If you read the . . . 'Collected Poems' you will gather more personal particulars than I could give you in an interview, circumstances not being so veiled in the verse as in the novels.' (Bailey, 4)
FINZI'S ONLY SONG CYCLE
Finzi's A Young Man's Exhortation is the only cycle of Hardy poems having a central theme, all other collections being called sets of songs. (Joy Finzi, interview) A Young Man's Exhortation is in two parts. The first, comprising five songs, is headed with the Latin inscription, "mane floreat et transeat" from Psalm 89, meaning, "in the morning it flourisheth and groweth up." The second part, headed, "Vespere decidat induret et arescat," also from Psalm 89, means "in the evening it is cut down and withereth." This section also comprises five songs. (Ferguson, record cover)
THEME
"Finzi was haunted by thoughts of transience and this is only the first and most overt presentation of an idea that reappears continually in his works." (Ferguson, record cover) Life, transience, and death is the theme of this cycle.
SONG GROUPS
Finzi believed in collecting songs into groups. He said that the tendency was for a single song to be lost over a period of time. He would delay publication of any solo song until it could be integrated into a set. Finzi had an acute sense of artistic pacing and variety so that the arrangement of the songs in the cycle A Young Man's Exhortation and indeed all of the other sets have thematic relevance. He was acutely aware that a program should have variety because of his experience conducting the Newbury String Players, therefore great thought and detail went into the selection of poetry for each set of songs. (Joy Finzi, interview)
WORD DISCIPLINE AND "BUDMOUTH DEARS"
Finzi, because he naturally gravitated to the slower musical settings of the more romantically involved poetry, had to work extra hard on the faster songs such as "Budmouth Dears" the third song in the cycle A Young Man's Exhortation. Mrs. Finzi recalls the intensity with which her husband worked on this piece, saying, "He really had to discipline himself." (Joy Finzi, interview)
KEY SEQUENCE AND DYNAMICS
Finzi's good friend Howard Ferguson, a pianist and composer having a fine sense of key sequence, helped Finzi with sequential key patterns in the arrangement of his songs. Ferguson advised Finzi to include dynamic markings, tempi and other instructions in his arrangements. Finzi said, "Anybody who has a sense of music should know what to do with my songs;" to which Ferguson replied, "No, you must give at least a rough idea of how you would like the pieces performed." (Joy Finzi, interview) Ferguson influenced Finzi's thinking about performance instructions and was often in the background encouraging the composer.
THE SONGS
The settings of Hardy poems by Finzi entitled A Young Man's Exhortation and published by Boosey and Hawkes are as follows:
PART I
1 A Young Man's Exhortation
2 Ditty
3 Budmouth Dears
4 Her Temple
5 The Comet at Yell'ham
PART II
1 Shortening Days
2 The Sigh
3 Former Beauties
4 Transformations
Chapter 4
ANALYSIS
Analysis of the poems comprising Finzi's song cycle A Young Man's Exhortation will be confined to:
1. Discussion of the poetic meter of each piece.
2. Rhythmic relationship of the poetic meter to the song.
3. Translations of the texts of each poem into a modern idiom.
4. Discussion of personages, places and events dealt with in each poem.
SCANNING AND POETIC METER
Each poem has been scanned and the poetic meter meticulously analyzed. Every line of every stanza has been broken down into feet and the appropriate accents noted. Where necessary the whole poem will be metered, but on the longer more regularly accented poems analysis will be confined to one stanza since other verses follow the same pattern.
FINZI'S RHYTHMIC RELATIONSHIP TO THE POEMS
Rhythmic relationship of poetic meter to the song setting is discussed but not always at length. This might prove to be an extremely long and involved study because Mrs. Finzi said that her husband paid no heed to musical form when composing his songs, but allowed the natural rhythm of the words themselves to dictate meter and note values. The natural musicality, rising and falling inflections he allowed to dictate the intervallic structure and consequently the melody of the songs. He was always amazed at what people said or what was written about his music. He wrote for the sound alone. (Joy Finzi, interview)
RHYTHMIC NATURALITY
Finzi's setting of A Young Man's Exhortation are indeed masterful in that the natural rhythm of the words is neither disturbed nor contrived into more conventional musical pulsation.
RHYTHMIC EXPERIMENTS RELATIVE TO THE SONG CYCLE
To confirm the statement by Mrs. Finzi that her husband let the natural rhythms of the words dictate the notation, the writer of this thesis conducted an informal experiment with non informed readers. Using three persons on different occasions, the readers were asked to interpret a random stanza from one of the poems while this writer followed the reading in Finzi's musical setting of these stanzas. The first sampling was from "The Sigh." It was most interesting to follow the reader's interpretation of the first stanza which highlighted syllabic stresses of important words and unstressed ones. The reader, were she a musician, could have written almost exactly Finzi's notation. The second and third experiments were conducted with musicians who read the fourth stanza of the first poem, "A Young Man's Exhortation" and the fourth stanza of "Former Beauties" respectively. In both reading Finzi's notation was observed and it was found to relate to the readers' voiced rhythms, and the syllabic stresses naturally performed and native to that person's learned speech habits. It was rewarding to discover that although all three persons who read were North Americans, the inflections and syllabic stresses did not alter radically from those more familiar to both Hardy and Finzi.
A MODERN IDIOM
It has been found necessary to put into a more modern idiomatic from some of the poetry so that the reader might better understand what the poet is saying. Some of the Victorian language of Hardy is unfamiliar to the modern ear and where necessary sentences and even individual words have been translated.
PERSONAGES PLACES AND EVENTS
Hardy did not wish his poetry to be obscure. He criticized other poets of his day for obscurity. However, much of his poetry was personal and he did not wish to go into lengthy explanations about any specific piece. Where necessary and where the meanings are somewhat veiled a full explanation of who and what the poems are about and their location is included. Some interesting and intimate facts about Hardy are brought to light and it is interesting to note the order in which Finzi placed the poems in his song cycle. The poems written by Hardy were not ordered nor written sequentially by him. Finzi's thought of life, transience and death seem to have influenced the order in which he place them.
John Keston made the preceding comments about Finzi's song cycle: A Young Man's Exhortation. Mr. Keston extended permission to post this excerpt from his thesis on September 30th, 2011. His thesis dated May 1981, is entitled:
Two Gentlemen from Wessex: The relationship of Thomas Hardy’s poetry to Gerald Finzi’s music.
This excerpt began on page thirty-four and concluded on page forty-two of the thesis.