Finzi, Channel Firing
Last November, around Veteran’s Day, we featured several works that dealt with World War I. George Butterworth’s 1911 setting of Housman’s The Lad’s in Their Hundreds presaged the death of so many, including Butterworth himself. We also featured Ivor Gurney’s In Flanders and Claude Debussy’s Noël des enfants qui n’ont plus de maisons.
For the Debussy song, we turned to baritone John Brancy accompanied by Peter Dugan who released an entire CD of songs focusing on the war by English, French, and American composers. That collection, entitled “A Silent Night,” begins with the current selection, Finzi’s Channel Firing. Brancy and Dugan describe the project:
The songs of A Silent Night tell stories of every facet of the Great War; from the soldiers in the trenches, to their loved ones waiting expectantly at home; from children who lost their parents to comrades who lost their friends; from bravery to fear. Almost every song was composed during the Great War.
Brancy and Dugan followed this project up with another entitled “The Journey Home” with songs dealing with those returning from World War I as well as songs of others seeking to find home. They preview some of the selections in this video:
Gerald Finzi (1901-1956), featured previously here, is among the English composers of the early 20th century, along with Vaughan Williams and Holst, who worked and composed in the field of English folk songs. Finzi was drawn to the poetry of Thomas Hardy for this song and many others. He composed five song cycles based on Hardy’s poems. Channel Firing comes from Finzi’s cycle Before and After Summer, Op. 16 composed between 1932 and 1949.
Hardy wrote Channel Firing in 1914 just before the outbreak of World War I. It describes British warships in the English Channel firing their heavy guns and the waking of dead in a nearby graveyard who mistake it for Judgment Day. The full text can be found here.