Gerald Finzi's Requiem da Camera (op. 3b, 1924), with Particular Emphasis on Editorial Problems in its Third Movement

• Main Author: Cook, Casey
• Other Authors: Chamberlain, Bruce B.
• Language: en
• Published: The University of Arizona. 2013
• Subjects: Camera; Choral; Finzi; Requiem; World War I; Music; British
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/283652

English composer Gerald Finzi's (1901-1956) early life was plagued by the deaths of close friends and family, and the beginning of the first world war. Before his eighteenth birthday, Finzi lost his three brothers, his father and his beloved composition teacher. To mourn these deaths and perhaps as a reaction to the first world war, Finzi began to compose his Requiem da Camera (op. 3b, 1924). Finzi completed three movements of this four-movement work during his lifetime, and left sketches for the completion of the unfinished third movement. Beginning in 1984, Philip Thomas, with the blessing of the Finzi family and the Finzi Trust, began examining the extant sketches in an attempt to complete the unfinished third movement. Thomas completed and published his edition of the Requiem da Camera in 1992. After a careful examination of this completion, a number of editorial questions were raised. This document was created to address these questions. It sets out historical parameters to provide context for Finzi's original composition, goes on to describe the development of liturgical and non-liturgical requiem composition, and discusses the development of British non-liturgical requiem (and requiem-like) compositions in the twentieth century. Thomas's completed third movement is compared to Finzi's source material. Four major areas of discrepancy are presented and examined to bring the movement closer to Finzi's original compositional intent. The document concludes with a new completion of the third movement. It combines the work of Finzi and Thomas, along with information gleaned in the process of creating this document, the remainder of the original Finzi composition, and other of Finzi's compositions with similar qualities from this era.