Gerald Finzi - Requiem da Camera : Prelude

The "Requiem da Camera", of which you hear the "Prelude" in this video, was composed by Finzi in 1924 in memory of his teacher Ernest Farrar, who died on the Somme in 1918. It was his first attempt at an extended work and is played here by the City of London Sinfonia, conducted by Richard Hickox. The complete work features poems by John Masefield, Thomas Hardy and Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, all written during the First World War, and all concerned with the English agricultural landscape and the effect of war on those who work in it. I have included Thomas Hardy’s "In Time of The Breaking of the Nations” beneath. The paintings of agricultural scenes are by the Scottish artist Archibald Russell Watson Allan, and the paintings of the First World War are by the English artist Cecil Constant Philip Lawson. "Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk. Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass; Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass. Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by: War's annals will cloud into night Ere their story die."