Gerald Finzi's Letters, 1915-1956

DIANA MCVEAGH is a Vice-President of the Elgar Society. Her interests range from Josquin to Birtwistle, but she writes mostly about English Romantics. She is the author of Elgar: His Life and Music (Dent, 1955), and the highly acclaimed Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music (Boydell, 2005 and 2010), and Elgar: The Music Maker (Boydell, 2007). She has contributed to the New Grove (1980, 2001) and the Dictionary of National Biography.

Stephen Banfield:
Gerald Finzi was an eager and urbane letter-writer, and Diana McVeagh, now in her 96th year, has done him proud. Her edition is a triumph of determined common sense and value for money.

Andrew Ford:
Diana McVeagh, who has edited a massive, 1080-page two-kilo volume of the composer's letters, is clear-headed and unsentimental in her estimation of his importance. . . . The book is fascinating for its glimpses into not only into the creative mind of a lesser composer and his circle, but also a time and place.

David Wright:
The 41-year span of these letters represents a substantial resource as an informal social history of the time and of the sensibilities and musical activities of one man and his circle. . . . Because of the interesting variety of Finzi's correspondents - including important movers and shakers in the British musical life of the time, as well as those now rarely remembered - these letters add a significant depth of individual flavour to the more general historical treatments.

Martin Bussey:
The publication of Diana McVeagh's long-awaited edition of Finzi's letters is properly a cause for celebration. They are an invaluable resource for those interested in British music during the first half of the twentieth century. The letters encompass an amazingly broad spectrum of musical life. The painstakingly researched cast of musical executants, composers and writers (as well as pomologists) means that countless students of Finzi's era will find new resources or be able to extend their existing understanding.

Andrew Burn:
By bringing together this collection of Finzi's letters, arguably among the finest of any 20th-century British composer, admirers and enthusiasts of the music of this period are in Diana McVeagh's debt: this volume is a treasure trove to return to - again, and again.

Jonathan Clinch:
In our age of extravagant promotion, intensive publicity, and the frequent over-politicisation of many writers, I believe it is hard to over-estimate the importance of Diana McVeagh's volume of Finzi letters. . . . By combining this vast trove of letters with a first-class commentary, we can experience at first-hand this vivid depiction of a certain strand within twentieth-century British music. [It] reveals not just an individual but a whole community.

Lewis Foreman:
This wonderful labour of love (and it must have been a labour) preserves in a quite special way the history of the life and times of a very specific musical milieu as well as Finzi's personal musical history . . . a literary and musical "Everest" elegantly conquered: a quite outstanding achievement.

Jeremy Dibble:
This unique volume ... is a treasure trove, beautifully organized and entrancing to read.... Finzi appears to have been an inveterate writer of often long and detailed letters, and his amenable style of prose makes for compelling reading.