A Young Man's Exhortation

Although Finzi produced over 50 settings of Thomas Hardy’s poems, the closest the composer comes to a song-cycle (rather than simply a set of songs) is in A Young Man’s Exhortation. Composed between 1926 and 1929 (though not published until 1933), these 10 songs are divided into two sets of five. Latin subtitles are attached to each of the two groups—two halves of the same verse from Psalm 90: “In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up. In the evening it is cut down and withereth.” A cycle that pivots from youthful hope—heard in the romantic swell of “Ditty” and the restless, dancing energy of “Budmouth Dears”—to an acceptance of life’s transience is already on the turn by “Her Temple”, where the ardent poet’s name first fades from memory. The arresting “The Comet at Yell’ham” that follows, its high piano opening unmoored from harmonic certainty, launches us into a stranger world. But there’s resolution in the bittersweet acceptance of the final song “The Dance Continued”.