Earth and Air and Rain

“If I had to be cut off from everything, that would be the one book I should choose.” Gerald Finzi’s music bears witness to the composer’s devotion to Thomas Hardy’s poetry: over 50 Hardy settings over the course of his career, with many more poems optimistically earmarked. Ten of these come courtesy of Earth and Air and Rain, the set of songs for baritone and piano composed between 1932 and 1936, and premiered complete in 1945. There is no narrative through the songs—rather they add up to a meditation on the passing of time: ageing, relationships forged and lost, nature growing and decaying, all life ultimately reduced to “earth, and air, and rain”. The stylistic breadth of the cycle reflects the variety of its verses: there’s musical balladry in “Lyonesse” and moment-not-seized love-song “To Lizbie Brown”; strange, chromatic other-worldliness in “Waiting Both” (a conversation between the poet and a star); dramatic recitative in “The Clock of the Years”; and runaway energy and unvarnished folk-exuberance in “Rollicum-Rorum”.