Three Anthems

Three sacred anthems for mixed choir and organ—My lovely one (1946), God is gone up (1951) and Welcome, sweet and sacred feast (1953)—are grouped together as Finzi’s Op. 27. A mystical quality, shared by the composer’s better-known Lo, the full, final sacrifice, runs through the set, mirroring rapt, often ecstatic verses by 17th-century poets Edward Taylor and Henry Vaughan. If My lovely one was not subtitled “Marriage Anthem” you wouldn’t guess from the muted musical palette and yearning, minor-key mood that prevails. Composed for the wedding of Finzi’s sister-in-law, it’s the shortest of the set, but charged with a quiet intensity. Echoing voice entries each strive to grasp the harmonic resolution—glimpsed briefly in the central section—that eludes them. “God is gone up with a triumphant shout,” Taylor writes, and this second anthem explodes into life with a brilliant fanfare. But that brassy exuberance soon morphs into something other-worldly as “heaven’s sparkling courtiers fly” in nimble, darting upper voices. The anthem ends with its feet firmly back on earth with a return of the dazzling opening music. The episodic Welcome, Sweet and Sacred Feast, a meditation on the Eucharist, showcases Finzi’s gift for word-painting: the blinding dazzle as God’s hand opens; the sudden breaking of the veil of life; the lyrical new shoots of “O rose of Sharon!”