{Hello. This is a recording of an essay I have written informing the paintings I made at the former house of the English composer Gerald Finzi (1901-1956). It is also to serve as a reminder for my future self who at some point many years from now may not remember. The essay was written in 2021, but after some recent adjustments and addendums, this is how it currently exists sitting in my little studio in our apartment in Moabit, Berlin on the 27th of September 2024 }

The first Finzi record that I came across was in the Poppy Trust Charity shop in Stalham, Norfolk. With my interest in Finzi already having blossomed for sometime through the internet, there was a certain serendipity, a divinity even, in stumbling across that first LP - the 1979 Argo pressing of For St Cecilia - in that small shop on Stalham High Street. It is a jubilance of the heart that can only be felt in the hunt for an archaic object such as the vinyl record, in lonesome cardboard boxes under railings of winter jackets, especially if it is 50 pence and in mint condition - which in this case it was.

For Finzi, although celebrated, is not so widely known as the other English composers of that time such as Benjamin Britten or Vaughan Williams, whose records you are more likely to come across in these shops, and they in turn are some what of a rarity compared to the Stetson tide of Jim Reeves LP’s flooding English charity shops today.

It is certain that in previous years I would have turned my nose up at this quite particular and very English genre of music but several years ago a shifting of the axis did occur. I cannot point to a specific event that triggered this, but one indication that the cogs had turned was the appreciation I took to the selection of music chosen by Sarah Lucas for her episode of Private Passions on Radio 3. Four of the nine pieces she chose were Benjamin Britten tunes, three of which were arrangements for piano and voice. It was ‘English Song’ in its most unadulterated form.

Living in Suffolk, the county Britten had been so tied to fifty years earlier, Lucas spoke of her love of the music in part due to its connection to those East Anglian surroundings. This interest in place; of grounding; of connecting the here and now with what came before it is something I would say I share when it comes to my appreciation of music - and also, of paintings. Born 50 miles up the coast from (Mr.) Britten, I was very interested in all Lucas had to say that day and decidedly went looking for more of the same.

I have always been drawn towards musicians that exist outside of the center in musical history. Perhaps this is because I have always considered myself to be a figure dwelling in the margins. Memories of being a young boy in rural Scotland, cast aside by the girls in the playground in favour of the more appealing boys - who didn’t have English accents - resonate in my search for a reason for this marginal orientation, but of course who really knows.

Whenever I become enamoured beyond a certain point with a musician from the past, I feel the urge to learn more about them and their life. {I am also usually quite quick to look for where they died, and may have been buried - A morbid fascination that has also been present since my playground years}. I want to have just a little taste of what existed behind the sounds that I am now hearing all these years later. There are those who believe you should know nothing of the painter when looking at the painting in front of you. The canvas on the wall should be viewed entirely for its own merit. It is my belief that those that go through life with this mentality are merely tip toeing in the shallows of experience. I say step down in to the depths and live the richer life you should be living!

7.12am Bakerloo Line

7th December 2019

Gerald Finzi was born in 1901 to Jewish parents of prosperous Sephardi and Ashkenazi families. The Finzis had already been in the UK for a number of generations but their roots where in Germany and Italy, the latter of which the Finzi name has an extensive history in. On the first performance of his work in London in 1928, a reviewer for the Times wondered “why a composer of that name dealt so confidently in a definitively English idiom”. Seeing him take a bow at the end of the concert, and being satisfied by his visual appearance “helped to solve the problem”. It was clear he had assimilated. This is a fine example of the struggle, and even embarrassment, that Gerald had with his surname throughout his life, who having distanced himself from his Jewish faith, simply wanted to be considered as an English composer.

As The Times reviewer did discover, the music of Finzi, despite his name, is distinctly English in nature. His dedication to pastoral themes neatly places him in the history books beside the previously mentioned Benjamin Britten or Vaughan Williams. Of course, this means that he exists in a canon of classical music that is often considered light, quaint and simply unfashionable compared to its cutting edge continental counterparts. When asking the owner of a rather eccentric old Berlin classical music store recently, whether he had any English music, he merely responded “Was there any?”.

The English sound was described by the American violinist Yehudi Menuhin as reflecting “the climate and the vegetation which know no sharp edges”, a description meant as a complement that could equally be read as a criticism. It is a music that is “not given to shattering utterances” or “pronouncements of right and wrong” and this is somewhat characteristic of Finzi’s output.

Conflict and virtuosity in music were of little importance to him. Often described as mild mannered, his output was not giant. Though his music was published and performed in his lifetime, he did not meet fame in the same fashion that Britten or Vaughan Williams did, the latter being a close friend to Finzi, the former being a composer he respected but did not appreciate {Coincidentally he did briefly employ Britten, in his youth, as a copyist. A fact he enjoyed bringing out at the dinner table after Britten became a household name}. He did not receive fame, but neither did he seek it. If one reads the volume of letters between his great friend, the Northern Irish composer Howard Ferguson, and he (published by Boydell in 2001) we can see two distinctly different characters, one constantly travelling around the world to different musical and ambassadorial engagements and the other working mostly out of a small village in Hampshire {It would, however, be wrong to view him as hermetic. The Finzi’s lead a very social life out of Church farm, their Hampshire home, with notable artists, musicians and friends alike coming through their doors. They did also travel abroad a handful of times}.

He had a troubled youth, having lost his father and his three brothers by the time he was a teenager. Boarding school proved difficult, as did the years after. It was not until his marriage to Joyce Black in 1933 that his life began to settle down. As recounted by his son Kiffer on the 40th anniversary of his father’s death, it was then that happiness in his life truly began. And though the next twenty years building a family were happy ones, the isolation he felt in his previous chapter perhaps explain the somewhat ‘train spotter’-esque interests he had later {biographer Stephen Banfield’s words, not mine}. Notably was his interest in forgotten eighteenth century English composers, of which he would scour libraries for, collect and – in an attempt to revive - also publish. Another of Finzi’s major life interests was pomology, particularly apples, and it was Vaughan Williams, who became somewhat of a father figure to Finzi, that noted the curious similarity of a long lost English composer and a rare apple variety.

Although many of the apple trees he planted at Church Farm have been cut down in the seventy years since his death, his entire collection of 18th century English Music is saved in the University of St Andrews library, where he was an external examiner. His collection of poetry, another of his great interests, is housed in The Finzi Room at the University of Reading.

    

The first Finzi record on the day it was bought.

Some Norfolk quinces outside the window.

Now many months later, it is difficult to remember exactly how it came to happen, but in my search for more information about the man I looked up Ashmansworth the village that he had lived in till his death in 1956. I was in fact in Berlin at the time, and looked up the village on Google Maps. On that autumnal German evening, with the aid of Google Street View, I was able to walk down the country roads virtually and, comparing with photos in the Banfield Finzi biography that I was reading at the time, identify Church Farm.

Seeing that it was in travelling distance from London, an idea developed in me to take a trip to Ashmansworth once I returned to the UK, a pilgrimage if you will, to see the village and the house where much of his music came from. Now Church Farm is no visitor attraction. There is no cafe. And one cannot go inside and have a tour. It is just a house, in a village; with people living in it. A fact that perhaps made it all the more compelling to go and have a looky.

If travelling all that way, why not do something there? I could make some drawings perhaps. I’m no plein Air painter, but why just make a tentative drawing and schlep it back to the studio to be worked on, when you could just make a real painting in that very moment then and there. So that is exactly what I decided to do.

It is important to note at this stage, that for some years up to that point, compulsive behavior had been increasingly plaguing my daily life. Rituals with my front door when leaving the house, or the oven before going to bed had been consuming significant periods of the day, to the extent that I would dread having to leave the house, studio or work on my own. If somebody else watches you lock the door you minimize your rituals in fear of embarrassment. If somebody else locks the door, the problem is evaded entirely. I have since learnt that this is classic avoidance behaviour.

The best way I can explain these compulsions is that something feels broken in the brain. A wire in the circuit has been cut. Just looking at a light switch isn’t enough to satisfy you that it is really turned off. So one develops routines, patterns, rituals to trigger that response in your brain. Tap, Tap, Tap, 1 2 3 , 1 2 3. 1 2 3. Yes. it is turned off.

This behavior was creeping into the manner in which I was making paintings and it was not uncommon for paintings to be tinkered with for years without being finished. I was frustrated by this and was seeking some opportunity for change. The thought of some painting in the countryside, nurtured by the warm hand of pilgrimage, was one such opportunity.

In the effort to rally against my compulsive monster within I first felt it important to apply some ground rules to my trip. Firstly, to remove the possibility of tinkering, I decided that all painting must take place in Ashmansworth and that none could be done once returned to the studio in London. I also decided not to shy away from the impracticality of oil paint outside of the studio - in favor of acrylic or watercolour for instance - so constructed a special wooden box that canvases could be screwed into so that their wet surfaces would not touch. Constructing this box made me think back to the Auerbach documentary I watched on VHS in the Edinburgh College of Art library years ago, and his dealer/gallerist who would screw his paintings into wooden boxes when Auerbach thought they were finished. They would then stay in the boxes for months so he couldn’t see them or change them. And there they would dry (if I remember correctly. I should watch that again).

I constructed my box from leftover pieces of wood from the crate I made to send my paintings to Milan in, including the metal handle that I salvaged from an old professionally made crate that was sitting covered in rat piss in the recycling center down the alley from the studio. The various symbols I lovingly painted on the crate, full of cheer for the show ahead, can still be seen on the box. That show and the gallerists turned out to be a fucking disaster.

The box can hold up to 4 small canvases by screwing different arrangements of one or two canvases per inside wall. My palette, an offcut of hardboard coated with Alkyd primer, then gets sandwiched between, with a 1cm gap each side, due to some cleverly placed pieces of wood.

The canvases themselves were all stretched with off cuts from the three varieties of oil-primed linen sold at Atlantis in London Fields. Some of the stretcher bars are also from Atlantis, others are from Russell & Chappell via A.P Fitzpatrick. The linen has been tacked into the sides and reverse edge of the stretcher bars similar to how they used to do it (in the olden days). I remember as an undergraduate student absolutely hating the look of such canvases, but as so often happens, my tastes have shifted and I now think they look fabulous. One element of this is a nostalgic interest. All those Nash and Hitchens canvases likely were tacked on the side, as are the various paintings I see in my parents house, such as my grandfather’s, one of which had hung in my small bedroom in London, side tacks visible from my mattress sitting on the floor down below. Simply put, it makes me feel happy painting on something that has been prepared in the same way. There is little I can come up with when it comes to the actual usefulness of tacking the sides other than that pre primed linen can bulge out on the edges and whacking a tack into it curbs that slightly. One positive to using tacks in general, however, does mean that you can do without staples, which are ugly things. They slice up the canvas to no end, and a few years down the line with a bit of rust they just seem to disintegrate.

In addition to my canvases and box, I also took a small fold out Chinese stool. The particular stool I took was brought back from Tengzhou City, and is a generic street food style stool that can be seen in any Chinese town. So far, I have brought back five of these stools from China.

And that concludes the details of my painting hardware.

My beautiful box, with the first trip's four blank canvases

I do ever so much enjoy planning a trip. To figure out how exactly to get to an obscure location you have never been to before and go about doing it is a terrific thing. Some evidence of the stereotypical male attribute in taking satisfaction, or indeed comfort, from lists and timetables - dare I say in a Train Spotter esque manner - may be at play here and an indulgence in various timetables on the occasion of this pilgrimage I did take.

I don’t think I am disclosing any secrets on the location of, or putting anyone in Ashmansworth’s life in danger, by disclosing any of this information (as it is all available online with but a little bit of searching); but the method I needed to take to get to Ashmansworth on the 7th of November 2019 was as follows:

I must leave my flat in Hackney, East London at 6.30am to get the overground then underground, in order to take the 7:36am Great Western train from Paddington to Newbury, in order to catch the 9.40am Stagecoach bus towards Andover. Getting off at Doily Bottom and walking 30 minutes would get me to Church Farm by 10.30. By catching the last bus back to Newbury at 17:15 and doing the four hour sequence in reverse, with a pint or two thrown in, I would be home by 9pm.

    

The door to my flat, 06:20

I sometimes take a photo of a door to make sure I have definitely locked it.
There are many such photos on my phone of plug sockets and oven knobs.

As mentioned before, the experience of actually getting to an almost random location in the English countryside is a very rewarding one. Just as the timetables on the Internet said, the train did actually travel to Newbury, as did the small bus from Newbury towards Andover, and I sat on them both. It was some wonderment at that fact I did feel as I stepped off the bus into the very same landscape of fields and hedges that I had viewed through google maps one month earlier. So with my box of canvases in one hand, box of oil paints in the other, and stool strapped to my back I set forth on the small winding road up the hill towards Ashmansworth.

It was about a twenty minute saunter up past some farm buildings, some cottages - at each of which I wondered “is that it?” “Is that it?” - before a few more corners gave way in the distance to the facade that I had unmistakably seen in my book. A few more turns and there I was standing at its perimeter flint Wall. “Wow I actually Got here” I thought.

Joy and Gerald, with the help of architect Peter Harland, had built Church Farm in 1939, the outer wall having been constructed with the flints of the dilapidated farm house that had stood there before. It was this prominent flint wall that while being built had caused the upset residents of the village to make jokes about the new incomers perhaps being nudists, due to it, rather incongruously, concealing the house and garden from view. Some of the same apple trees planted by Finzi in the garden can still be seen peering over the wall. His love of apples had seen the grounds of Church Farm, in its heyday, host around 400 apple trees. With a particular interest in rare breeds, he apparently even saved several varieties from extinction {There are five contributions from Finzi existing in the National Fruit Collection in Kent: Baxter’s Pearmain, Lord Lennox, Mead’s Broading, Morris’s Russett and Norman’s Pippin}, Although extensive in variety, many of his apples were known by his children to be far from delicious.

It is perhaps soppy to refer to that first experience of seeing Church Farm, its wall and the red apples beyond it as being touching, but it was. The actual painting that happened on that first day, however, was disheartening.

Sitting outside for six hours in November is cold, even with two pairs of trousers. And for the first try, I hadn’t yet developed any way of working, any way of putting paint to canvas in a constrained period of time while sitting on the side of a road shivering. In November it gets dark at about 4pm, so the final 45 minutes or so of painting are done in the dark. So despite the great pleasure of fulfilling my pilgrimage, there was a frustration as I descended the hill in the winter night. This was relieved, however, by the knowledge that I was simply going to have to return again, and soon. This pilgrimage would have to continue.

Me with Church Farm in the background
Phone balanced in hedge for self timer. 7th November 2019.

It became compulsory to take one photo like this each trip.

Upon opening my box the next day in the studio, the paintings within were not as disappointing as I had previously thought but three of four were certainly not finished. It was clear that my hope of creating a pile of fresh one-hitter paintings - as a reaction to overworked studio paintings of the past - had become slightly more complicated. The solution, however, was a simple one. Because I was not going to do any work on them in the studio, if the paintings weren’t finished I would just have to take them back to Ashmansworth to finish them. And so that winter one trip turned into two. And two turned into four. The process I developed was to always bring one or two blank canvases to start new paintings with but also bring at least one unfinished one from a previous trip back to continue painting on. Some paintings were completed on their first trip, some took two trips, and one or two even had three trips back and forth.

"Ribston"

Oil on linen

20cm x 25cm

7th November 2019.

On my second visit to Ashmansworth, while sitting on the bench in the yard of St James’, the 12th century church opposite Church Farm, I met the church warden. As I sat merrily drinking my coffee after my four hour commute to that spot, he explained that he had seen the note that I left in the church visitors book two weeks earlier and said something along the lines of “so you’re the painter”. For the life of me I cannot remember his name, but the various times I would see him in the churchyard over the coming visits he was very pleasant. We had some nice chats and he was interested in my comings and goings. He knew I was there due to an interest in Finzi and would share pieces of information with me. For although Gerald died in 1956, the Finzi family had in fact owned Church Farm until only a few years before my arrival and he had known them well. I had mistakenly thought that the family might have left long before, and that my little project would therefor only have been concerned with a twenty year period of the house’s history some eighty years back, which would have been quite tenuous.

Geralds Eldest son Kiffer had live at Church farm in the years after his fathers death. {His real name was in fact Christopher, but his childhood mispronunciation was taken on by all}. On a later trip, the warden would inform me of the recent death of Kiffer. There was to be a memorial at the church later in the week, and he suggested that that would perhaps not be a good day to come painting, if I had been thinking about it.

Kiffer, a musician and conductor, had been married to the flautist Hilary du Pre. There was some contention when their life at Church Farm and tangled affair with Hilary’s sister, the well know cellist Jacqueline du Pre, was revealed in Hilary and brother Piers’s co written memoir “A Genius in the family”. The book and following film were controversial and numerous well known figures, such as the guitarist John Williams – a close friend to Jacqueline - suggested that they had shifted considerably from the real narrative and painted and unfair and ugly picture of their dead sister.

I would later take a copy of Elgar’s cello concerto played by Jacqueline du Pre from my grandfather’s record collection. Rather touchingly, inside there was an article on Jacqueline du Pre from the newspaper sometime after her death in 1987, presumably folded and placed there by my grandfather. Interestingly, upon her death, the cello she played in this recording, The Davidov Stradivarius from 1512, was given to another well known cellist, Yo Yo Ma. To almost complete my collection of the Finzi records pressed by the much loved English classical music recording company Lyrita, I have just purchased a copy of the Finzi cello concerto played by none other than Yo Yo Ma – his recording debut nonetheless. The recording, however, took place some eight years before he inherited the Stradivarius from Du Pre. {the fact that these antique celebrity instruments exist and are played, and apparently even left in taxis (!), is quite enthralling. Real time can be spent reading through the list and histories of the various Stradivarius instruments.}

Tangent aside, Kiffer’s life, at least in the public realm, has been somewhat defined by the du Pre love triangle, however, he did enjoy a career in music, most notably as a conductor. He, in fact, conducted for the first recording of his father’s piece Dies Natalis (dee-es Nat-Ah-lis). In later life he and Hilary also opened a health food shop in Newbury called Sunstore.

    

Coffee on the St James' bench, December 2019

The side of a painting while back in the studio, November 2019

"Laxton's Superb"

Oil on linen

30cm x 40cm

19th November 2019.

On that same visit that I met the church warden for the first time, I also met the current owner of Church Farm. Now, I have noticed a general trend of people being very suspicious towards encountering painters in the countryside, or more specifically encountering me in the countryside. My colleague Alice, and confidant on all things painterly, thought that if I were a female painter, people might react differently. Age is likely a factor too. If you are going to come across a painter on a country road, perhaps you would expect them to be in their twilight years, not in the throes of youth, such as I am.

I had previously shied away from this particular spot to paint, as it was perhaps more noticeable, being on a verge just outside of the front gate, showing a clearer view of the house than from anywhere else. It is here that you can see the blue plaque on the wall exclaiming “Home from 1939-1956 of Gerald Finzi English Composer (1901-1956)”. I was sat some 45 minutes into my painting, which was going rather well, when a car pulled in off the main road to turn into the house driveway. The car stopped, the window wound down and the lady driving, in an unsettled tone, asked “can I help you?”

“I’m just painting” I said.

“What, my house?”,

“Well the front gate really”,

“Well I wish you would have asked permission first”.

Feeling rather sheepish at this point I felt it best to simply apologise, which I did several times and then with an optimistic hope of appeasement asked if she would like to see my painting. To which she got out of the car, engine still running, and walked over to have a look, arms crossed (it was cold), and said:

“hmm that’s cool. I’m sorry, it’s just we get some strange people around here”

“What? people on Finzi pilgrimages?” I said.

“No, not that. People staking out houses and things”

Then there was a little more chat that I can’t really remember, but after she saw her front gate rendered in my dulcet pastel tones and saw that I was in fact not the look-out for a criminal gang ransacking her house, the tone became much more pleasant. Peace treaty brokered, I ended things with:

“I’m planning on coming back to do some more painting so if you see a strange man sitting on the side of the road, it might well be me”.

"Margil (winter Orchard)"

Oil on linen

25cm x 30cm

7th December 2019.

The second trip

7th November 2019.

I do not think you need permission to paint something, especially if you are standing on a public road while doing so - perhaps if you were camped out with a telescopic lens that would be another thing - nonetheless, I did feel embarrassed by the encounter. These pilgrimages could be viewed as being somewhat perverted, and sitting there that day I, rightly or wrongly, felt ever so slightly like the foot fetishist caught with his nose in the used sock drawer.

However, in the St James’ Church Visitors Book, I made the discovery that I was not alone in my pursuit for pilgrimage. After all the research that had lead me to be there on a Novembers day in 2019, I discovered that only the day before a couple from Australia had also visited the church on a self proclaimed ‘Finzi pilgrimage’. In fact, if I kept turning back the pages I found numerous others. There were not vast numbers of Finzians filling the pages, and it didn’t take much leafing before you got back to the 1980’s and 1970’s. In addition to those on journeys of discovery and those who had been visiting the few that are buried in the small yard, there were also scrawlings from various members of the Finzi family themselves, memorably Kiffer and Joy - their cursive still so fresh after all these years sealed in this earthly volume.

On the topic of like minded pilgrims, I was also rather reassured by reading the foreword for the Finzi Friends “The Clock of The Years” Anthology” in which it mentions the chairman and the author’s - both “avid English music people-collectors” – and their 1978 trips to visit locations relevant to composers of the genre. These involved visits to “various relatives, housekeepers or graves”. I read this to mean that I am not the only one with a fascination in final resting places.

The church was heavily tied to the Finzi’s whose house was located just across the lane. Gerald had established The Newbury String Players, a group of amateur local musicians, to provide concerts in the local villages and towns during wartime when live music was scarce. St James’ served as the location for the first Newbury String Players performance on 28th December 1940 {Slightly confusingly the first NSP performance is noted by Finzi biographer Diana McVeagh, in her farewell tribute to Joy, as being at St Martin’s Church in East Woodhay, 5 miles up the road from Ashmansworth. It is also mentioned on geraldfinzi.org as being at Enborne Church which is a further 3 miles away. A letter written by Gerald about that first performance, noted in Banfields book, states it as being at St James’s, And that is the one I have chosen to believe. Incidentally, on the subject of writing a biography Banfield later summarised the difficulties of interpreting the historical information rather well. “People are such messy creatures”}.

A group of 100 descended on St James’s that December’s day, a twenty fold increase on their typical congregation, which Finzi in his modest nature was apparently embarrassed by. Some local residents were unhappy about non-believers coming inside the church and others displeased at some of the secular music that was performed. No applause was allowed, as was the norm in churches at that time, but the event appeared to be a great success. Not at least because of the collection that was taken that was notably higher than normal, which did please the churchwarden.

The Newbury String Players went on to play 378 more concerts over 39 years. Joy, Nigel (their second son) and Kiffer all spent time in the ensemble, with the latter leading them after his fathers death.

On visit four on the 6th of December 2019, at around 5pm, I gathered my belongings under the light coming out from the church window as a small choir was rehearsing inside for a concert that evening. What a city dweller often forgets about the countryside is how dark it is at nighttime, but also how quiet it is. As Christmas approached, it was already known that this was the last trip of the year before a return to my own family in Scotland, and the sound of this choir floating out into the dark churchyard served as a heart-warming marker of that. I soaked up the scene for as long as would allow before heading off into the night to make the last bus back.

I can’t remember if it was the first time or second time that I stood out on the road to wave the bus down that it sped straight past. There is no actual bus stop on the road so I would make sure to get down there with a few minutes to spare then I would sit on my painting box beside the Ashmansworth road sign, drink whatever coffee was left in my flask and look upwards for any sign of the bus coming down the hill. Sometimes it would arrive 1 minute after I got there, other times it would take 45 minutes, leaving me to nervously wonder if it had passed just before I made it to the road. When I would finally see it’s lights speeding down through the silhouettes of the trees up ahead, I would quickly jump on to the road and wave my arms frantically (Later I learnt to bring my bike lights as an aid to being more visible). Any way, one time as I waved with the longing of a castaway to a ship out to sea, the bus just flew straight past, my heart sinking as I was left in the darkness wondering how else I could get back to Newbury. Thankfully it pulled over 50 metres down the road. The driver wasn’t expecting to see someone at night time in the middle of the countryside and it took him 50 metres to figure out why I was waving at him. That was the only time, I almost didn’t catch the bus.

"Wyken Pippin (St James)"

Oil on linen

30cm x 25cm

2019

"Norman's Pippin (Dolly)"

Oil on linen

20cm x 25cm

19th November 2019

On more than one occasion, once it started to get dark, I would be sitting at the side of the road hunched over my painting box, bringing my painting session to a close and a car would drive past. Clearly having caught a glimpse of something not-quite-right, the car would rather ominously reverse back and beam it’s lights in my direction, with no words spoken, the car would then drive on again. Night time painting, as it turned out, became a rather defining characteristic of the four trips I made that winter.

As darkness fell on the day I met the current occupant of the house – and feeling rather sheepish still - with my remaining blank canvas for that day, I painted a quick outline of a particular view and scuttled off down the road to a piece of grass out of view from the house. There, with the remaining thirty minutes of my time, I filled in the colours over the drawing as night truly fell.

“Do you need any help over there?” said a couple who were walking their dog, the beams from their head torches being their only recognisable feature.

“I’m just painting” I replied.

Out of the darkness, the reply came: “But it’s dark”

To which I returned: “The best painting happens in the dark!”

And this was the truth that I did speak.

Each of those first four trips I would repeat this same ritual of painting an outline at some point during the day, then later - in the last 30 minutes before the bus - rushedly fill the colours in under the black of night. Those paintings, made in a fraction of the time compared to some of their counterparts, are the most successful of any that I painted.

Trip four. Two Hats

7th December 2019.

This phenomenon takes me back in time to 2005 or so, on our school art department trip to the Isle of Skye. One evening Mr Prosser sat us outside of the cottage we were staying in and in the dead of night, presented each of us with a palette of paint, the colours on which we could not see. We were then to paint the dark landscape in front of us based on the one characteristic of the splodges of paint we could see, which was the tone. When we then took the paintings inside to examine by the warm fire, these dark moonlit landscapes were in fact rendered in bright and garish pinks, yellows, blues and greens. A trick on us had been played. Each evening that I sat on my grassy verge arousing the interest of night time passers-by in Ashmansworth I thought about that exercise.

The cold and the dark were such important components of those trips, to the extent that I didn’t want the project to drag on into the summer. There was something magical about surviving the weather of the day with two hats and a flask of coffee, then with the stars above and a view down towards Southampton – which in 1944, the Finzi’s had seen lit up by German bombing - dashing down to bus it back to the pub in Newbury; then after a few pints and a pack of pork scratchings, falling asleep on the train back to London. One time just after waking up and walking off the train at Paddington, on a particularly icy November night, some guy, who had also been on the train, having seen my garb, said “You weren’t out there in that cold painting where you?!” To which I was quite proud to say “Yes I was”.

On the topic of pubs in Newbury, I must mention the ‘Cow and Cask’ due to it being such a beacon of hope on those cold nights rolling back into town. Unpretentious and irregular in providing good quality ale in a room that could just as easily be a hairdressers. With three well kept casks at any one time, and three more resting in preparation, I have had many a memorable glass of ale there. On some occasions I have been the only patron, and being quite a small room with no music, that is a unique experience. But conversation is always a pleasure, and it does seem that he has a loyal group of regulars. Five stars.

The 'Cow and Cask' in Newbury.

I would not know it then, but following that Christmas, I would not return to paint at Church Farm for some time. My project would not be finished in the winter months alone. This was of course due to the settling in of Covid-19, the end of which we still have not seen.

Those winter mornings where I would prepare a flask of hot coffee at 6am were sometimes plain dreadful. The 20 minutes I would allocate from waking up to getting out the door allowed me to feel grimness in its purest form. But during the following months at the height of the corona virus which I was back in Scotland for, I would often think about the next time I might get to travel to Church Farm. I missed those days. I wondered when I might be able to continue, and possibly finish those small paintings now sitting in my studio down in London.

It turned out to be eight months before I would return to England, and then a few days more before I made it to Ashmansworth. By that time, England was no longer under the blanket of winter and instead the summer sun had allowed its countryside to take on an altogether new life.

Trip five

8th August 2020

Walking up the road to Ashmansworth in August certainly was pleasant, in shorts and a t-shirt with the fields either side full with maze. I had only seen them muddy and arid the previous December. Where before, arriving at the church after the four hour journey, comfort was found in hot coffee, on this return, the coffee was iced. I even made sure to wear sun cream. Standing on the road by the turn off to the church with my naked legs to show, prodding a canvas in one hand with a paint brush from the other, a couple walking their dog said “we heard you were here, news travels fast in the village” – whether this was the same headlight donning couple I had encountered the previous winter I do not know. Either way, it was clear that the neighborhood watch was operating well.

A noticeable change to the new season was that it didn’t get dark at 4pm, so no more nighttime painting was required. It did not get dark, in fact, until well into the return train ride back to London, meaning a couple of very pleasant evenings sitting outside of the Cow and Cask.

These summer trips, that numbered two, were quite memorable in another way. Sometime after the first trip, my girlfriend Hanwen and I discovered that we were expecting a child. She having returned to Berlin after our Scottish sojourn, and I to London, it took us both rather by surprise. So between the first summer trip and the second, it was decided that my London chapter would come to a close and I would move to Berlin.

So with that, there were only a handful of Saturdays left open for Finzi {Saturdays were decided on as the best day of the week after the firs two trips which took place on weekdays. Anything larger than a briefcase is not received well by the commuting public, so negotiating a packed carriage at 7am with my two boxes and a stool hanging off my backpack was disheartening. Saturdays, it turned out, were both quieter and cheaper on the train}.

One of those Saturday was missed due to drinking. In preparation for the planned trip the next day, I had brought all my stuff back from the studio to the flat. I had even laid my flask and snacks out on the kitchen worktop that night, as I always did. But, I then went out for a great dinner with Anthony Banks at The Laughing Heart and drank enough wine that when I woke at 6am the next morning and looked out the window to see Cassland Road draped in the half light of a grey Saturday dawn, I just didn’t want to go.

And so the final trip was on the 19th of September 2020. The removal of my belongings to Berlin had been booked and a date was set to get out. Waking up that morning was not taxing one bit and the whole sun filled day was a real pleasure. Of particular note that day was the ceremonial eating of one of the pears from the Church Farm garden. There is a low section of wall where several branches of a fig tree and a pear tree protrude over into the public road, a section that two of my paintings focus on. Upon one branch was a wonderful looking pear that faded between an autumnal yellow and a lusty red. I could not bring myself to scrump that pear off the branch and was rather disappointed in my pathetic self because of it. But on the grass down below sat a number of other pears that had fallen to the ground under their own volition, and I happily picked one of these up and sunk my teeth into it with sacramental fervency. The small yellow pear was extremely sweet, juicy and altogether more delicious than I was expecting. Whether Finzi planted that pear tree himself, I do not know, but it felt like a very fitting farewell to the six trips that I had made to that little village.

Homerton Station, 06:34 19th September 2020

Alas. As always was going to be. Numerous paintings were left unfinished. I had been ambitious in bringing two blank canvases on the last trip; a decision that may well have been a subconscious desire for certain failure. For sitting there that day and being unable to cover them pleasingly in paint, it opened up in my mind the idea of another trip: one more time at some point down the line when I will have to come back and finish them. Perhaps far into the future, when our baby boy is already well known to the world, on one weekend returning to London I may be able to squeeze it in. I had, after all, kept my painting box stored in my London studio (which I am subletting) so it would not be difficult. Or if in the unlikely event that an opportunity arose to present an exhibition of these paintings, a final trip could be made the weekend before. I could finish the painting in dick-swinging fashion and hang the still wet painting on the gallery wall, and how cool would that be?!

And that is where it all currently stands. Here I sit, writing this rather drawn out and self indulgent non-essay {apparently, according to Hanwen, this is not an essay} in Moabit, Berlin as the infamously long Berlin winter begins to rear it’s head; and in Bromley-by-Bow, London, the 14 Finzi paintings sit on a shelf gathering dust.

One motivating factor in initiating this series of trips was the thought of a possible move away from London. I thought: what thing could I do at this moment that would take advantage of being in London that I couldn’t do if I were in another country? And now with that move finally having taken place, I look back on these six trips to Ashmansworth, Hampshire and I feel entirely content knowing that I did make the most of living there.

In the forty ninth year of his life Finzi was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma. A decade earlier he had begun cataloguing his life’s work. Following his diagnosis, and pessimistic prognosis, he added the following postscript to the preface:

“It is likely that new ideas, new fashions, and the pressing forward of new generations will soon obliterate my small contribution. Yet, I like to think that in each generation, maybe found a few responsive minds, and for them I should still like the work to be available”

As a responsive mind, the main driving force for making those trips was the simple desire to get a little closer to the life of Gerald Finzi. Of course it is foolish to think that I know the man any more, but having stepped down into the pond; having rambled around in the environment that much of that music came from, my experience of listening to the music has changed. I saw the trees of Hampshire bare in the winter then laden with green in the summer, I sat in the quiet solitude of the St James’ Nave and I even feasted on a Church Farm pear – all things that I would not have done otherwise – and my experience of listening to the music is altogether richer because of it.

"Cox's Orange Pippin"

40cm x 30cm

Oil on linen

8th August 2020

The Finzi’s had travelled to Gloucestershire for the 1956 Three Choirs Festival and had decided to take the Vaughan Williams’ to see Chosen Hill, the spot that had inspired Finzi’s In Terra Pax which was being given its first performance at the festival. It was on Chosen Hill, while having tea at the Sexton’s cottage, that Finzi contracted chicken pox from the owner’s children. With his already weakened immune system from the Hodgkin’s disease, it was these chicken pox that would, ironically, end his life soon after.

Joy gives an account of those final weeks in her diary, the artistic leanings of which are worth mentioning. Following the Three Choirs Festival, Gerald visited some orchards to indulge his pomological interests then they visited a Mrs Neilson at Upleadon to see her Paul Nash paintings and “one of the best Ivon Hitchens” {note. can it be traced which Hitchens this is? further note. Mrs.Neilson’s Nash paintings were bequeathed to her godson who then gave them to Pallant House in 2013. Although Pallant House also own some Hitchens paintings, through a few emails with them, who in turn contacted her godson, it was confirmed that no Hitchens painting was included in the Clare Neilson Gift. He remembers a Hitchens painting on the wall of her sitting room. But with no inventory of her works, or photos showing it, the trail runs cold there. For the time being}.

Also related to painting, the Finzis visited the painter John Aldridge with their family friend Richard Shirley Smith aka ‘Shush’ who was wanting to apply to the Slade, where Aldridge taught. Joy expressed interest in the possible acquisition of one of his paintings of a cornfield that Gerald ‘greatly loved’. It was soon after their return to Church Farm that the chicken pox made themselves known and his condition worsened quickly. Despite this, on one day he was still able to eat a meal of Salmon and Peas washed down with a Pilsner, which is a meal I should jolly well like to have when my end comes. He was moved to the hospital in Oxford two days later, being quite taken by an “immense” looking nurse in the ambulance on the way. It was there, at Oxford, that he died peacefully on the 27th of September 1956, the evening after the first radio broadcast of his cello concerto. He was 55.

“The shadow has fallen”, wrote Joy.

"Lord Lennox (What Is Thy Joy)"

Oil on linen

30cm x 25cm

August 2019

"Claygate Pearmain (Towards Southampton)"

Oil on linen

20cm x 30cm

19th September 2020

It was around this time, 400 miles further north in Scotland, that my grandparents moved into a house not dissimilar to Church Farm. My grandfather was an architect, not a composer, but he too was of some standing in his field. Artists, musicians and general figures of interest came through that house out in the East Lothian countryside, in much the same way they did at Church Farm. Evenings were shared round the dinner table, cigarettes were smoked, and stories made. Stories that for the most part are now lost to time.

I did not meet my grandfather, but that house, at the end of a long tree lined drive out amongst the fields, was where my earliest memories were formed. Perhaps it is for that reason that I feel such kinship with the Finzi story and Church Farm. Is Gerald a proxy for my grandfather?

The orbits of these two men did briefly cross when a concert dedicated to Gerald’s music was staged at The Royal Festival Hall in London in 1954. Despite his worries, an audience including Gerald and many of his family and friends filled that hall to almost capacity. The hall had been built three years earlier to commemorate the Festival Of Britain. The design of which was led by, none other than, my grandfather.

The Festival Hall and some other of his buildings still stand, others have crumbled. His painting, however, that I slept under on my floor mattress in East London now lives with us here in Berlin. As the arrogance of youth and lofty dreams of success are ground away by the realities of an approaching middling of age, what modest legacy should I aspire to for my own paintings? is Gerald a proxy for my grandfather? Or is he in fact, just a proxy for me?

We look at those who came before us and we consecrate them - Time’s Winged Chariot casts a golden light - perhaps as a means to embolden the thought of our own legacies. Banfield in his biography, posited on this “myth of the minor composer” and whether Finzi’s worth had been posthumously and undeservedly inflated. And, it might well have. Only a year younger than Beethoven at the time of his death, he left behind a fraction “in size and scope” in comparison (Also when compared to Benjamin Britten). And much of what he did leave remained unfinished. Numerous pieces were published posthumously only following editing and completion by his friends.

I am not going to argue that he was as gifted a composer as either of those two previously mentioned figures. Indeed, should our success be marked only in comparison to the monoliths of our field? With this in mind, I would like to wind down proceedings by considering one such unfinished piece, the Eclogue for Piano and Strings, the first piece of Finzi’s that I heard.

It began its life in 1928, being worked up as a possible piano concerto. Only in the final years of his life, nearly thirty years later, was it (almost) finished in the form of two separate pieces, the grand Fantasia & Toccata - which he did complete, and which was incidentally given its premier at The Festival Hall concert; and the Eclogue, which was only finished, or at least edited, after his death by his friend Howard Ferguson. The struggle he took with the piece affectionately got him the nickname Dave (after David and Goliath) from Ferguson, and the majority of letters sent from him to Finzi after 1928 were, in fact, addressed to ‘Dave’. This constant reworking of ideas was typical of him and before even considering how the middle climax makes my tears swell, the more valuable fact to me is that his process is relatable. His drawn out method fits neither into the myth of the virtuosic composer, conjuring brilliant music with ease, nor the myth of the genius depressive, expelling brilliance through struggle, possibly with a self inflicted early demise.

Indeed I don’t think he would even be considered a genius, and I think that is no less meaningful a fact; and certainly no less meaningful a thing to aspire to. It is music that “know(s) no sharp edges” (Menuhin) and I love it. His, and all other’s ‘minorness’ should to be cherished.

The Eclogue received it’s first performance the year after his death, at the memorial to him held in the Victoria & Albert museum in 1957. It was also performed after the death of Joy at her memorial in St Martin’s Church in East Woodhay in 1991.

Our houses will be sold, and our furniture shared amongst our offspring. But if we’re lucky, a song may still be sung or a painting may still hang on a wall. And, to quote Finzi’s latterly edited catalogue preface once more “To shake hands with a good friend over the centuries is a pleasant thing”.

Trip five

8th August 2020

My first finzi record was found in the Poppy trust shop in Stalham, the second in the Emmaus Greenwhich charity shop in Poplar and the third was at the Notting Hill Music Exchange. As I have left five stars to a pub, if I were to leave five stars for a record shop, it would be this one. I haven’t seen a comparable selection of English classical music on vinyl anywhere else. When I asked why there were hearts drawn on the cardboard showing the Lyrita section in the shop, the extremely knowledgeable and clearly seasoned staff member behind the desk went ever so gooey-eyed as he said “well, they’re great quality pressings, and they’re English”. I think he might have drawn the hearts. So that’s where you can go for your Finzi, Ferguson, Rubbra, Howells, Moeran, Sumsion, Bax, Quilter, Warlock, Ireland, Bliss, Parry, Stanford, Butterworth or Berkley. And English Song? That unembellished pairing of voice and piano, with the likes of Sarah Lucas amongst its admirers “They all did it”, he replied.

The remaining Finzi records I have since obtained via various sellers online. And with the arrival of the Cello Concerto yesterday, my collection of the nine, that I would describe as, major records that exist dedicated solely to his music is nearly complete.

So, with that I will draw this piece of writing to a close. As I did during the first period away from England, I miss that Hampshire countryside and my lonesome wanderings through it terribly. But there will be a future trip to Ashmansworth, I am sure. And I will finish those paintings and probably start some more. With the recent move away from England, however, there was a definitive end to a chapter which made writing this seem like the right thing to do.

I shall end simply by quoting a Thomas Hardy poem, one set to music by Finzi a year before his death, the last in his song cycle Till Earth Outwears. The poem is “Life Laughs Onward”.

"Adam's Pearmain"

Oil on linen

25cm x 20cm

November 2019

And that concludes the 2021 essay. Now a:

Postscript.

27th September, 2024

To the owners of Church Farm, Ashmansworth.

I hope this letter finds you well.

Several years ago I made a number of trips to Ashmansworth to make some paintings. You may remember seeing me on the side of the road with my painting box. As I mentioned to the Lady of the House (apologies I don’t know how else to name you!), outside your front gate one morning, these trips were made in the name of Mr. Finzi, a series of pilgrimages that numbered six in 2019 and 2020.

Now, four years later these paintings are going to be put on public display. There will be an exhibition at a gallery called Cedric Bardawil, in London’s Soho between the dates of 30th October and 10th of November 2024, open Wednesday to Saturday. I don’t know if this would be of any interest to you, but I felt it important to let you know. After all, I did feel somewhat embarrassed to alarm you that morning painting your gate. Incidentally, that painting shall certainly be hanging on the gallery wall.

I wrote an essay on the subject of those trips and paintings, which will also be available in printed form at the gallery. I could certainly also send this to you, if you wished. Perhaps it may shine some light on it all, or at least provide some fuel for your winter fire. “Not another Finzi pilgrim!” I hear you say.

These trips came to an end because in late 2020 I moved from London to Berlin, where my girlfriend and I brought a beautiful boy into this world. Life laughed onwards but I would often think of those Hampshire lanes. So when this exhibition became set in stone, I, in fact, made a seventh trip to Ashmansworth this summer in an attempt to finish some of those paintings started all those years before.

I repeated the lengthy journey out of the city via train, bus then foot that I had made each time previously and did what I set out to achieve: I bought somewhat of a closure to proceedings. So it is unlikely that you will see me hunched over a canvas outside your house again anytime soon, but I would never say never.

“Haven’t seen you in awhile” the proprietor of The Cow & Cask in Newbury proclaimed when I walked in with with my painting box at the end of that last day before my train back to London. “It’s been four years”, I said. “Gosh! Remind me again, what exactly was it you were out there painting?”.

Incidentally, if you are keen on Ale and have not been to that fine establishment, I would heartily recommend a visit.

Yours sincerely,

Alex Gibbs

Trip seven

24th July 2024