Gerald Finzi’s Elegy for Orchestra, “The Fall of the Leaf”: An English Landscape
Gerald Finzi’s Elegy for Orchestra, Op. 20, The Fall of the Leaf, is music of the English landscape. It evokes the timelessness of serene pastures and meandering hedgerows. Beyond its lush beauty exists a lingering melancholy and nostalgia. Unsettling twilight shadows pervade this music. We encounter something similar in much of the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, who shared friendship and frequent correspondence with Finzi (1901-1956), and throughout the works of Edward Elgar. …