Joy Finzi (3 March 1907 – 14 June 1991) was a British artist and founder of the

Finzi Trust The Finzi Trust was founded in 1969 and seeks to further the music, ideals and work of Gerald Finzi. It has assisted individuals and organisations in a variety of ways and has initiated many projects reflecting the Trust's policy of encouraging yo ...

, a foundation named for her husband, composer

Gerald Finzi Gerald Raphael Finzi (14 July 1901 – 27 September 1956) was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a choral composer, but also wrote in other genres. Large-scale compositions by Finzi include the cantata '' Dies natalis'' for solo voice and ...

Life and career

She was born Joyce Amy Black in

Hampstead Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...

, London in 1907. She studied music and art, and married Finzi in 1933. They had two sons,

Christopher Christopher is the English language, English version of a Europe-wide name derived from the Greek language, Greek name Χριστόφορος (''Christophoros'' or ''Christoforos''). The constituent parts are Χριστός (''Christós''), "Jesus ...

and Nigel. Together with her husband, Finzi played an important part in founding the Newbury String Players. She devoted much time to preserving the work of composer-poet

Ivor Gurney Ivor Bertie Gurney (28 August 1890 – 26 December 1937) was an English poet and composer, particularly of songs. He was born and raised in Gloucester. He suffered from bipolar disorder through much of his life and spent his last 15 years in ps ...

, continuing her husband's work after his premature death in 1956. She sketched

portrait A portrait is a portrait painting, painting, portrait photography, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, Personality type ...

s of contemporary musicians including

Ralph Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams, (; 12 October 1872– 26 August 1958) was an English composer. His works include operas, ballets, chamber music, secular and religious vocal pieces and orchestral compositions including nine symphonies, written over ...

, Sir

Adrian Boult Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, CH (; 8 April 1889 – 22 February 1983) was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family, he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London ...

Howard Ferguson George Howard Ferguson, PC (June 18, 1870 – February 21, 1946) was the ninth premier of Ontario, from 1923 to 1930. He was a Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1905 to 1930 who represented the eastern provincia ...

and Sir

Arthur Bliss Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss (2 August 189127 March 1975) was an English composer and conductor. Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army. In the post-war years he qu ...

, and writers including

Edmund Blunden Edmund Charles Blunden (1 November 1896 – 20 January 1974) was an English poet, author, and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was als ...

Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the '' Earthsea'' fantasy series. She was ...

Sylvia Townsend Warner Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner (6 December 1893 – 1 May 1978) was an English novelist, poet and musicologist, known for works such as ''Lolly Willowes'', '' The Corner That Held Them'', and ''Kingdoms of Elfin''. Life Sylvia Townsend Warner wa ...

and David Jones.. In 1969, she founded the Finzi Trust to finance the recording of her husband Gerald's work and that of other composers, and was instrumental in the formation of ''Finzi Friends'' in 1982, a society furthering the work of the Trust. She continued to draw and sculpt, and published two volumes of

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

: ''A Point of Departure'' and ''Twelve Months of a Year''. A collection of her portrait drawings was published in 1987, with the title ''In That Place''. She died on 14 June 1991 in

Ashmansworth Ashmansworth is a village and civil parish in the Basingstoke and Deane district of the English county of Hampshire. Geography The village is about south west of Newbury in Berkshire, and north east from Andover in Hampshire, just south west ...

, Hampshire at the age of 84.

References

External links

Joy Finzi
memorial website

a
MusicWeb InternationalThe Finzi TrustFinzi Friends
archived in 2007 {{DEFAULTSORT:Finzi, Joy 1907 births 1991 deaths People from Hampstead Artists from London 20th-century English women artists People from Ashmansworth

Life and career

References

Further reading

External links