Till Earth Outwears

This posthumous collection of Hardy settings follows Finzi’s example of assembling songs from throughout his life. Both It never looks like summer here and I look into my glass parallel Hardy’s inexorable twists of fate through darkening harmonic cycles. The market-girl and At a lunar eclipse were first penned in the late ’20s and originally intended for A Young Man’s Exhortation, but were revisted in the early ’40s: the former is a good example of Finzi’s syllabic parlando style, and the latter an astronomical study akin to The comet at Yell’ham. The collection is rounded off in apt fashion with Life laughs onward, a resourceful and wistful depiction of the old succumbing to the young - central imagery for both Hardy and Finzi.