Many of the poems set on this recording are by Thomas Hardy. Hardy was Gerald Finzi’s (1901 – 1956) favourite poet whose bleak fatalism accorded with Finzi’s own view of the world. Finzi’s music teacher Ernest Farrar was killed at the Western Front during WW1 and he also suffered the loss of his three brothers during these formative years.

About two thirds of Finzi’s music is vocal and this gives the clue to the most individual characteristic of Finzi’s art – his response to words – which results in music that seems inevitably, and effortlessly, to be at one with the poet’s thought. This bonding with the authors he set arose out of his remarkable knowledge of English literature, especially poetry. Finzi was attracted by the recurrent motif of the innocence of childhood corrupted by adult experience.

Finzi would gather songs into collections - Oh Fair to See and Till Earth Outwears were gathered together and posthumously assigned Opus numbers. A Young Man’s Exhortation was one of Finzi’s early successes which established him as a masterly and sensitive setter of poetry.