Octavo.  116 pp.  Lithographed.  No PN.  "Corrected" written in blue ink to head of upper wrapper in the composer's hand; "Marked" and "Finzi" in pencil in unidentified hand to front cover and penciled annotations throughout the score, apparently in the hand of composer composer Gerald Finzi.  Original wrappers with partial loss to spine; minor tears to some pages; else in very good condition.  From the library of critic Michael Kennedy (1926–2014), who was a close friend of the composer and became his biographer in 1964.

Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony - one of the composer’s best-loved works - was written during the Second World War and with its symphonic predecessor displaying a convulsive fury and desolation, the Fifth is surprisingly serene and pastoral. Vaughan Williams dedicated it ‘without permission’ to Jean Sibelius – who in his diary described his impression on first hearing the work as ‘a caress from a summer world.’

In 1923 Vaughan Williams replied to a letter he had received from a young composer, Gerald Finzi, who had apparently asked him for permission to use a folk tune which VW had collected. In due course, a close friendship developed. Decades on, Gerald was invited to hear Hubert Foss and Alan Richardson play through the sketch of the present 5th symphony ‘to see if I like it well enough to go on with it. Your criticism wd be much valued, if you cd come’. Gerald and Joy also attended the first orchestral playthrough at the Maida Vale BBC studios in May 1943.  The present score was published later and it is not known on what occasion Finzi

Although Finzi today remains best known for his choral compositions (his output includes nine song cycles), Finzi also wrote lovely works in a number of other genres, including concertos for both clarinet (1949) and cello (1955).  In 1956, following a trip to Gloucester with his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams, Finzi developed a bad case of shingles (almost certainly a result of the immune suppression caused by his Hodgkin’s disease) which quickly progressed to fatal brain inflammation. He passed away at a hospital in Oxford just one day after the world premiere of his Cello Concerto.