Composers need their music performed, so by their nature they are often visibility-seeking individuals. Gerald Finzi was the self-effacing opposite. He was born into a Jewish family in London in 1901, the son of a wealthy shipbroker who died when Finzi was seven years old. Three of his brothers and his supportive first music teacher were killed in the First World War; Finzi’s response to these traumas was to immerse himself in English poetry, in the study of church music (at York Minster), and in composing. Gradually, an individual musical style took shape, reducing drama and rhetoric in favor of a thoughtful and lyrical sensibility. In 1933, Finzi married the artist Joyce Black and moved to rural Wiltshire. There, he grew rare apple species in his orchard, built up a huge library of English literature and philosophy, and composed slowly and painstakingly. Among the results was the voice-and-piano song cycle Earth and Air and Rain, 10 settings of Thomas Hardy. A major statement was Dies natalis (Day of Birth) for voice and string orchestra, with words by the 17th-century English poet-priest Thomas Traherne. Finzi followed up the success of this with other substantial works, including a Clarinet Concerto in 1949. The diagnosis of Hodgkin’s disease (then incurable) influenced the more turbulent world of the Cello Concerto, completed in 1956, the year its composer died.