Serving in the court of James II, Finger was not a popular musician in England as he was just one of many foreign musicians serving in the Catholic chapel when it opened in 1686. Prior to this he did work in Munich for a brief period and is thought to have traveled to Italy. When James II fled England in '88, many of the foreign musicians also left England. Finger was one of the exceptions. He remained and worked assiduously making a successful venture through his increasingly popular music. He entered the competition of 1700 for "best composer in the land" and came in fourth to Weldon, Eccles and Purcell. Many professional musicians thought that Finger's setting of Congreve's "The Judgment of Paris" should have been awarded first place. A proper study of Finger's music has not been done; therefore it is difficult to assess which of his many compositions is most illustratiuve of his work. The genres in which he composed included incidental music for plays, masques, odes and serenades, operas and stage works and instrumetnal pieces including numerous sonatas. The stage works illustrated his flexibility, his sonatas demonstrated a clear rendition, however weak, of the Italian style, and Finger's compositions for the bass viol illustrate a heavy English and Germanic influence. ~ Keith Johnson