Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music
(T)he author's style is very easy indeed, informal and communicative. RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS SOCIETY JOURNALThe book is very well researched and immensely informative. (...) From reading this particular biography, there is also the wish to read more by Diana McVeagh. THE ELGAR SOCIETY JOURNAL McVeagh's analyses unfailingly draw the reader's attention to the melodic and harmonic subtleties of Finzi's writing. At her best, as in a beautiful passage on Finzi and Hardy, she sings with a lyricism that matches Finzi's own. This book comes as a timely reminder that there should be a place for the finely wrought music of a minor master. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (Richard Lawrence)This has been long in preparation, but the wait has been worthwhile. Lucky the composer who finds so fair-minded, candid and scrupulous a biographer and one who writes so well...(McVeagh's) analyses achieve the rare distinction of being both illuminating and readable. This is one of the best-written books about a musician to appear for many years. BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE (Michael Kennedy) McVeagh surely loves Finzi's music and it shows. However her devotion is clear-eyed and her writing completely avoids the sort of pastoral hagiography that Finzi scholarship can easily collapse into. The book is self-recommending but that does not stop me recommending it. - CLASSICAL MUSIC ON THE WEB  (This) is unquestionably destined to be the standard biography of Gerald Finzi. - RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS SOCIETY JOURNAL (Rolf Jordan) (Now) we have McVeagh at last, so good and so well written that those who already possess...other books must have it, not only to complement them but for the sheer pleasure afforded by such a winning combination of scholarship, insight and clear-eyed humanity.. their belief will be reinforced and intensified by Miss McVeagh's candour and her remarkable achievement in writing not only a good biography but in re-creating the atmosphere of English musical life in the half-century of Finzi's life. FINZI NEWSLETTERWith clear-eyed affection for her subject, McVeagh relates Finzi's poignant history with clarity of design that does not preclude empathy, and never allows herself the luxury of letting him off lightly over either musical or personal foibles...(a) lovely, warm and elegiac book. MUSIC & LETTERS (Byron Adams)