DESCRIPTION:
Dies natalis (Latin: "Natal Day" or "Day of Birth") is a five-movement work by Gerald Finzi, setting texts by Thomas Traherne, for solo soprano or tenor and string orchestra. This is the fifth and final movement. I think the tenor here, Philip Langridge, delivers a most delicate, touching account - a winning performance in every way.

Here is the text:

"These little limbs, these eyes and hands which I here find,
This panting heart wherewith my life begins;
Where have ye been? Behind what curtain were ye from me hid so long?
Where was, in what abyss, my new made tongue?

When silent I so many thousand thousand years
Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie, how could I smiles, or tears,
Or lips, or hands, or eyes, or ears perceive?
Welcome, ye treasures which I now receive.

From dust from I rise and out of nothing now awake,
These brighter regions which salute my eyes,
A gift from God I take, the earth, the seas, the light, the lofty skies,
The sun and stars are mine: if these I prize.

A stranger here, strange things doth meet, strange glory see,
Strange treasures lodged in this fair world appear,
Strange, all, and new to me: But that they mine should be who nothing was,
That strangest is of all; yet brought to pass."

The opening painting at 0:30 (and closing detail) is "The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne" (c.1508) by Leonardo da Vinci depicting St. Anne, her daughter the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. Christ is shown grappling with a sacrificial lamb symbolizing his Passion as the Virgin tries to restrain him.

At 1:56, "The Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence" (also known as The Adoration) from 1609 by the Italian master Caravaggio. (It was stolen on October 16, 1969 from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily and has never been recovered).

I took the photographs in various parts of the Derbyshire Peak District, including at 1:24 a "poppy-head" bench-end finial at the Church of St John the Baptist at Tideswell (just one of many of the mediaeval carvings there) and at 3:25, the C13 vault of the chapter house at Lincoln Cathedral, England.

Philip Langridge, Tenor
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: David Hill
A Decca Recording