"History, Analysis and Performance Considerations of Gerald Finzi's ...

PERFORMANCE CONSIDERATIONSPrinciplesIn preparing a performance of Lo, the Full Final Sacrifice, two underlying principlesshould be considered. First, Finzi’s gift was in song, and his love was for words. As alreadyexplored here, he took great strains to be true to the meaning, spirit and dramatic rhythm of atext. Hold observed:The genius lies in his subtle handling of rhythm: the imaginative way in which hetranslates verbal rhythm into musical rhythm . . . . This rhythmic flexibility—some might say finickiness—enables him to set words with great delicacy,lending his songs the quality of intimate conversation. One has only to follow thepoet’s original text when listening to a Finzi setting to appreciate this. Suchrightness and beauty of scansion is a joy in itself and, in one respect, achieves themelo-poetic ideal. No wonder he has been called the ‘poet’s composer.’ ” 65The result of Finzi’s “finickiness” is a great naturalness in his line, the ebb and flow of vocalrhythms strengthening the poetic meaning (no less the intelligibility) of the verse. Words then,the successful delivery of both their diction and drama are of utmost importance.The second principle is trust. Finzi was not a composer who demanded that his musicshould be performed in exactly this way or that. In his early years (pre-World War II), hedespised notating dynamics and phrasing, stating “any musical person should know how itshould go.” 66 According to both his son Christopher and Howard Ferguson, he also allowed65 Hold, 398.66 However as he began his first conducting activities (the Newbury String Players), he learned that such indicationssaved a great deal of time for the performers. See McVeagh, 175.