Midnight Lamentation op. 6 Harold
Monro
A Kiss op. 15 Thomas
Hardy
Easter Song op. 16 Edgar
Billingham
At Malvern op. 26 John
Addington Symonds
Flying Crooked op. 28/1 Robert
Graves
At Midnight op. 28/2 Edna
StVincent Millay
The Way Through op33/1 Jennifer
Andrews
It Rains op. 33/2 Edward
Thomas
Vitae Summa Brevis op. 33/3 Ernest
Dowson
The November Piano op. 33/4 Charles
Bennett
Break, Break, Break op. 33/5 Alfred
Lord Tennyson
The Hippo op. 33/6 Theodore
Roethke
Love Lies Beyond op. 37/1 John
Clare
Cover Design by Jennifer Andrews
Some time ago the issue
of a CD of songs by this young composer
met with critical acclaim [review].
And now the publication of a book of
thirteen songs enables us to look more
closely and to judge whether what was
then considered as a new and fresh voice
in English music is a true estimate.
Venables at 50 is now
an established composer, and though
not prolific, has some 40-odd opus numbers
to his credit which include not only
songs, but a variety of works of considerable
maturity – pieces for piano and solo
instrument (violin, cello, viola, oboe,
flute and clarinet), organ music, an
orchestral triptych, an expansive ‘Millenium’
Anthem, four substantial song-cycles,
music for brass, a String Quartet, and
perhaps his greatest and most characteristic
achievement to date – a fine Piano Quintet
(1).
Until these works are
recorded and more widely known he must,
for the moment, be considered on the
basis of this representative collection
of songs which are drawn from op. 6
to op. 37. I would suggest with what
I know of his other work that his is
not so much a ‘new’ voice in English
music but a significant reincarnation
of that English lyric voice from the
early years of the twentieth century.
Leaving for the moment
the early song ‘Midnight Lamentation’
which he wrote age 19, and is numbered
op. 6, his first 15 opus numbers contain
only one song. Nevertheless the quiet
voice of this selection of songs shows
his development over some thirty years.
It does not include the song-cycles
opp. 22/31/36. What it does disclose
is a mature and original voice showing
awareness of a cultural line through
the development of the English lyric
voice from the heritage of English song
– a poetic tradition that stems from
Campion, Dowland and Purcell, via Parry,
Elgar, Ireland, Howells and Finzi –
all of whose influence can be heard
in Venables. While he recognises the
inexhaustible power of the system of
tonality, this does not mean that he
is following dated or well-worn paths,
but that he shares what Trevor Hold
said of the poet Edward Thomas "a
fresh vision on old deep-rooted subjects,
a new way to express ageless thoughts".
In a personal letter
to the composer (2) Professor Stephen
Banfield (3) wrote "you have a
genius for melancholy" and in this
informal but penetrating assessment
of the recorded songs he went on to
say that his [Venables’] genius extended
to "the understanding [of] melodic,
harmonic and poetic tradition for speaking
to the heart, not least in the refined
gold [my italics] of the poems you
have sought out", thus underlining
what must be the principal character
of Venables’ expression – the awareness
of that tradition, following none of
the ’isms and ’alities of so much present
day expression, and a gentle melancholy
that attends the expression of Beauty
and its transient nature. (4) English
poetry, from the earliest Anglo-Saxon
to the voices of the 20th
Century is, in the words of Peter Ackroyd
(5) "suffused with melancholy ...
That long sweet note of pathos can be
heard equally in the music of Delius
and the poetry of Keats, in the plangent
harmonies of Purcell and the stately
threnodies of Spenser ..." Venables’
choice of poets is therefore illuminating
– in this present publication the names
of Dowson, John Clare, John Addington
Symonds, Hardy and Edward Thomas surely
reflect this assessment – and yet reflect
also a vein of deeper experience than
simple lyricism? It is significant that
three of the cycles are settings of
Clare, Symonds and Housman: it is even
more significant that he has chosen
late poems, and in the main, poems that
have not been set by others. (7) The
present volume must therefore be taken
to underline Venables’ raison d’être
as a composer which, as with so much
English music, has a literary rather
than a musical impetus.
There are and always
will be, disagreements on the vexed
question of ‘words for music’ (8) Purcell
acknowledged Poetry and Music as sister
arts: Dryden took the opposite position
–"’tis my part to invent and the
musician’s to humour that invention".
(9) Yeats was more vicious - "the
concert platform has wronged the poets
by masticating their well-made words
and turning them into spittle."
(10) Certainly the early ‘fugues of
words’ that sufficed the era of Handel
(which Baddeley calls ‘the anaesthesia
of poetry’) would have provoked the
poet’s wrath! What has Venables to say
on the subject?
"Well, I have
already suggested that poetry and music
are sister forms. But I would go further
than this to suggest that when a composer’s
music is in complete accord with the
poet’s intentions then a transformation
takes place that results in an altogether
new art form, This new form is called
‘Art Song’ and as such I think it has
to be approached on its own merit. Both
music and poetry become one synergistic
effect, with the whole being greater
than the sum of its parts. As composer
of art-song I am therefore trying
to find the hidden music that lies beneath
the words [my italics] It is a kind
of recreation of the poet’s essence
in musical terms ……ultimately it is
the poetic theme and the underlying
structure that are the determining factors.
This inspired idea has then to be developed
within the limits imposed by the poem’s
structure, metre and natural rhythms
and cadences of the lines ... the more
sensitive and empathetic the composer
is, the more he is able to evoke the
poem’s overriding mood, atmosphere,
imagery, and ultimately to distil its
essence" (11)
The first impression
one gets from Venables’ settings is
that he succeeds in this, and that it
is the inner vision of the poet to which
he is responding and not simply the
imagery. The emotional power of that
impact, readily seen here in the first
song to words by Harold Monro, may well
in its urgency distort the shape/words/syntax
of the poet - yet at the same time captures
the elusive image that is in the poet’s
mind.
Venables does indeed
take liberties with the verse. The first
song in this album is a setting of ‘Midnight
Lamentation’ by the Georgian poet Harold
Monro (12). This song, although marked
op. 6, is possibly his earliest acknowledged
composition (written at age 19) and
is a perfect example, not only of his
treatment of the text, but is also illustrative
of that melancholic element which the
poem expresses so strongly. Monro’s
poem has eight stanzas. Venables sets
the first and the third with minimal
restructuring of the words and rhythm
using merely repetition. He then turns
to the final stanza, omitting the others,
where he wrings the utmost emotion from
the poet’s essential idea and substitutes
Monro’s almost banal ‘I cannot reach
beyond/Body to you’ with his own words
‘And in death and darkness/no way leads
me to you – repeated three times in
an agonising despair with a repeated
triplet figure (one that recurs emotionally
as a recognisable fingerprint later
in his work – and specifically in two
pieces ‘Elegy’ op. 2, and ‘Poem’ op.
29 both for cello and piano). This song
is a remarkably powerful expression
for a 19-year old composer – the anticipation
of love eclipsed by death and the awful
realisation that the end is also separation.
If, in the end, it requires the text
to crystallise the emotion, the music
alone is unbearably poignant.
Many facets of the
composer’s musical language emerge in
the opening bars where the piano sets
the emotional scene in terms that are
heard elsewhere in his work - including
the instrumental pieces. Apart from
the recurring triplet figure (which
has echoes in Ireland’s Cello Sonata)
there is a suggestion of bells – a seeming
ambivalence of tonality (here C sharp
minor and E major) – the plangent open
fifths – and the fact that almost all
his discords are suspensions, resolving,
if at all, to a minor chord. One hears
also the false relations that recall
Finzi. There is a brief reference to
a dotted figure which, at later moments,
seems to suggest the slow passage of
time or, as with Housman, Howells, Gurney
and Clare, that many thoughts are drafted
when walking.(13)
With the exception
of his setting of Edward Thomas’s "It
rains", I suggest that Venables
has chosen poems that are not intrinsically
musical in themselves. Yet they almost
always suggest a musical idea – ‘a long
procession of sounds’ (Hardy) – ‘in
the thickets still the breezes blow’
(Symonds) – ‘that summer sang in me’
(Millay) – ‘he sings in his boat on
the bay’ (Tennyson). There is too a
conciseness in his settings true to
the lyric as defined by Palgrave ‘that
each poem should turn upon a single
thought, feeling or situation’. None
are ballads (although the cycles are
more declamatory and whose thought processes
are more expansive). There is a simplicity
about his melodic lines - on their own
they suggest very subtly an appropriate
harmony which has a quality both brooding
and elegiac There is one characteristic
phrase – a curiously Celtic leap of
a seventh, followed by a fall of a third
– which is both a cry of despair and
a surge of emotion.
This is also heard
in many of the instrumental works, and
therefore is clearly the personal language
in which he expresses himself and is
not entirely generated by the textual
implications. This is not to imply that
there are no lighter moments – the op.
11 three pieces for violin and piano
are gorgeously romantic and full of
warm lyricism – and in the present volume
of songs few writers have captured the
spirit of the whimsical as has Venables
in his setting of Graves’s ‘Flying Crooked’,
a capricious and enchanting portrayal
of the erratic flight of the humble
cabbage white, recalling the John Ireland
of ‘Merry Andrew’ or ‘Ragamuffin’. ‘The
Hippo’ too shows the composer’s lighter
side - a mere 21 bars in the idyllic
life of the pachyderm!
One of the finest songs
in this volume is the setting of Addington
Symonds’ "At Malvern". Here
the open-ended melody is suspended in
a breathless languor, over unresolved
harmony of distant bells, a hint of
the tritone, with the reflection in
dark waters of the melody in canon.
"Beauty and stillness brood over
everything". A reference to Catullus
introduces a relaxed moment of hedonism
before a return of the opening, the
earlier canonic reflection being replaced
by Ireland-like 4ths. In very similar
mood the setting of Dowson’s familiar
lines "They are not long/the days
of wine and roses" evokes in a
brief 40 bars centred firmly on the
mediant, a fatalistic acceptance of
the transience of Beauty.
The setting of Tennyson
(whose words ‘Ring out the old, ring
in the New’ Venables chose for the Millenium
anthem) again express the dark mood
– seeking, in an almost Elgarian phrase,
"the touch of a vanished hand and
the sound of a voice that is still".
The bold descending triplets suggest
the implacable element. Also hung on
suspended harmony the setting of Edna
St Vincent Millay’s "At Midnight"
is certainly illustrative of Palgrave’s
‘single feeling’ being poised ‘at midnight
with a cry’ all stemming from the opening
obsessive falling second, the lonely
tree no longer decked with green. Another
masterpiece of a song is ‘A Kiss’ to
words of Thomas Hardy the poet himself
equating the flight of the kiss with
birdsong. It opens also with an eleven
bar introduction incorporating both
the drop of a 3rd , the triplet
figure and the quasi-stately rhythmic
pattern (suggestive of dance) that seems
here to evoke the fluttering butterfly-like
flight of the kiss as it is wafted through
the air.
It is scarcely surprising
that Venables’ antecedents in English
music should show themselves clearly
- for instance at bars 27/28 "There
ivy calmly grows" and a hint almost
of Delius in the final few bars?
There is a static quality
about ‘At Midnight’ - the persistent
alternating 5ths and 4ths expressive
of the ‘quiet pain’ carrying the resignation
of the poet through a drifting skein
of grey - the melody a quiet plaint
- to an unresolved conclusion. In strong
contrast there is drama in ‘Easter Song’,
the poet seeing in the reburgeoning
Spring a recurring of both Nature and
spirit. ‘The Way Through’ to words of
Jennifer Andrews, who also designed
the cover illustration evokes the idea
of Robert Frost’s ‘The road not taken’
– hesitant at the ‘hot road forked’
capturing beautifully in the syncopated
bell-like piano figuration the nostalgia
of the first song in the volume.
Possibly the most enigmatic
song is that of Edward Thomas – a poet
notoriously difficult to set successfully.
Rain is a potent image in Thomas’s work
– both verse and prose - a soft rain,
a quiet rain, a grey mist that diffuses
the vision of the poet where, out of
the wood, on the carpet of rain the
song of a thrush recalls ever the brief
happiness, the kissing, and the present
loneliness. – ‘nothing stirs within
the fence’. Venables picks out the salient
images – the fallen petals, the poet’s
happiness and the present nostalgia
– all expressed subtly within the first
three bars – the yearning of the melodic
phrase repeated by the voice – then,
as the memory returns the phrase returns
in inflected thirds, and growing in
intensity with the fading vision. I
am not entirely sure that in this setting
the poet’s and the composer’s vision
coalesce. But I am certain that the
composer will return to the poet, as
both deal in deep thoughts.
I have argued that
the main influences directing Venables’
expression are to be found in that "heritage
of Englishry" – and it is scarcely
surprising that obvious and specific
musical influence should be seen in
his work. I have already suggested the
influence of John Ireland (Venables
studied with Richard Arnell, himself
a pupil of Ireland) and that of Gerald
Finzi. But such indications of ‘influence’
should generally be regarded as little
more than dippings into the common pot
of the development of artistic expression
in this country – or at least little
more than allusions.
In dealing with the
songs in this isolated way and the relation
of melody and harmony to the words of
the poet, the question of structure
and form is subjugated to the demands
of the text. Much of Venables’ instrumental
music is in a fairly straightforward
ternary form except where (particularly
in the two works for ’cello and piano
already cited above) the emotional tension
forces the music into a very concentrated
organic expression. It is perhaps not
unreasonable to imagine that environmental
influences stemming from the black and
white surroundings of the great city
of Liverpool where much of his young
life was spent might to some extent
dictate formal considerations derived
from the architecture – for as early
as op. 4 there is a threefold set of
pieces (written originally for piano
but later orchestrated) - an impressionistic
evocation of the Palladian Follies at
Stourhead in Wiltshire. These pieces
are unlike anything in the songs.
"Creativity is
rooted in both the personality of the
artist and in the external forces that
act upon them" Thus the composer
himself in an article on ‘The Music
of Poetry’ (14) It is my belief that
the personality of this composer as
clearly discernible in these varied
songs will, when the rest of his music
(particularly the song cycles and the
Piano Quintet) is better known, assume
a stature in the pageant of English
music in the 20th Century.
The pianist Graham
Lloyd provides a full and insightful
essay on the songs by way of introduction.
He knows this music from the inside
having accompanied the singer on the
recording, and in many performances.
V C Clinton Baddeley
should have the last word:
"Song will not
rise again in these islands until the
poets and musicians
will combine to create
a contemporary art." (15)
Ian Venables has a
part to play.
Colin Scott-Sutherland
NOTES:
1. web site: www.ianvenables.com
2. 27/9/01
3. Author of ‘Sensibility
and English Song’, Cambridge, 1985
4. It was Housman who
wrote "It is the function of poetry
to harmonise the sadness of the world"
5. Peter Ackroyd "Albion
– The origins of the English Imagination’"
Vintage. 2002 pp. 55/56
6. Ibid
7. Clare has been set
only by Gurney and Warlock. Symonds
by Cyril Scott. Ireland uses words by
Symonds in his choral "These Things
Shall Be".
8. The most reasoned
argument on the subject is probably
that undertaken by V C Clinton Baddeley
in the early 1940s – a case of acting
as referee between poet and composer.
(‘Words for Music’, Cambridge 1941)
9. Preface to "Albion
and Albanius", 1685
10. Broadsides – Yeats
and Wellesley, 1937
11. Talk: The Art of
Songwriting - Ledbury Poetry Festival.
The Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson
usefully confirms "every musical
motif or theme contains the germ of
its own development; set words to it
and the development of the musical idea
has to be subjugated to the development
of the verbal idea. The music has to
yield to the words: like a creeping
plant it has to be trained to a trellis.
This problem can be overcome partially
by a careful selection of the text"
(‘Composing a Song Cycle’, Stevenson
Society Newsletter Vol. 3/2, Autumn
1996)
12. Collected Poems
ed Alida Monro Cobden-Sanderson, 1933,
pp. 16/18
13. I once asked Ronald
Stevenson how he went about setting
a poem. He replied, "I go about
with it………."
14. Ian Venables ‘The
Music of Poetry’ The Ivor Gurney Society
Journal, Vol. 8, 2002,
15. op. cit., p. 163
