for Soprano and Piano
Composed: 1999
Duration: 3 minutes
First Performance: February 2000, at the Royal Grammar School, Worcester, performed by Susan Anne Jenkins (Soprano) and Jennifer Partridge (Piano)
Composed: 2000
Duration: 4 minutes
First Performance: September 2000, at Dymock Parish Church, Herefordshire, performed by Jane Field (Soprano) and Graham Lloyd (Piano)
The song The Way Through was composed for the distinguished duo Susan Anne Jenkins and Jennifer Partridge. The poem, taken from a cycle of poems entitled, Where the Green Sunlight Beckons was written especially for the composer by the Suffolk based poet Jennifer Andrews.
The song opens with a rippling piano accompaniment with throbbing left-hand chords that evoke the timeless quality redolent in the poem. The song's two verses, while creating a structural unity are diverse. The first is questioning, unsure and pointillistic with Venables mirroring perfectly the interrogatory nature of the first stanza.
The second is more assured and at the words 'except in dreams' moves into a sound world that is more affirmative and expectant. It is only on the final word of the phrase 'but did not climb over', that a sense of true return occurs; the mood dissolving into the uncertainty of the first stanza. Paradoxically, it is the sense of musical return that gives the song its feeling of unity. However, whereas the poem implies a journey where ultimately one reaches a destination, but 'does not climb over', the masterly use of the introductory material as a coda heightens rather than contradicts the poems ultimate message.
The song It Rains is a setting of a poem by Edward Thomas