Ian Venables

Biography

Ian Venables was born in Liverpool in 1955 and was educated at Liverpool Collegiate Grammar School. He studied music with Richard Arnell at the Trinity College of Music, and later with Andrew Downes, John Mayer, and John Joubert at the Birmingham Conservatoire. His compositions encompass many genres, and, in particular, he has added significantly to the canon of English art song. Described as "one of the finest song composers of his generation," he has written over sixty works in this genre, which include eight song-cycles: Venetian Songs – Love’s Voice, Op.22 (1995); Invite to Eternity for tenor and string quartet, Op.31 (1997); Songs of Eternity and Sorrow for tenor, string quartet, and piano, Op.36 (2004); On the Wings of Love for tenor, clarinet, and piano, Op.38 (2006); The Pine Boughs Past Music for baritone and piano, Op.39 (2010); Remember This, Op.40, (2011); The Song of the Severn for baritone, string quartet, and piano, Op.43 (2013)and "Through These Pale Cold Days", Op.46 (2016). Other songs for solo voice and piano include Two Songs, Op.28 (1997) and Six Songs, Op.33 (1999–2003), A Dramatic Scena – At the Court of the Poisoned Rose for counter-tenor and piano, Op. 20 (1994). His songs have been performed by national and internationally acclaimed artists that include: Andrew Kennedy, Roderick Williams, Patricia Rozario, Ian Partridge, Allan Clayton, Caroline MacPhie, Brian Thorsett, Susan Bickley, Benjamin Hulett, Sally Porter Munro, Benjamin Appl, Geraldine McGreevy, Alessandro Fisher, Nicky Spence, Daniel Norman, Howard Wong, Nathan Vale, Michael Lampard, Peter Savidge, Kevin McLean-Mair, Mary Plazas, Peter Wilman, Sally Porter Munro, Nicholas Mulroy, Nick Pritchard. Elizabeth Atherton, Kristian Sorensen and Ciara Hendrick. His many chamber works include Piano Quintet, Op.27 (1995), described by Roderic Dunnett in The Independent as "lending a new late 20th Century dimension to the English pastoral," and String Quartet, Op.32 (1998), as well as smaller pieces for solo instruments and piano. He has also written works for choir including Awake, Awake, the World is Young, Op.34, and Rhapsody for organ, Op.25 (1996), brass and solo piano.

He is an acknowledged expert on the 19th century poet and literary critic John Addington Symonds, and apart from having set five of his poems for voice and piano, he has contributed a significant essay to the book John Addington Symonds: Culture and the Demon Desire (Macmillan Press Ltd, 2000).

He is president of the Arthur Bliss Society, a vice-president of the Gloucester Music Society, and chairman of the Ivor Gurney Society. His continuing work on the music of Gurney has led to 2003 orchestrations of two of his songs, counterparts to two that by Herbert Howells, and newly edited versions of Gurney's War Elegy (1919) and A Gloucestershire Rhapsody (1921), with Philip Lancaster. His works have been recorded on the Signum, Somm, Regent and Naxos labels.

His music is published by Novello & Co (Music Sales)

Works list

1. Fortunate Isles
2. The Passing Stranger
3. Invitation to the Gondola (also for baritone and piano)
4. Love's Voice

1. Born upon an Angel's Breast
2. An Invite to Eternity
3. Evening Bells
4. I am

1. The Way Through
2. It Rains
3. Vitae summa brevis
4. The November Piano
5. Break, break, break
6. The Hippo (also for voice and string quartet)

A. E. Housman

1. Easter Hymn
2. When Green Buds Hang
3. Oh, Who is That Young Sinner
4. Because I Liked You Better

1. Love Lives Beyond
2. Friendship
3. Aurelia

Federico García Lorca, Jean de Sponde, Emperor Hadrian, Robert Frost and W. B. Yeats

1. Ionian Song
2. The Moon Sails Out
3. Sonnets of Love, No XI
4. Animula Vagula, Blandula
5. Reluctance
6. When You Are Old

Leonard Clark

1. The Wind
2. Soft Rain
3. My Heart Makes Songs on Lonely Roads
4. In Memoriam – Ivor Gurney

1. Frutta di mare
2. The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
3. In a Palor Containing a Table
4. Cut Grass
5. Little Old Cupid
6. Chamber Music III
7. On Eastnor Knoll

A.E. Housman, John Drinkwater and Philip Worner

1. On Malvern Hill
2. How Clear, How Lovely Bright
3. Elgar's Music
4. Laugh And Be Merry
5. The River In December

Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon and Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy

1. The Send Off
2. Procrastination
3. Through These Pale Cold Days
4. Suicide In The Trenches
5. If You Forget

Ivor Gurney

Ian Venables is the Chairman of the Ivor Gurney Society and a trustee of the Ivor Gurney Estate. He is currently working on behalf of the Trust to edit for publication some previously unpublished works by Gurney. (Source- see below)