Songs of Venice (c 1976)

The Gondolier

St Mark’s Square

Rain Storm

Michael Head’s Songs of Venice present a modern view of the city. If Nancy Bush who wrote the three poems - and several other texts that Head set to music - sees Venice through a tourist’s eyes, so does nearly every one else. The date of the composition is uncertain but, since the score is dedicated “to Dame Janet Baker” and since she received her DBE in 1976, one might assume that they were written in the last year of the composer’s life. The dedication might, however, have been updated for the publication of the songs and their first performance, by Dame Janet with André Previn, at a concert in aid of Venice in Peril in the Royal Festival Hall in 1977.

Whenever they were written, the Songs of Venice represent Head at his best - which means that they definitely do not “fall somewhere between the popular ballad and the art song proper” as New Grove claims of his songs in general. They are proper art songs. It is true that the setting of “The Gondolier” is conventional enough to adopt the gently rocking 6/8 rhythms and rippling figuration of the barcarole but it is not too obviously done and the complete change of manner in the “Ohé” middle section makes a dramatic contrast. “St Mark’s Square” also has its picturesque element in the fluttering imagery of the piano part but it is not so “harmonically conservative” as to forego the sonorous opportunity offered by the bronze bells in another striking middle section. A cold wind blows through the harmonies of “Rain Storm” which, though elegiac in the expressive piano counterpoint to the vocal line, ends with a modest apotheosis.