The two songs last around 8 minutes in performance.

*This is a digital mockup of the two songs using Notion’s sound library. Earphones/headphones are recommended. 6/6

The opening chords provide the intervallic content of the rest of the song, and return as a kind of refrain. Twice the singer rises to a bitter-sweet climax before a tender rendition of the opening chord sequence accompanies the words “…and grief unto my darling joys dost bring”. 5/6

The second song, John Keats’ ‘To A Lady Seen For A Few Moments At Vauxhall’, is more harmonically wide-ranging than the first, perhaps in an effort to capture the elusive spirit of the poem. 4/6

The first song, a partial setting of ‘Lover’s Infiniteness’ by John Donne, begins with a funereal tread that swells occasionally into anguished outbursts, or retreats into uneasy oases of calm. The opening contains a brief quote from Zemlinsky’s ‘Sechs Maeterlinck Gesänge’. 3/6

Years later, during a creative dry spell, I was compelled to revisit my earlier pieces and decided that, whilst the songs’ harmonic framework undoubtedly marked them out as student works, their imagery and musical material were crying out for a full orchestral setting. 2/6

These two songs were written whilst I was a student and were originally clumsily arranged for voice and chamber ensemble, before being quietly put to one side once the initial flush of pride had turned to dissatisfaction. 1/6