Chamber ensemble (2-7 players)
Puhake ki te rangi
For string quartet and taonga pūoro
Puhake ki te rangi was written while I was the Creative NZ/ NZ School of Music Composer-in-Residence. The premiere was given by the NZ String Quartet with Richard Nunns (taonga pūoro) on 6 February 2007 at the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson.
About the work
Puhake ki te rangi, which translates as ‘spouting to the skies’ is a celebration of whales.
Although one section is based on a transcription of whale song, there is no programme to the piece — no confrontation with humanity, for instance. The guiding principles were the extreme range of whale song, the changing patterns of their song, and the image, given to me by the late Tungia Baker, of a whale in Campbell Island waters allowing seal pups at play to slide down her flanks over and over again until, tiring of the game, she flipped them gently away.
In the score, the taonga pūoro sections are improvised; mostly the quartet parts are notated, but sometimes the players are required to improvise.
Instrumentation
The taonga pūoro used in this piece are all made from whale bone or the bone from the albatross, the whale’s avian counterpart.
In the order they are played, the taonga, all made by Brian Flintoff, are:
- the percussive tumutumu, made from the jaw of a pilot whale washed up on Farewell Spit
- a karanga manu (bird caller) made from an orca tooth
- 2 nguru (flutes) made from the teeth of sperm whales that stranded, one in Tory channel and one at Paekakariki
- 2 putorino koiwi toroa (instruments made here from albatross bones, which have 2 different voices, being played as flute or trumpet), made here from the wingbones of a wandering albatross from the sub-Antarctic islands and a young royal albatross from the Chatham Islands
- a nguru made from the cochlea of a hump-backed whale and finally a putorino koiwi toroa, especially made for this piece from the rib of a right whale that beached at Cable Bay.
Members of the quartet play percussive instruments — whalebone tumutumu and tokere (castanets).
Scores and recordings
The New Zealand String Quartet and Richard Nunns have recorded this work.
Listen to the title track online.
Puhake ki te rangi — audio on video
There are also 2 performances by the New Zealand String Quartet with Rob Thorne online.
Quintet
For oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano
Quintet was commissioned by Chamber Music New Zealand, with funding from Creative New Zealand, for the Brisbane-based Southern Cross Soloists. They gave the first performance as part of a national tour at the Regent on Broadway in Palmerston North on 10 July 2003.
About the work
Because of the limitations of range of the instruments (only the piano has extremes of range), their different tuning systems and the fact that only the clarinet among the wind instruments has possibilities of extended techniques, this piece explores more ‘classical’ ideas than some of the other pieces I wrote around this time.
Quintet is in a single movement with several sections. The work uses a set of 6 notes as its basic idea: sounded together they have a restless quality, but the structure of the set provides both diversity and connection between the sound worlds of the piece.
At the outset, a variety of ideas and textures are presented, not unlike moment form, but not using the extremities of 20th century moment form. A second section, over a piano pedal, initiates an exchange between the bassoon and other instruments. This leads to a rapid scherzo-like section, with a monodic trio. It is closely followed by a slow movement, based on a close-range melody that is a tribute to Hirini Melbourne, who died during the writing of this section. The oboe cadenza which follows is the structural centre of the quartet, and is followed by a reworking in reverse of the material already presented. The ending leaves the piece unresolved.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
Quintet was recorded as part of SOUNZ’s Resound project.
Shadows cross the water
For oboe, piano and string quartet
The first performance of this work, then called Tamariki, was given by the Stamic Quartet with Vilém Veverka (oboe) and Patricia Goodson (piano) in Prague on 9 December 2014.
About the work
2014 marked the 70th anniversary of the arrival of New Zealand’s first refugees, more than 700 Polish children who were cared for at a specially prepared camp in Pahīatua north of Wellington. The anniversary led me to consider the terrible and dislocating movement of children in times of war.
As I wrote this piece, 2 significant and dear friends – Peter Maxwell Davies and Jack Body – were terminally ill, so there are many interpretations of the title — which was taken from a Greg O’Brien poem.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
Shadows cross the water — SOUNZ
A recording, released by Rattle CDs, can be bought from SOUNZ and all good record stores.
still, echoing
For piano and string quartet
still, echoing was commissioned by Chamber Music New Zealand for a national tour of the New Zealand String Quartet and British pianist Kathryn Stott. They premiered the work at the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson on 7 May 2017.
About the work
still, echoing takes its title from Greg O’Brien’s poem ‘Te Whanga Lagoon’, which collects the water from most of the Chatham Islands’ rivers before draining into the Pacific at Hanson Bay.
The work is unified by a set of 6 notes that form the basic cell or idea of the piece. It explores the sound possibilities of different combinations of the instruments: at times the piano falls silent, leaving just the violins and viola in dialogue; elsewhere the viola and cello sing together with the piano.
The moments at which all the strings play in rhythmic unison provide cohesion and drive, evoking the irrevocable ebb and flow of wave and tide, and contrasting the tumult of the Pacific with the stillness of Te Whanga Lagoon on Chatham Island.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
SOUNZ filmed a performance for their Resound project.
RNZ Concert recorded the performance.
Taurangi
For flute and piano
Taurangi was commissioned by the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts in 2000, during which it received its first performance by Bridget Douglas and Rachel Thompson. It’s dedicated to the memory of John Mansfield Thomson.
About the work
I began writing Taurangi in the shadow of both the East Timor crisis and the death of my good friend and sometime mentor of many years, the musicologist and historian John Mansfield Thomson. These events modified both the original formal ideas and the detail of the piece.
Williams’ A Dictionary of the Māori Language gives 4 meanings for the word ‘taurangi’ — ‘unsettled’, ‘changing or changeable’, ‘incomplete, unsatisfied, unfulfilled’, ‘to grieve for’ and ‘wanderer’.
Scores and recordings
Taurangi was published by Waiteata Music Press in 2001. It is also available in a digital format.
There are 2 recordings of Taurangi on CD
Composer portrait: Gillian Whitehead — CD
You can also hear a recording online.
Commentary
Kirsten Eade focused on this work in her dissertation.
The influence of Māori music traditions in the flute compositions of Gillian Whitehead — publication
Te āhua, te atārangi
For string quartet
Te āhua, te atārangi was the winning work in the 1971 string quartet competition sponsored by APRA, the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation and the New Zealand Music Federation (now Chamber Music New Zealand). It remains unperformed, as does the work Lyell Cresswell entered which was the runner-up.
About the work
Te āhua te ātārangi is an extremely difficult piece.
The title translates as the form (appearance), the shadow, and refers to the form I was experimenting with, in which a series of 4 movements are followed by short interludes that negate the gestures of the preceding movement. So something low and slow might be contrasted with something high and rapid and short.
I think this way of writing might have come from a dream I had as a child, when I looked down the road and saw 2 figures walking towards me from the distance. Suddenly the scene went from colour to sepia and the figures rushed towards me, with a sensation of terror, then back to normal colour and normal pace, then again sepia and rapid movement, and terror. Strange, as I didn’t see a lot of cinema.
Score
Contact me if you would like to see the score.