Orchestra with soloist

Alice

2002 | 35 minutes

Monodrama for mezzo-soprano and full orchestra

Text: Fleur Adcock

Alice was written as part of my residency with the Auckland Philharmonia in 2001. The first performance was given in July 2003 by the Auckland Philharmonia conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya with Helen Medlyn (mezzo-soprano).

About the work

Alice is 8 sections which often merge into one another.

In a letter to her father, Alice describes shipboard life.
In New Zealand, she compares her past life and hopes for the future.
A dialogue between father and daughter, expressed through their letters.
In Makarora, Alice discovers she is pregnant.
Alice hears of her father’s death.
In England, she learns of her husband’s death.
Back in Makarora, Alice is turned away by her sisters-in-law.
Turning her back on the South Island, Alice looks forward to her new life with her brother’s family in the north.

My approach

While writing this piece, I was drawn again and again into the thought that, although this is a true story, set in a particular place at a certain time, it has the resonances of a universal myth, known to all of us who live here. Our forebears, or we ourselves, have crossed the seas to begin a new life, with unforeseen and unimaginable difficulties and felicities, whether 10 years, a century or a millennium or so ago.

The music of Alice is text-driven, ranging between a language at times extremely simple, as was the basic musical language of the settlers, and at times quite complex, evoking a storm at sea, or the unease of the settlers in a new environment, or Alice’s reaction to the problems which beset her. The piece is held together by various referential motifs. The initial idea, which perhaps suggests the instability of the sea, is also present in the bell-like sounds marking Charles’ death, music associated with a storm at sea is later associated with mental stress, while music suggestive of the movement of shipboard lice later underlies Alice’s traumatic encounter with her sisters-in-law.

Instrumentation

Alice is scored for: 3*34*3*; 3310; harp, timpani, 3 percussion, strings and mezzo-soprano.

About Alice Adcock

Fleur Adcock writes: ‘In 1909 Alice Adcock, a lively and adventurous young woman from Manchester, was on her way to New Zealand. She was 23, and had recently developed TB, for which there was then no cure. Somehow she persuaded her widowed father to let her travel alone to the other side of the world in case a healthy climate would save her life. (It worked – she lived for another 50 years). The family kept her entertaining letter describing shipboard life, and a few postcards from her have also survived, but most of what we know about her time in New Zealand comes from her father’s letters to her, of which he kept copies, or from family tradition.

On her arrival in New Zealand, Alice went into service, travelling widely, much to the consternation of her father. As housekeeper (and the only woman) on a farm in Makarora (a remote settlement on Lake Wanaka) she became pregnant to an unknown man, but was “rescued” by marriage to a local farmer, Charles Pipson, shortly before the birth of her daughter. In 1911, her beloved father died; in 1912, Alice and Charles had a son and the following year, pregnant again, Alice took her children back to England to visit her family.

Tragically, while she was away, her husband died suddenly of typhoid fever. Alice hurried back to Makarora to claim her inheritance, but left the 2 babies with her brother Sam and his wife (who were shortly to emigrate to New Zealand) and took only her eldest child, the illegitimate one, with her. This outraged her sisters-in-law, who saw it as an insult to their dead brother; they sent her away from the farm empty-handed. Once again she had to take a housekeeping job, this time in the North Island. In 1914, Alice and her brother’s family met up again, and Alice began a new life.’

Scores and recordings

Buy or borrow the full score and CD from SOUNZ.

Alice — SOUNZ

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra has released a recording of Alice.

Alice — CD

RNZ Concert recorded the Auckland Philharmonia’s premiere performance in 2003.

Alice — audio

Award

Alice won the 2003 SOUNZ Contemporary Award.

SOUNZ Contemporary Award

Ngā whetū o Matariki

2023 | 16 minutes

Orchestra with soloist, Works with taonga pūoro

For orchestra and taonga pūoro

Ngā whetū o Matariki (The stars of Matariki) was commissioned by the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra. It received its first performances, with Brent Stewart conducting and Ariana Tikao playing taonga pūoro, on July 22 and 23 at the King’s and Queen’s Performing Arts Centre in Dunedin.

About the work

Ngā whetu o Matariki celebrates the two harbingers of the Māori New Year — the star Puaka, particularly important to iwi in the south of Aotearoa, and Matariki, the Pleiades.

I found when I was writing the piece that I was thinking of many things — of the varying patterns in movement of stars and planets, of the appearance of Puaka and Matariki in the morning sky as the seasons change, of human ritual.

The work of Professor Rangi Matamua has revealed Māori beliefs concerning the star group Matariki — how, as the constellation first rises, the clarity of individual stars presage the quality of crops and weather for the new year; how our aspirations rise with the smoke from baking kumara to be understood by the stars; how the constellation was formed when Tāwhirimātea, distressed when his parents Rangi and Papatūānuku were driven apart by his brothers, tore out his eyes and threw them into the sky, where they splintered to form Matariki (the eyes of a chief); and how Taramainuku, the captain of the Waka in the sky, whose prow is Matariki and whose stern is in Orion, captures in his great net the souls of those who die each day, then releases them into the sky as stars at the time of Matariki.

Score

The score will be lodged with SOUNZ after the premiere.

Instrumentation

Ngā whetu o Matariki is scored for taonga pūoro, 1222, 2200, timpani, 2 percussion and strings. There is also an alternative version with 2 flutes.

Interview

Listen to an interview about the work on RNZ National.

Composer Dame Gillian Whitehead premieres a new work about Matariki — RNZ

Tai timu, tai pari

2021 | 20 minutes

Orchestra with soloist

Concerto for violin and full orchestra

Tai timu, tai pari was commissioned by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (APO) with funding from the APO Trust and Creative New Zealand. The first performance was given by the APO conducted by James Feddeck with Andrew Beer (violin) on 10 June 2022. It is dedicated to Andrew Beer.

About the work

I wrote Tai timu, tai pari on the Otago Peninsula, in the wake of the first wave of Covid-19. I’d worked on other pieces during 2020, all initiated before the pandemic (and cancelled because of it), but this piece is written under the influences of these new times. I felt initially that I couldn’t write anything that was harsh or strident, but rather the sounds had to be gentle. This was probably something to do with the uncertainty, the keeping safe and the exhortations to be kind we’d experienced over those 18 months. However, as I wrote, the structure of the piece took over, and that self-censorship went away.

From my studio on the Otago peninsula I can look across the harbour towards the hills opposite, and what I see constantly changes. The tide ebbs and flows — tai timu, tai pari translates from te reo Māori as ‘low tide, high tide’ — light plays on the water, birds forage for food, rest on the water, whirl in flocks.

When I was writing, images of the variation in waves lapping on the shore, of distant disputes between birds or sea-creatures and birds in flight, of footprints on the beach came to mind. Not that the piece is primarily a soundscape — more than most of my pieces it harks back to the balance and proportions of the classical era.

Tai timu, tai pari is in a single movement, lasting a bit over 20 minutes, where the sections, in general terms, are slow, fast, cadenza, fast and slow.