Music
Search this list of all my publicly available works using the search box, or the category and year lists. Information about each work includes where to buy, borrow or listen to it.
Moments
For SATB choir
4 poems by Cilla McQueen
Moments was commissioned by Jack Speirs for the Southern Consort based in Dunedin but is yet to receive its first performance.
About the work
Moments is a setting of 4 poems from Cilla McQueen’s 1988 collection called Benzina. They are: Silence, Moments, The Angel and Hooper’s Inlet.
Score
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
Awa herea
Song cycle for soprano and piano
Text by the composer with translations into Māori by Keri Kaa
Awa herea was commissioned by soprano Tracey Chadwell with assistance from Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council (now Creative New Zealand) and the Arts Council of Great Britain. The first performance was given by Tracey Chadwell and Margaret Nielsen (piano) on 15 July 1993 in the Adam Concert Room at Victoria University School of Music.
About the work
I wrote the words for Awa herea as I was travelling round Te Wai Pounamu — the south island of Aotearoa. The title means ‘braided rivers’.
The work is in 8 sections: Vocalise, Karakia, Awa Herea, The Berries, Lake Ianthe, Scale and perspective, The Sandfly, Awa Herea (conclusion).
After a vocalise and karakia, the song Awa Herea draws on imagery of the east coast rivers. It suggests that a single thread, though strong, has an end — 2 threads, woven together, are much stronger.
The Berries describes a scene walking from Ship Cove in the Marlborough Sounds. Lake Ianthe reacts to a beautiful scene where there is knowledge that behind the fringe of beauty the forest is being clear felled, while Scale and perspective and The Sandfly deal with the comparative length of life cycles. The final section concludes the work; many strands woven together form an enduring, infinite, colourful cloth.
Scores and recordings
Buy or borrow the score and recordings from SOUNZ.
The full work has been recorded by Tracey Chadwell.
Tracey Chadwell’s Song Book — CD
One movement, Karakia, has been recorded by Mere Boynton.
The first movement, Vocalise, is included in an educational resource for primary schools.
The Journey of Mataku Moana
For cello
I wrote The Journey of Matuku Moana in 1992, in response to a commission from the Danish-born Australian-based cellist, Georg Pedersen, who gave its first performance in Sydney in 1993. The commission was funded by the Performing Arts Board of the Australia Council.
About the work
Matuku moana is the Māori name of the white-faced heron. This piece was mostly composed in Sydney while I was receiving treatment for breast cancer. I had a large wooden sculpture of a heron in my room, and I completed the work in New Zealand in an environment where herons fed in the mudflats outside my house.
The Journey of Matuku Moana is based on the idea of the double, where the initial ideas are recycled and condensed, and the call of the Australian currawong and the New Zealand korimako (bellbird) recur during the piece.
The music, recorded by Georg Pedersen, was used in Gaylene Preston’s film Titless wonders.
Scores and recordings
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
The work has been released on 2 CDs you can buy or borrow from SOUNZ.
Listen online to Alexander Ivashkin’s performance from Under the Southern Cross.
Angels born at the speed of light
For narrator, dancer and improvising trio
Text by Cilla McQueen
Funded by Creative New Zealand, this work was given its first performance at the Trust Bank Theatre, Dunedin in 1992. The choreographer was Bronwyn Judge and the performers were Judy Bailey (piano), Peter Adams (clarinet) and Russell Scoones (percussion).
About the work
Angels born at the speed of light is a collaboration between poet Cilla McQueen, Bronwyn Judge and myself. The dance, in and around a pool of water, involved 3 ages of women — as child, as woman (Bronwyn Judge) and kuia (Shona McTavish).
For some time, I had been interested in working with improvising musicians to provide a musical structure in which the narrative is always recognisable but the detail constantly changes.
I provided the framework and the basic material while the performers — in this instance narrator, piano, percussion and clarinet doubling saxophone — adapt the material and, within the framework, take it where they will.
Instrumentation
The trio is scored for clarinet/saxophone, with improvised parts for percussion and piano. The clarinet part can be played on flute, and a vibraphone is optional.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
Angels born at the speed of light — SOUNZ
A recording of the premiere performance made by RNZ Concert may be available from Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision.
Moon, Tides and Shoreline
For string quartet
Moon Tides and Shoreline was commissioned by the New Zealand Music Federation (now Chamber Music New Zealand) with funding from the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council for the New Zealand String Quartet. They gave the first performance in Napier on 28 September 1992.
About the work
Moon Tides and Shoreline was inspired by Paekakariki on the Kapiti Coast north of Wellington — ‘home’ during a 6-week residency at Victoria University in 1989.
The relationship between music and environment is particularly strong. The cello’s low repeated D, which opens the piece, is the fundamental pitch heard in the sea and the restless semi-quavers evoke the continuous movement of waves crashing on the Paekakariki shore.
My fascination with mediaeval philosophy and music, incorporating natural cycles, is reflected both in the title and in the compositional process, where magic squares were used to generate the background structure.
Scores and recordings
Hire the parts from Waiteata Music Press or buy the score they published in 1993.
Moon, Tides and Shoreline — publication
It was also released on a Waiteata Music Press CD of my works.
Composer portrait: Gillian Whitehead — CD
RNZ Concert recorded Moon, Tides and Shoreline in 2010.
Moon, Tides and Shoreline — audio
Reviews
‘This is a rich evocative piece that is never merely picturesque, as the title might suggest. It has a lyrical complexity reminiscent of Tippett … [it] achieves moments of great beauty.”
— Tim Bridgewater, The Dominion
‘The highlight for me was the premiere of Gillian Whitehead’s Moon Tides, and Shoreline. … Perhaps there are marine associations to be heard in the score, but, more importantly, one appreciates the work’s cool and eminently logical form. The various musical motifs are inventive in themselves and intriguingly handled.’
— William Dart, Music in New Zealand
Resurgences
For full orchestra
The first public performance of Resurgences was given by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young at the New Music New Zealand festival in Edinburgh in December 1998.
About the work
Resurgences was written during my 6-week residency at Victoria University of Wellington in 1989.
It is about living away from the sea and being drawn back to ideas of the sea, ideas that are very strong with all New Zealanders — looking out to distant horizons.
Instrumentation
Resurgences is scored for: 3 (3 doubling picc)333; 4331; timpani, 3 percussion, harp and strings.
Scores and recordings
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
A recording by the NZSO of Resurgences was released by Continuum in 1995. A new recording of Gillian’s orchestral works includes this work, again performed by the NZSO.
Tai timu tai pari — Ebb tide, flood tide — CD
Review
‘For Whitehead, the piece is very much in the New Zealand tradition, inspired by the geothermal activities around Rotorua, phenomena which she sees as related to the tidal elements that inform other works, including her 1990 string quartet, Moon, Tides and Shoreline.
A densely layered piece, Resurgences features the various sections of the orchestra (including a colourful contribution from percussion) used as both polyphonic voices within the whole work and within their own group of sonorities. Underpinning the score are complex mensural canons, although the listener is not aware of such structural niceties, as volatile shifts of texture and tempo give the score the primeval energy of an Antipodean Rite of Spring.
The landscape is never far from sight.’
— William Dart