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.
Napier’s Bones
For 24 percussionists and improvising pianist
Napier’s Bones was commissioned by Judy Bailey and funded by the Performing Arts Board of the Australia Council. The first performance was given by Judy Bailey and the Sydney Percussion Ensemble conducted by Graeme Leak at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 1990.
About the work
I wrote Napier’s Bones to involve the improvising talents of Sydney-based pianist Judy Bailey, who, like me, grew up in Whangarei, New Zealand, and as a companion piece to Charles Wuorinen’s Percussion Symphony.
The title has many resonances, but the Napier referred to is Sir John Napier, the inventor of logarithms, and Napier’s bones in Africa were strips of ebony and ivory used for calculating, suggesting to me both rhythmic complexity and the layout of a keyboard.
The piano part is almost entirely improvised, although the pianist is given basic material to work with. There are various forms of interaction with the ensemble for the soloist — call and response, elaboration of harmonic patterns, decoration of percussion textures, improvised duets with percussion instruments, free solo improvisation. The details will vary greatly from performance to performance, although the shape of the piece, which encompasses many speeds, moods and textures in its single movement, remains constant.
Instrumentation
There is also a later version for 6 percussionists and improvising pianist.
Buy or borrow the score and parts from the Australian Music Centre.
Four short pieces
For piano
Four Short Pieces were commissioned for Allen’s Publishing for their Australian Bicentennial Anthology of piano music.
About the work
The pieces perhaps suggest nature images, but the only one that was a reaction to something specific is the last, which was suggested by watching and hearing a beck in spate (or flooded stream) on the west coast of Scotland.
There are 4 movements:
I.
II. Sensitively
III. With Energy
IV. Fiercely.
Score
Four short pieces were published in 1988 by Allens but the album is long out of print.
Bride of Fortune
Opera in 2 acts for soprano, tenor, 2 baritones, and 10 smaller roles doubling as chorus, accompanied by a 17-piece ensemble
Libretto by Anna Maria dell’Oso
Bride of Fortune was commissioned by West Australia Opera and the Perth Festival. It was first performed in a 4-night season at the Octagon Theatre during the 1991 Perth Festival. Performers included the WASO Ensemble and singers Merlyn Quaife (Grazia), Geoffrey Harris (Vito), and Emma Mathews in perhaps her first professional role as Grazia’s sister Fiorina.
About the work
Bride of Fortune is set in Calabria and Sicily in Italy, and Melbourne in Australia in the early 1950s. It’s a work about immigration from Europe to the New World after the war, about the importance of letters in a pre-computer age and about the difference between the different cultures.
The opera opens with the main character, Grazia, writing a letter in her Collingwood, Melbourne flat to her sister — her story is told in flashback.
In Calabria, Grazia is with her sisters preparing for her arranged marriage to Vito, who lives in Melbourne and whom she has never met. (This was common practice at that time, until Australian law put a stop to the practice around 1952.) The marriage takes place, with Vito represented by his photo. She has the ring to take to him, celebrations follow and, as she is leaving by ship from Naples, she argues with her brother Ennio about her land that she refuses to sell to him. On the ship she writes a letter to her husband-to-be, imagining their life together.
In Melbourne, things are very different from her expectations. Vito is crippled from an accident in the brewery where he works, and he is living in the shabby flat of a friend, Mario. Grazia takes a job in a textile factory, and Vito becomes jealous of Mario when he playfully flirts with Grazia. In Sicily, Vito’s mother-in-law has received a ticket so that his young daughter from his previous marriage can join him in Melbourne, and Grazia, unaware of this, comes across a box containing the child’s clothing.
Things unravel quickly from this point. Vito, fuelled with jealousy, challenges Mario, who refuses to fight him, Grazia loses her factory job, Ennio sells Grazia’s land, Vito gambles and loses Grazia’s pay, they argue, Vito hits Grazia and she runs out of the flat sobbing.
Some days later he receives a letter telling him his daughter, still in Sicily, has died of tuberculosis. He is very drunk when Grazia comes to collect her belongings with some friends from the factory. A letter from Fiorina has arrived — she has sold her own land and can pay for Grazia’s return to Italy. As the women rejoice, Vito, anguished, pulls out a knife and holds it to Grazia’s throat.
The flat is surrounded by police and a priest is begging Vito to give himself up. Vito shows Grazia a photo of his dead child. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asks. ‘If I had told you, would you have come?’ The police burst in and seeing Vito threatening them with a knife, they shoot him. Grazia places the wedding ring on his finger as he dies.
Grazia is finishing her letter to Fiorina as another immigrant family are looking to rent the flat. Grazia is pregnant. She will stay in Australia to provide a better life for her child, and hopes Fiorina will come and join her. ‘Life is hard here, but we can live.’
Instrumentation
The score is written for 13 singers, who, except for the 2 main roles, cover many roles between them, both as soloists and ensemble singers.
The orchestration is: flute, oboe, clarinet and saxophone (1 player), horn, trumpet, trombone, timpani, 2 pianos, piano accordion and 2 violins, violas, cellos and double basses.
One musician could play percussion and piano, and a cast member could play the simple accordion part.
Production notes
Some use is made of recorded sound — for example, street sounds, crowd sounds, water, wind — and the Perth production also used slides in the shipboard scenes.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
Review
A review of the Perth season by Noel Sanders was published in Music in New Zealand.
The Bride of Fortune: Gillian Whitehead at Perth — publication
A thesis by Anne Power about opera in Australia from 1988-1998 discusses this opera.
Manutaki
For flute (and piccolo), clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano
Manutaki was commissioned by the Australia Ensemble with funding from the Performing Arts Board of the Australia Council, and it was first performed by them during a tour for Chamber Music New Zealand in 1986.
About the work
At that time I composed this I was using quite complicated structures to organise the music — similar to the isorhythmic structures used in the music of Machaut and Dufay. These hold the piece together, but you’re not aware of those structures when you hear the music.
Before I began writing it I spent some time at Whatipu on the west coast of Auckland and was fascinated by the swallows darting around the cliffs. Their movement certainly influenced the surface of the piece, and if I believe it was a conversation with Peter Scholes, clarinettist and conductor, that gave me the title, Manutaki, the lead bird in a flock of birds.
Score and recordings
Waiteata Music Press published Manutaki in 1993.
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
Tall Poppies in Australia released a recording on CD in 1991.
Members of the Auckland Chamber Orchestra performed it in 2017 during a ‘composer portrait’ concert.
Five bagatelles
For piano
Five Bagatelles was commissioned by Sally Mays with assistance from the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council and the New Zealand Composers Foundation. She gave the first performance on 18 May 1987.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
Listen to an RNZ Concert recording of Sally Mays’ premiere performance.
The Pirate Moon
Opera in 2 acts for 12 singers and orchestra
Libretto by Anna-Maria dell’Oso
The Pirate Moon was commissioned for the singing students of Anthea Moller, to celebrate the opening of the new music building at the Auckland University School of Music. The premiere took place there in 1986 conducted by John Elmsly.
About the work
Early in 1985, I was asked to write this chamber opera for the singing students and an ensemble consisting of the staff and students of the School of Music. It is in 2 acts, set in the world of the Futuries, with a prologue and epilogue set on a west coast beach.
The choice of subject in an area bordering on science fiction was dictated by the fact that the majority of singers were women, and I wanted to stay away from stereotypical themes.
I gave an abstract story line based on 2 ideas to the librettist — a story concerning the encounter with a UFO on a west coast beach by a young couple, and the other, a theme I’ve often worked with, the misunderstandings that arise between groups of different cultures or beliefs.
Anna dell’Oso, who was at the time looking into women’s mythology, drew on 2 quotations, one from Plutarch, ‘This is … an oracle shared by Night and the Moon …The voice was the Sibyl’s … who sang of the future as she was carried about on the face of the moon’, and the other from Macbeth ‘You can look into the seeds of time, and say which will grow and which will not.’
Cast
There are 3 main roles for mezzo-soprano, baritone and soprano, with 7 minor principals (mainly women) who double as a small SATB chorus.
Instrumentation
The Pirate Moon is scored for: flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trumpet, trombone, keyboards, percussion (3 players), tape and strings.
Score
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.