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.
Ahotu (O matenga)
For chamber sextet
Ahotu (O matenga) was commissioned by the Flederman Sextet, with funding from the Australia Council.
About the work
Ahotu is the sixth in a series of instrumental pieces based on the phases of the moon, and refers to the seventh day of the cycle in the Māori lunar year.
The text of the entire 30-day cycle has been used as one of the rhythmic generators of the piece, with vowels and consonants translated into durations to provide the apparently irrational rhythms, which are contrasted in a series of short ensemble or solo sections with either proportionally defined or regular rhythms.
The 2 longest sections are centrally placed. The first, featuring trombone and percussion, presents the language-based material in the percussion; the second, starting with the long piano solo, begins a mensural canon based on the proportional material. However, half-way through this canon, recapitulatory material begins, and subsequent appearances of the canon occur in continually shorter blocks, each transformed very differently.
O Matenga, in the title of the piece, refers to the Māori custom, found also in many other civilisations, of providing sustenance for the spirit to the next world after death — the piece is dedicated to my father.
Instrumentation
Ahotu (O matenga) is scored for flute, trombone, cello, percussion and 2 keyboard players — 2 pianos, celesta and harpsichord.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
The work was released on British label Lorelt in 2003.
The king of the other country
Chamber opera in 2 acts for soprano, baritone, 6 singers in minor roles accompanied by chamber orchestra
Libretto by Fleur Adcock
The king of the other country was written for the students of the Sydney Conservatorium Opera School and first performed by them with Jane Manning (soprano), Geoffrey Chard (baritone) and the Flederman Ensemble conducted by Myer Fredman.
About the work
Somewhere in Britain, Isabel is sitting in the garden of her isolated cottage on a long, hot summer evening, singing a lullaby to her daughter. Her husband comes and admonishes her. It is dangerous to sit out alone at night. A year ago he had met this strange man, who, it’s said, might be the king of the other country.
Isabel considers this nonsense, but her mother supports her husband. Isabel asks her sister to sit in the garden with her, but, tiring of her chatter, sends her back inside. Alone in the garden, singing to her baby in her cradle, she is approached by a distinguished man and his gentleman attendant, who, after some conversation, reveal their true identities. ‘I am the king of the other country, and you are coming to be my bride.’ The king sweeps her off her feet and abducts her to the other country.
After a night spent in lovemaking in the other country, Isabel asks the king if she can return to visit her daughter. The king agrees, but she must wear a golden cloak to keep her safe. After she returns home, she eventually comes to realise that it is not one night that has passed, but many years …
Cast
The 2 major roles for soprano and baritone were written for professional singers. The minor roles are for 2 tenors, 4 sopranos and 2 mezzo-sopranos. Singers in minor roles also double as chorus, and some of the solo parts can be doubled.
Instrumentation
This work is scored for flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet in B flat, clarinet in E flat, bass clarinet, trombone, piano/celesta/harpsichord, piano/chamber organ, harp, timpani, percussion (3 players) and strings.
Score
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
These isles your dream
For mezzo-soprano, viola and piano
Text by Kathleen Raine
These isles your dream was commissioned, with assistance from Northern Arts, and premiered by mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Lamb in 1983 in Carlisle, United Kingdom.
About the work
These isles your dream is a series of very short poems set as a single movement.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the full score from SOUNZ.
These isles your dream — SOUNZ
An RNZ Concert recording from 1993 is available online.
Out of this nettle, danger
For mezzo-soprano, flute, clarinet, cello, keyboard and percussion
Text by Fleur Adcock, based on Katherine Mansfield’s writings from the last 3 years of her life
The first performance was given by Anthea Moller (mezzo) with the Australian Chamber Players conducted by Graham Hair.
About this work
The text of Out of this nettle, danger was commissioned by the Literature Board of the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs and the music received a First Use fee from the Music Board of the Australia Council.
It is based on the letters, diaries and other writings of Katherine Mansfield. All the excerpts come from the winter of 1919–20, 3 years before her death in 1923. She was at the time 23 years old, living by the northern Mediterranean coast, as it was essential for her health that she avoided the English winters. This separated her from her husband, John Middleton Murry, who had to work in London to earn enough to keep them both.
The writings express the exaggerations of emotion engendered by tuberculosis, and trace various events of the winter – the visit by her wealthy father, bringing cigarettes and daisies but no money at a time of financial crisis; the dark days of her sojourn at Ospedaletti with her companion who, like her husband, was frequently the recipient of hatred and bitterness; happier times at Menton; and a dream that she had.
The title comes from one of her favourite quotations. ‘Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety’, spoken by Shakespeare’s Hotspur in Henry IV Part 1 and chosen by her for her epitaph.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
Out of this nettle, danger — SOUNZ
RNZ Concert recorded this work in 1987.
Out of this nettle, danger — audio
Review
‘Out of this Nettle, Danger is intimate, acute, fleet, with a fascinating sensitivity to the deep implications of the text. There is a big range of percussion instruments, used with the greatest economy and power of suggestion so that no sound or thematic fragment is perfunctory, each has a voluptuous, expressive, original shape. The piece moves forward in small episodes, held together partly by text, partly by the sheer consistent quality of the imagination.’
— Meredith Oakes, The Independent
Low tide, Aramoana
For large SATB choir and small brass ensemble
Text by Cilla McQueen
Low tide, Aramoana was commissioned by the Auckland Choral Society, and first performed by them conducted by Ray Wilson, in the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Parnell, Auckland on 2 August 1982.
About the work
Low tide, Aramoana is a setting of a poem by Cilla McQueen, and is used with her kind permission.
The piece is an evocation of an estuary at the turn of the tide. The poem itself describes Aramoana at the mouth of Otago harbour which was significant at the time because of the threat of the aluminium smelter that, because of the strength of local protest, was in fact not built. For me, however, it was the estuary where the Ruakaka River meets the sea south of Whangarei that was significant.
Instrumentation
The work is scored for STAB choir with divisi, and 3 trumpets, 2 trombones and timpani.
The score is notated in C; trumpets may be in C or B flat. Trumpet 1, trombones and timpani form a central ensemble. Trumpets 2 and 3, as well as forming part of the central ensemble, take up initial and final positions remote but equidistant from the central ensemble, but with access to it.
Instrumental lines that are bracketed and asterisked may be omitted — the lines here only give and sustain the vocal pitches.
Score
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Monodrama for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra
Text by Fleur Adcock
The first performance of Eleanor of Aquitaine was given in September 1988 at the New Directions Festival in Sydney by the Seymour Group with Jeannie Marsh (mezzo) conducted by Paul Stanhope.
About the work
Eleanor of Aquitaine was commissioned by the Northern Sinfonia with funds from the Arts Council of Great Britain.
The powerful and politically acute 12th century queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of 2 kings and mother of 2, was married first to the monk-like King Louis of France — their marriage was annulled and she strategically married Henry II of England.
Henry, alarmed by her political manoeuvring and the growing power of their sons, had her imprisoned in Chinon for 17 years. In our monodrama, Eleanor, in prison, looks back to her marriages and forward to the time when she will be freed and her son, Richard Coeur de Lion will become king.
Score
Buy or borrow the full score from SOUNZ.