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.
The virgin and the nightingale
5 songs for 6 solo voices and flute
The texts are translated from Latin by Fleur Adcock
The virgin and the nightingale was commissioned with funding from the Music Board of the Australia Council. The first complete performance was given in 1992 by The Song Company.
About the work
The songs are settings of 5 mediaeval poems about birds:
- Courtship
- The Swan
- The Thrush
- The Roasted Swan, and
- The Anti-nightingale song.
Scoring
Scored for soprano, mezzo, alto, tenor, baritone and bass. Some of the songs have been sung by choirs. Flute is used in 3 songs.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
The virgin and the nightingale — SOUNZ
This work has been released on CD by the Song Company.
Windstreams
For percussion
Windstreams was commissioned and premiered by percussionist, Michael Askill with funding from the Music Board of the Australia Council.
About the work
I wrote Windstreams in Green Valley, south of Sydney, while watching the movement of trees in a strong wind storm.
Instrumentation
Windstreams is scored for: 8 drums (tomtoms and rototoms), bass drum, low timpani, bell tree, 4 suspended cymbals, tamtam, glockenspiel, vibraphone, tubular bells, 5 temple blocks and 2 wood blocks.
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
RNZ Concert recorded Windstreams in 1994.
Reviews
[Gillian Whitehead] has the ability to focus on the resonance of sounds, giving them an intense aftertaste. She makes you listen to the echo more than the event, a dangerous strategy for anyone without her acute sensitivity to timbre.
— Peter McCallum, Sydney Morning Herald 23 April 1987
Wind stream (sic) is one of those exquisitely fragile soundscapes which could be a disaster in less skilled and sensitive hands than those of Michael Askill. Surrounded by more than a dozen percussion instruments, he built fragments of sound into a kind of aural tapestry that was both varied and delicate.
— Jill Sykes, Sydney Morning Herald
Tongues, swords, keys
For 8 solo voices and 4 percussion
Text devised by Randolph Stow
Tongues, swords, keys was commissioned by The Song Company with funding from the Music Board of the Australia Council. They, together with percussion ensemble Synergy, gave the first performance in September 1987 at the Verbrugghen Hall at Sydney Conservatorium.
About the work
The multilingual text explores ideas of coming together and parting — perhaps of tribes, or of nations, or of individuals. At times the work is ritualistic in character.
Scoring
The work is scored for 2 sopranos, 2 altos, 2 tenors, 2 basses and percussion.
Scores
Buy or borrow the hand-written score from SOUNZ.
Buy or borrow a typeset score from the Australian Music Centre.
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.