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.
Qui natus est
Carol for SATB choir
Latin and English text
Qui natus est was first performed by the University of Auckland Choir.
About the work
The mediaeval text of this carol is macaronic, mixing Latin and English phrases, and was written in Adelaide in 1966.
The Latin text translates as, ‘He who was born of a virgin, O Lord, grant me thy salvation.’
Score and recording
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
The University of Auckland Festival Choir released this work on CD.
Three bridges to cross PRIVATE
For flute, violin and gongs
Three bridges to cross was composed during my time as a student in Sydney.
About the work
Three bridges to cross is music for a film about about Cambodia published by Australian Broadcasting Corporation and NHK (Japan) in 1966.
Score
The score is in the National Library of New Zealand and can be viewed with my permission.
Karakia
3 pieces for piano
These short pieces are suitable for intermediate performers and were written while I was a student at the University of Sydney.
Score
Contact me if you are interested in seeing the score.
Three improvisations for solo oboe
I wrote these 3 short pieces — which are not really improvisations — while I was an undergraduate at Victoria University of Wellington. They waited 27 years for their first performance which was given by Diana Craig in Katoomba, Australia.
Scores and recordings
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ.
A Rattle CD with a performance by Vilém Veverka was released in 2018.
RNZ Concert recorded the work in 2012.
Lord’s Prayer
For voices, with or without piano accompaniment
This setting of the Lord’s Prayer was written for and sung at Whangarei Girls’ High School assemblies.
Score
Buy or borrow the score from SOUNZ soon.
Missa Brevis
For SATB choir
Text of Latin mass
The first complete performance of Missa Brevis was given by the Leonine Consort in Sydney in 1965.
About the work
I have always had an affinity with the music of the 16th century. For 3 years I sang in Peter Godfrey’s choir at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Auckland, where the repertoire included Byrd’s 4-part mass. This experience meant that the writing of this work came naturally.
Written while I was studying in Wellington, it was one of the first of my works that I heard performed — the Victoria University Choir conducted by Robert Oliver sang selected movements. Its first complete performance — in an otherwise ‘all Bach’ concert given by the Leonine Consort — was broadcast on television.
Scores and recordings
The score was first published by Musica Dei Gloriae Wellington in 1978, but is now out of print. In 1996 it was re-published by Waiteata Music Press.
Missa Brevis was released on a Waiteata Music Press CD of my works.
Composer portrait: Gillian Whitehead — CD
RNZ Concert recorded Missa Brevis in 2011.
Review
‘Gillian Whitehead’s Missa Brevis easily rose to the challenge of justifying its presence, [showing] rare understanding of how to write for concerted voices; everything she calculated on paper worked in practice in this tenderly beautiful performance’.
— Roger Covell, Sydney Morning Herald, 1965