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The rich overtone resonances from low, rubber-stopped notes on the piano create sensuous single sound moments in the music. These Filipino gong music inspired resonances combine with slow European chorale-like gestures throughout to provide breath moments within an increasingly combative musical texture. The melodic-line derived from Bontok war-chant, usually the prerogative of men, finds full cry in erotic “sea ripples”, which in turn generates long-lyric lines expressive of the poem’s princess meditation on war. Even the chorale-like breath segments work in shortening gasps leading to transfigured Kulintang (Filipino percussion) segments whose dance-like momentum undergird the “metal timbre” climax of work. The text is drawn from Merlinda Bobis’ epic poem Cantata of the Warrior Woman Daragang Magayon – a revisionist re-telling of the Philippines ancient myth associated with the active volcano Mount Mayon. It charts the play of ambivalence and conviction of a beautiful maiden on the eve of battle and is interpreted by the composer as a metaphor of volcanic, erotically-fuelled anger against social injustice, not just in war but in cultural colonisation.

• Crossman: Daragang Magayon Cantata; computer  

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• Daragang Magayon Cantata - Bruce Crossman / Merlinda Bobis 

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• Bruce Crossman: Selected Works (1996-2001) 

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• Bruce Crossman: Intercultural Sounds 

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• Bruce Crossman: Selected Works (1996-2001) Vol. 2 

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• Double Resonances - Bruce Crossman  Year: 2008 

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The Love Sonnets of Michelangelo I wrote for Michael Parmenter, with whom I worked on a programme entitled Between Two Fires (also included was a dance-theatre work I created collaboratively with Michael, using his voice as well as his body, with imagery extracted from the diaries of Franz Kafka.) At the time I was focused on different styles of melody, having just completed my Five Melodies for Piano. Inspired by the lovely voices of some of the then current students in our School of Music, I felt that women’s voices gave the expressive quality I wanted, as well as providing a useful ‘cover’ for the overtly homo-erotic tenor of the texts. The original production used film, shot by my good friend Bayley Watson, showed the dancer’s prostrate figure, swathed in bandages. As the performance unfolded the cloth was gradually cut and pealed back by hands belonging to an old man whose face we never saw, the intended metaphor being of the sculptor cutting away marble to reveal the male form that he sensed already existed within the stone.

The work has since had other performances that have discarded the theatrical elements, most successfully when each setting is prefaced by a reading of the poem in translation.

These settings of some of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s most personal sonnets articulate the anguish of love and desire, as well as the despair of old age. The musical style combines the theatricality of Italian bel canto with the direct expressivity of folksong.

• Body: Love Sonnets of Michelangelo; facsimile 

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• Jack Body and Michael Parmenter: Love Sonnets 

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• Baroque Voices: How Great is the Pleasure   Year: 2001 

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• Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 6 - Composer Portrait: Jack Body  Year: 2003 

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This work was commissioned as the SOUNZ Community Commission in 1999 for the Millennium Parade in Gisborne.

• Besser: Te Rangimarie Dawn Pagent 

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• Besser: Te Rangimarie Dawn Pagent  Year: 2000 

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• Ritchie A.: The God Boy; Computer Set 

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• Ritchie A: The God Boy; computer-set 

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• Ritchie, A.: The God Boy; computer-set 

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• Ritchie A.: The God Boy  Year: 2004 

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• Anthony Ritchie and Jeremy Commons: The God Boy  Year: 2004 

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• Opera Otago: The God Boy by Anthony Ritchie  Year: 2004 

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• Scholes: The Tale of the Birdcatcher; computer-set 

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• Scholes: The Tale of the Birdcatcher 

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