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Gillian Whitehead  

Alice

Duration: 36' 00" Year: 2002
an eight movement monodrama for mezzo-soprano and orchestra

Score Sample
Score Sample
  • Instrumentation
    3343, 3310, harp, timp., 3 perc., strings, mezzo-soprano
  • Programme Note

    In 1909 Alice Adcock, a lively and adventurous young woman from Manchester, was on her way to New Zealand. She was 23, and had recently developed TB, for which there was then no cure. Somehow she persuaded her widowed father to let her travel alone to the other side of the world in case a healthy climate would save her life. (It worked – she lived for another 50 years). The family kept her entertaining letter describing shipboard life, and a few postcards from her have also survived, but most of what we know about her time in New Zealand comes from her father’s letters to her, of which he kept copies, or from family tradition. On her arrival in New Zealand, Alice went into service, travelling widely, much to the consternation of her father. As housekeeper (and the only woman) on a farm in Makarora (a remote settlement on Lake Wanaka) she became pregnant to an unknown man, but was ‘rescued’ by marriage to a local farmer, Charles Pipson, shortly before the birth of her daughter. In 1911, her beloved father died; in 1912, Alice and Charles had a son and the following year, pregnant again, Alice took her children back to England to visit her family. Tragically, while she was away, her husband died suddenly of typhoid fever. Alice hurried back to Makarora to claim her inheritance, but left the two babies with her brother Sam and his wife (who were shortly to emigrate to New Zealand) and took only her eldest child, the illegitimate one, with her. This outraged her sisters-in-law, who saw it as an insult to their dead brother; they sent her away from the farm empty-handed. Once again she had to take a housekeeping job, this time in the North Island. In 1914, Alice and her brother’s family met up again, and Alice began a new life. (Fleur Adcock – abridged) The music of Alice is text-driven, ranging between a language at times extremely simple, as was the basic musical language of the settlers, and at times quite complex, evoking a storm at sea, or the unease of the settlers in a new environment, or Alice’s reaction to the problems which beset her. The piece is held together by various referential motifs. The initial idea, which perhaps suggests the instability of the sea, is also present in the bell-like sounds marking Charles’ death, music associated with a storm at sea is later associated with mental stress, while music suggestive of the movement of shipboard lice later underlies Alice’s traumatic encounter with her sisters-in-law.

    There are eight sections, which often merge into one another: 1. in a letter to her father, Alice describes shipboard life; 2. in New Zealand, she compares her past life and hopes for the future; 3. a dialogue between father and daughter, expressed through their letters; 4. in Makarora, Alice discovers she is pregnant; 5. Alice hears of her father’s death; 6. in England, she learns of her husband’s death; 7. back in Makarora, Alice is turned away by her sisters-in-law; 8. turning her back on the South Island, Alice looks forward to her new life with her brother’s family in the north.

    While writing this piece, I was drawn again and again into the thought that, although this is a true story, set in a particular place at a certain time, it has the resonances of a universal myth, known to all of us who live here. Our forebears, or we ourselves, have crossed the seas to begin a new life, with unforeseen and unimaginable difficulties and felicities, whether ten years, a century or a millennium or so ago.

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M Louise Webster  

An Infinite Shore

Duration: 20' 00" Year: 2011
Clarinet quintet in three movements

Score Sample
Audio Sample
Audio Sample
Audio Sample
  • Instrumentation
    Bb Clarinet, string quartet
  • Programme Note

    This work for clarinet quintet in three movements was written following time spent in the north of Scotland, during which I visited the remote and desolate places that my family left behind when they emigrated from Scotland to New Zealand in the 19th Century. Although the music is not intended to be strictly descriptive, the image underpinning the work is that of an infinite shore that stretches from the line of steep cliffs at Badbea overlooking the North Sea, around the world to the rocky southern shores of Aotearoa New Zealand. The work draws on the tonal colour and extremes of pitch that are possible in the clarinet, and the extraordinary platform of sound of the string quartet.

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David Hamilton  

An Offering for Parihaka

Duration: 14' 00" Year: 1988
for traditional Maori instruments (taonga puoru) and string orchestra

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Ian Sinclair  

Balfour & Paterson - A Dedication

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 1998
for symphony orchestra and written for the Otago-Southland sesquicentenary celebration

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Christopher Blake  

Bitter Calm

Duration: 1h 30' 00" Year: 1993
opera in two acts for soloists, chorus and orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    2sop,1ten,2bari,SATB chorus and orchestra: (2)22(2)2(2); 2220; 2perc,timp,2keyb; strs.
  • Programme Note

    Bitter Calm is a full length opera for five principals, chorus and orchestra in two acts. It is based on an incident at Motuarohia Island in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand in the 1840s. It is a drama of human passions in the contexts of land alienation and tensions between Maori and new settlers. Premiered at the New Zealand International Festival for the Arts in 1994 and filmed for television.

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Helen Fisher  

Bone of Contention

Duration: 1h 20' 00" Year: 1993
a dance work for mezzo-soprano and ensemble

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Anthony Ritchie  

From the Southern Marches

Duration: 2h 00' 00" Year: 1997
for choir, soprano, alto, tenor and bass soloists and orchestra

  • Programme Note

    From the Southern Marches was the brain-child of George Griffiths, historian and owner of Otago Heritage Books in Dunedin. He writes: ‘For many years I’d pondered the nature of the southern region and the people who live in it – particularly the contradictory characteristics passed on from our Scots forebears, with their unrelenting capacity for hard work and their uncertain trust in the rewards to be gained from it. In a broader view, it seemed the development of a southern character was a story so rich in human spirit and diversity that it demanded some kind of expression.’ The ‘kind of expression’ depended very much on George’s choice of texts which come from a wide variety of sources, ranging from old Maori chants to more recent poetry.

    The work progresses more or less in a chronological manner, but avoids becoming a potted history of the south. Each text from each particular era focuses on a special characteristic of the time – whether it is the reckless optimism of the gold miners in the 1860s, or the grim reality of the needle-workers in the 1880s who were virtual slaves. George has drawn on a rich variety of ideas and texts, so that more serious items are contrasted with humour, as in Thatcher’s The Old Identity or ‘King’ Dick Seddon’s political speech. Some items involve text with existent tunes, and the music becomes an arrangement (as is the case with The Old Identity). Sometimes these tunes are just a starting point for lengthy elaboration, as in Bright Fine Gold, based on the tune for Hot Cross Buns.

    From the Southern Marches has a format that is similar to oratorio, with alternations between solo vocal items and choruses, with the addition of two purely orchestral sections. There is even references to the ‘recitative’ style in The Jubilee, Southern Education and elsewhere. It runs to almost two hours in length, and is divided into two halves.

    Such was the success of the premiere in March 1998, From the Southern Marches was repeated in December of the same year, this time with Dobbs Franks conducting. In 1998, Otago Heritage Books won a Special Merit Award in the National Business Review’s Business Sponsorship of the Arts Awards .

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David Farquhar  

Ode

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1963
for piano

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Anthony Ritchie  

Olveston Suite

Duration: 07' 40" Year: 1988
six pieces for piano

  • Programme Note

    Olveston Suite was composed in 1988 while Anthony Ritchie was Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago. The manager of Olveston House in Dunedin, Mr Dennis Moore, asked Anthony to play a programme of music in Olveston, on the 1904 grand piano. In response to a joking suggestion for a piece about the house, Anthony set about composing the Olveston Suite in quick time.

    The pieces reflect qualities of the house; ‘Great Hall’ is expansive and majestic, ‘Kitchen and Scullery’ is busy and bubbling, while ‘Dining room’ suggests an old English style. The fourth piece, ‘Writing Room, Edwardian Bedroom’ is dedicated to Dorothy Theomin, the daughter of the original owners of Olveston and the last member of the family to live in the house. ‘Billiard Room, Persian Room’ is fast and jovial with an exotic middle section. The Suite is rounded off by a repetition of ‘Great Hall’, as the listener exits Olveston.

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Gillian Whitehead  

Outrageous Fortune

Duration: 1h 58' 00" Year: 1998
a chamber opera in two acts

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