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David Farquhar  

Four Janet Frame Songs

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2005
for medium voice and piano

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Eve de Castro-Robinson  

Len Songs

Duration: 25' 00" Year: 2003
for mezzo-soprano, clarinet, violin and piano

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Ros Emeleus  

Mackenzie's Ballad

Duration: 04' 00"
for baritone and piano

  • Programme Note

    The text, by Joe Charles, tells of the legendary 1850’s tale of Mackenzie and his dog who, it was claimed, were responsible for shifting one thousand sheep which had gone missing from a South Canterbury sheep station. This event was to give a region of Canterbury its Scottish name – Mackenzie Country. The story is very rustic in its yarn-style of delivery and full of delightful exaggerations presenting an attractive challenge of capturing the style of a ballad song, portraying the bold Mackenzie Country landscape whilst at the same time incorporating musical elements reminiscent of the Scottish pioneer.
    The text is a traditional verse-refrain structure and this setting is set in strophic format. The setting evokes the harsh life of the pioneer and the powerful landscape in its use of parallel fifths and in economical use of harmony. The Scottish influence can be heard in the bagpipe-like drone in the introduction, the dotted rhythmic motif that appears in the vocal line and accompaniment, the use of compound meter, and the occasional ‘Scotch Snap’ rhythm.

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David Griffiths  

Six Watercolours

 Year: 1994
six songs for voice, clarinet in B flat, violoncello and piano

  • Programme Note

    These beautiful poems of Charles Brasch were set to music in 1994.

    Commissioned by John Rimmer for the Karheinz company, with assistance from Creative New Zealand, they depict some of the most pristine landscapes of coastal New Zealand. With the exception of the beach settlement at Oaro, which is in the Kaikora region, the texts describe the coastal areas of the northern tip of the South Island. Onekaka (which in Maori means burning sands) is in Golden Bay. Tarakohe and Totaranui are both beaches in the stunning Abel Tasman National Park.

    The poetry was originally set for baritone, clarinet in B flat, violoncello and piano. In this version the clarinet is replaced by violin with some minor transpositions. The settings illustrate the words, capturing with musical gesture both the ancient resonance of these once unpeopled places and the dissolution of human presence over time.

    David Griffiths
    Notes taken from Ahi – The Ogen Trio, Atoll Records ACD108

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Maria Grenfell  

Sketches of a Land

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1993
for soprano and chamber ensemble

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Michael Williams  

Songs of Age and Ice

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 2000
two songs for soprano and piano

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David Farquhar  

Three Cilla McQueen Songs

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1987
for mezzo-soprano and piano

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  • Instrumentation
    can be sung by baritone
  • Programme Note

    I first heard Cilla McQueen reading her own poems at the opening of the new National Library building in August 1987. Among the poems the read was Synaesthesia, which entranced me with its sustained lyricism and seemed to be crying out for music – something very unusual in recent NZ poetry, most of which tends to be more conversational in tone. I asked her for a copy of Synaesthesia (at that stage unpublished) and later formed two other poems among her published collections. The musical connections between Synaesthesia and Princess Alice came quite unconsciously, though the two songs are very contrasted in rhythmic style: one flowing, the other dancing. In between, Solstice is suspended in stillness.

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Douglas Lilburn  

Three Songs

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1947, r. 1954
for voice and piano

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  • Programme Note

    “The three poems here set have always seemed to me to share some ambient and most poignant awareness of our experience on these islands, whether of small remote sounds in summer, the desolation of a crippled gull, or the brilliance of summer harvesting, or whatever might make us feel at home” -Douglas Lilburn

    Lilburn found an underlying experiential similarity in these poems by Ruth Dallas (Nos. 1 and 2) and Basil Dowling (No. 3), which he drew the fore in his settings. The keyboard introduction of “Clear Sky” captures the play of expansiveness (in the broad registral reach) and homeliness (the repeated motifs) that characterises the set as a whole. In “The Picnic” the spacious quality of the keyboard, evoking the circling swallows in their easy flight, is tinged by a haunting iambic limp. Lilburn’s word painting here is poignant and ironic: vocal melismas depict the crumpled, curled foot of the one-footed gull, and our (short) memories of his sorry sight. “Summer Afternoon” sums up the ambivalent mood of the set. The declamatory voice (also found in “The Picnic”) gradually becomes more lyrical, and a sense of progress is conveyed through the rising vocal line (as in “Clear Sky”). Yet there is a lingering sadness. The keyboard’s recurrent fluttering seventh and off-beat falling fourth recalls the desolation and troubling limp of “The Picnic”.
    (Note by Nancy November).

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Douglas Lilburn  

Three Songs for Baritone and Viola

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1958

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  • Programme Note

    Lilburn composed these songs in 1958 for the baritone Donald Munro and his wife the violist Jean McCartney, who gave the first broadcast performance.

    The influence of serialism on the composer’s style at this point in his career makes for a challenging vocal line, especially in the first two songs. Nonetheless, Lilburn’s work capitalizes on the affinities between voice and viola, and exploits technical capabilities of the viola to evoke moods rather than painting the words. In the penultimate verse of “Warning of Winter”, for example, the viola’s wavering line, thickened with chords, heralds the darkness of winter that “descends the flowered pathway”. Such subtle evocation of the text is also found in “Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness”. Here the viola’s wide leaps to high trills are to be executed with the bow placed over the fingerboard; this evokes the troubling paradoxes of spring, the “Birds that are silent now/And buds of barren springing”. Between these bleak poles, the viola and voice pairing are used with bold irony in “Song of Allegiance”. This march is a poet’s humble yet robust reflection on his own position in comparison to the poetic geniuses of the past. Again Lilburn enlists the viola to speak with and as the poet: wide intervals, tense chords, and motivic stutters convey a poetic voice that is “cracked and harsh”.

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David Farquhar  

Writing on the Sand

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 1987
for mezzo-soprano and violin

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