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For the composer, Fantasia is a particularly significant work. It was her first ever commission. Numerous performances in Europe by Tessa Birnie – including a premiere broadcast on Radio Turkey! – led to subsequent performances by other pianists. Displaying a new technical confidence from her studies with Peter Maxwell Davies, the work’s single unified structure marks a turning point in Whitehead’s composing method. The title, refers not so much to free fantasy but to the imagination required to create music from minimal material; in this case – the opening three-note motive. The work is in three sections, corresponding to these notes, and fabric of the entire piece is generated from them. There are patterns that emerge within sections, as well as those spanning the entire piece, (trills and tempi changes included). Because of the inherent symmetry of the generated material, with layers building up both forwards and backwards, Whitehead’s original intention was to make a palindromic structure, but it became instead a through-composed work with coda. (Programme note by Emma Carle and Jack Body).

• Whitehead: Fantasia on three notes; facsimile  Year: 1969 

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• Tessa Birnie: Piano Music by New Zealand Composers 

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• Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 3 - Composer Portrait: Gillian Whitehead  Year: 2000 

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Four Stabiles was composed when I was newly graduated from university, after I had decided that I liked the idea of becoming a composer. Margaret Nielsen graciously gave it an early airing and the score was promptly published by Waiteata Press Music, giving me a tremendous boost of self-confidence.

The 60s were a time when musical abstraction was the vogue, when a mathematical structure justified the music. Thus the inverted palindromic form of Stabile I based on its two versions of the all-interval symmetrically invertible 12-tone chord was a source of considerable composerly satisfaction! All but one of the dedicatees, personal friends, have long since either drifted or passed away. The one remaining contact, William Dart, is characterised in Stabile III, a tender portrait of someone who was then living a curiously isolated existence. Tony (Stabile 1) I admired for his good looks and spiritual curiosity, while winsome Robert (Stabile 2) was the object of one of my compulsive crushes. Gaye (Stabile 4) was a passionately energetic fellow student at Teacher’s College, who, sadly, took her own life a few years later.

These pieces use fixed register, that is, each note (C, C#, etc) is heard at only one register, creating a static vertical relationship between the pitches. Variety is achieved by viewing the ‘sound object’ from different perspectives, just as a viewer explores a static sculptural structure (a stabile) by walking around it. Movements one and three permit two possible registers for each note by using two chords, one the inversion of the other. Another feature of the first movement is that it is palindromic. The gentle sounds of the Stabile 2 suggest a star-lit night, Stabile 4 strives for rhythmic momentum to counter the essentially static compositional technique, while an informed listener will easily recognise the debt that Stabile 3 owes to the first of Douglas Lilburn’s Nine Short Pieces.

• Body: Four Stabiles; facsimile  Year: 1969 

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• Body - Three Transcriptions 

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

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Jenny McLeod composed Piano Piece 1965 while studying in Paris under Olivier Messiaen. The work was given a first public performance in Wellington the following year by Margaret Nielsen.

• McLeod: Piano Piece 1965; facsimile  Year: 1967 

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• Jenny McLeod: Under the Sun and Piano Piece 1965 

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• Jenny McLeod: Piano Piece 1965 - Tessa Birnie 

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• Jenny McLeod: Piano Piece 1965 - Tessa Birnie 

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• Tessa Birnie: Piano Music by New Zealand Composers 

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• Douglas Lilburn: Complete Piano Music Volume 2 

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• Douglas Lilburn: Complete Piano Music Volume 2 

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