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This music was originally commissioned by Richard Campion for the New Zealand Players’ production of Ring Round the Moon by Jean Ahhouil, translated by Christopher Fry. In the second act there is a ball taking place offstage and demanding a large number of dances which are specified in the text.

The music was first recorded on acetate discs by a ad hoc orchestra led by Alex Lindsay; these small recordings were then played through speakers for the production, sounding very loud to the cast but filtering out more gently to the audience. At the end of the long national tour, the cast knew the music very well and suggested to me that I should do something with it.

The result, some years later, 1957, was a suite of nine dances first performed by the Alex Lindsay Orchestra. This rapidly became my most performed piece and was commercially recorded by the Alex Lindsay Orchestra in the 1960s, a recording still available today from Kiwi Pacific Reords.

Ashley Heenen, through the NZ APRA Committee, commissioned an arrangement for full orchestra for the NZ Youth Orchestra to take on a tour of Europe and China in 1975. This version was shortened to six dances by leaving out the first three numbers. The music has also been used for a ballet, The Wintergarden, choreographed by Arthur Turnbull for the Royal New Zealand Ballet Company – this version included a tenth dance not in the 1957 Suite. Since 1975 two further version have been commissioned: Waltz Suite (1989), for string orchestra (five dances) for the Nova Strings, and an arrangement of the original Dance Suite (1992) for violin and piano (nine dances) for Isador Saslav.

• Farquhar: Short Suite from Ring Round the Moon; computer-set 

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• Farquhar: A Short Suite from Ring Round the Moon; computer-set 

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• Farquhar: Short Suite from Ring Round the Moon; computer set 

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• SOUNZ Orchestral 1993 

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• New Zealand Composers  Year: 1995 

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• New Zealand Electronic Music 

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• New Zealand Electronic Music 

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• Lilburn: Complete Electroacoustic Works 

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• Sacred and Profane: compositions for voices by Jack Body  Year: 1975 

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• Edwin Carr: The Snowmaiden; computer-set 

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• Music by Edwin Carr  Year: 1978 

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• New Zealand Composers  Year: 1995 

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This work was originally created in 1970 as a music theatre piece incorporating live and taped sounds and actions evocative of ancient erotic rituals, traces of which, I believe, still survive in the communal memory, dormant memories which may be evoked by sound. The score of that version was published in Source: Music of the Avant-Garde Issue No.9. I then made this second, longer version for tape alone.

Over a period of two years I assembled sounds which were, for me, highly sensuous. Rather than consciously working out a structure for them, I let the shape of Tiger Balm emerge on an unconscious level, letting the sounds arrange themselves, as if dreamed, and I found that they moved in a flowing transformation process. Very often a sound merges with its successor, blending together through shared characteristics which are frequently evocative of the tiger’s presence.

The sound used (a cat purring, a heartbeat, gongs, jews harps, a tiger, woman and plane) are all literal, and with the exception of speed change on the gongs and jews harp, none are modified. I find that the less I manipulate sounds, the stronger is their presence and their power for me. (Notes for the LP release on Opus One in 1981).

• Annea Lockwood: Tiger Balm 

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• Ruth Anderson: State of the Union Message 

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• Lilburn: Complete Electroacoustic Works 

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