Search Music:

A music-theatre work especially written for Wellington pianist Dan Poynton. Although referring indirectly to religious symbolism, the composition focuses on the physical and mental stress that pianists submit themselves to.

• Body: 14 Stations; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  • Borrow

• Jack Body: 14 Stations 

  Digital sound file - MP3
  

• Body: 14 Stations 

  Video
  
  • Borrow

• Body: 14 Stations; cassette 

  Cassette
  
  • Borrow

• New Zealand Electronic Music 

  Cassette
  
  • Borrow

• New Zealand Electronic Music 

  Vinyl (LP or EP)
  

• Lilburn: Complete Electroacoustic Works 

  CD
  
  $70.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

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 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $9.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Jack Body and Michael Parmenter: Love Sonnets 

  Video
  
  • Borrow

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

  CD
  
  • Borrow

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

  CD
  
  $15.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Limbs Dance Company: Poi 

  Video
  

Two fearless percussionists duel with skipping ropes and whistles, creating rhythms and improving their cardiovasular fitness simultaneously.

• Cowan: Skip; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  • Borrow

• Claire Cowan: Skip 

  Digital movie
  

New Zealand’s landscape has long been a source of inspiration for artists and composers. I was fortunate enough to have enjoyed frequent trips to the mountains when young, and I still remember them fondly to this day. I have written quite a number of works on the theme of New Zealand’s natural environment. So I was very pleased to be asked by the Dunedin Sinfonia (now Southern Sinfonia) and Natural History New Zealand to compose ‘Southern Journeys’.

After initial discussions in 1999, I was given freedom to come up with my own ‘synopsis’ for the piece. The music was to be written first, and then recorded by the Dunedin Sinfonia so that images could be put to the music. This was a considerable luxury for the composer, as normally the film is made first and later the music is written to fit the images. Natural History was insistent that I should compose my music without the restriction of specific images, and for that I am very grateful.

Although Southern Journeys is programmatic, I have attempted to incorporate a symphonic logic into the music. Themes are developed and transformed, and there is an element of cyclic form with the return of the opening theme at the very end of the work. Ideally, the music should be able to stand alone without film, and still make sense.

The first movement is subtitled ‘Ancient South’ and portrays southern landscape, particularly remote areas such as mountains and sounds. The land is constantly being changed by water, snow and wind, the most dramatic example being the effects of avalanches. In the second movement, ‘Southern Adventures’, humans interact with Nature, at sea, in caves, on rock faces, in the air. Although these adventures are often difficult and treacherous, we feel exhilerated by this risky communion with Nature. The third movement, ‘Seasons in the South’, begins with the stillness of lakes and forests in Autumn, and moves on to explore southern bird and sea life. Winter announces its arrival with a storm, followed by the thawing of snow and ice and the first signs of Spring. The last movement, ‘Our Place’, explores our own environment and contrasts it with the natural environment we have witnessed in the previous movements. A note of caution is sounded: we cannot take the natural beauty of the South for granted. We have to respect and care for it, so as to maintain the balance between our needs and the needs of Nature. At the end of the movement a harmony exists between the beautiful aspects of a city like Dunedin and the natural environment.

Southern Journeys received financial assistance from the Millennium Fund and Natural History New Zealand.

• Anthony Ritchie: Southern Journeys  Year: 2000 

  Video
  
  • Borrow

• Anthony Ritchie: Southern Journeys  Year: 2002 

  DVD
  
  • Borrow

In my work as a composer I have found bringing together classical and jazz musicians to be a rich and unique way of working. I have experience in both fields and my compositional talent and interest lies genuinely across the two art forms.

This piece has been specifically composed for these performers and their unique sets of skills. Each performer is of a very high calibre and each possesses something special and unique in their playing and approach to music making. Mike Kime and Reuben Derrick often have moments of freedom as they are both accomplished improvisers. Gretchen Dunsmore and Mark Le Roche are classically trained performers with excellent skills and intelligent ears and minds. I knew that each of them would bring something to the work that would be unique and exciting.

More recently my creative interest in movement and form has expanded to contemporary dance and I wanted to involve and include another artistic discipline in this work. Collaborating with Julia Milsom has been an exciting new venture for me. The nature of the sounds within the piece are highly applicable to contemporary dance and have been interpreted and expressed with considerable talent and skill by Julia.

Layers of sound in time is a theme I have developed extensively in the piece. The layers interact, evolve, contrast, compliment, and conflict with each other to create a depth of space and time between them.

The work is an exploration of the timelessness that comes in moments of deep introspection through evocative sounds and movement.

Alex van den Broek

• van den Broek: Still Standing Silent; computer-set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $15.00
  • • Quantity:

• van den Broek: Still Standing Silent; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $15.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Alex van den Broek: Still Standing Silent; video 

  Media on Demand | Embedded
  

• Alex van den Broek: Still Standing Silent  Year: 2009 

  DVD
  
  • Borrow

• Ritchie A.: The God Boy; Computer Set 

  Vocal score | Pdf - computer set
  

• Ritchie A: The God Boy; computer-set 

  Vocal score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  • Borrow

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

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  • Borrow

• Ritchie A.: The God Boy  Year: 2004 

  Video
  
  • Borrow

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

  CD
  
  $30.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

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

  DVD
  
  • Borrow

Gu Cheng, the exiled Chinese poet whose poetry and person form the basis of 3 Poems, lived on a small island in Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf. The video images are of Gu Cheng and his poet wife Xie Ye on Waiheke Island, animations of Gu Cheng’s disturbingly whimsical drawings and the poem’s Chinese text. The tape uses diverse sounds and music – cooking oil, a Russian folksong sung in Chinese by the couple and – potatoes!

• Palmer: Three Poems from the Bulin File; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $5.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Palmer: Three Poems From the Bulin File  Year: 1990 

  Video
  
  • Borrow