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This is the second arrangement made of a song written around 1918 by Erima Maewa Kaihau (1879-1941). It follows on from E moe te ra made in 2007 – both pieces arranged at the request of David Gordon of Diocesan School for Girls. Erima Maewa Kaihau was also involved in the complex gestation of the song Now is the hour.

Akoako o te Rangi is also very much in the late Victorian tradition of ‘parlour ballads’ and owes little to traditional Maori song forms or styles. In fact the rather erratic word underlay of the Maori text suggests that the English version (hardly a translation though of the Maori) may have been te first made.

The text is short although there may have originally been further verses (the printed music, published in 1918, contains just the one verse). It is a love song – the scent of a loved one wafting on the breeze to awaken the sleeping lovelorn singer.

• Hamilton: Akoako o te Rangi; computer-set  Year: 2010 

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This song cycle for soprano and piano has texts by the composer in Maori and English.

“Awa Herea memorably evokes the physical appearance of symbolic significance of these braided rivers… cosmic weather-driven energy.” (Covell, Sydney Morning Herald).

“Its pace was shrewdly varied and the music encompassed a range of styles – from sung declamation to florid lyricism – without incongruity.” (Jack, Independent).

“The cycle displays all the characteristics of her [Gillian Whitehead’s] mature work. The vocal line is at once exultant and contemplative, the piano writing incisive or lulling; the formal shaping novel yet accessible. It is a memorable piece, filled with the energetic spirit of the natural world and finding through that spirit its own serenity.”

• Whitehead: Awa Herea; computer-set 

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• Whitehead: Awa Herea; computer-set 

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• Whitehead: Awa Herea; facsimile 

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• NZIAF: Gillian Whitehead Portrait; part 2 

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• Waikohu: Mere Boynton and Friends 

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• Tracey Chadwell's Songbook  Year: 1995 

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• Ears Wide Open Taringa Areare Education Resource CD  Year: 2000 

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• Katene: Calling Me Home; facsimile 

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An extract from Wenceslas (1992) a cantata for choir and orchestra by Philip Norman, commissioned by the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, setting the words of the traditional Czech carol, Carol of the Birds. First performed in the New Zealand version by The Cathedral Grammar School Choir at the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra’s 2005 Christmas Proms. Arranged for a capella SATB in 2009.

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• Norman: Carol of the (New Zealand) Birds; computer-set 

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An extract from Wenceslas (1992) a cantata for choir and orchestra by Philip Norman, commissioned by the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, setting the words of the traditional Czech carol, Carol of the Birds. First performed in the New Zealand version by the Cathedral Grammar School Choir at the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra’s 2005 Christmas Proms.

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• Norman: Carol of the (New Zealand) Birds; computer-set 

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• Voyages  Year: 1992 

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E rewa mai, e ra is an invocation to the sun, asking it to rise, to give light, so that all living things will thrive and be healthy, so that the rain will fall. It is 2000 years since the coming of Christ. Rise, sun.

E rewa mai, e ra was composed on 30th December 1999 to be sung at dawn on 1 January 2000.

• Whitehead: E rewa mai, e ra; computer set 

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• Nunns and Melbourne: E Taku Kuru Pounamu 

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• Melbourne and Nunns: Te hekenga-a-rangi  Year: 2003 

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I became inspired to write this piece by a rather disparate selection of influences: the Golden Years permanent exhibit at the Te Papa Tongarewa museum in Wellington, Giacometti’s Women of Venice sculptures, and a photocopy of an old poster from the early 1900s.

I had been aware of Giacometti’s striking sculptures of emaciated figures, but hadn’t seen them in the flesh until the beginning of this year at an exhibition in Christchurch. I was particularly enamoured with Women of Venice, an apparently loosely arranged group of stationary female figures all facing straight ahead in a mesmerising and somewhat disarming display of trance-like fixed focus. I imagined a similar group of performers stationed about the stage like petrified soldiers risen from a swamp, who then come to life at random and begin to channel voices from their pasts. This idea of channelling voices was also inspired by the Golden Years exhibit, where museum patrons are lead into an old junk shop that has closed down for the day, only to find items in the shop seemingly coming to life in a display of a potted history of New Zealand.

I then came across a copy of Henry Wright’s infamous poster from the early 1900s cautioning women to abandon exercising any political assertions whatsoever. The poster read:

Notice to EPICENE WOMEN
Electioneering Women are requested not to call here

They are recommended to go home, to look after their children, cook their husbands’ dinners, empty the slops, and generally attend to the domestic affairs for which nature intended them.

By taking this advice they will gain the respect of all right-minded people – an end not to be attained by unsexing themselves and meddling in masculine concerns of which they are profoundly ignorant.

Henry Wright,
103 Mein Street,
Wellington

I found the poster amusing in its ridiculousness, and played with the words so as to make nonsense of them, or to blatantly give them a feminist angle. Here is an example of one of the tweaked versions:

Notice to Sloppy Children
Affairs of sloppy husbands are requested not to attend Wellington.

They are recommended to unsex their meddling masculine nature and generally concern themselves in their profoundly ignorant nature.

By taking this advice they will slop their children’s dinners by unsexing themselves – an end not to be attained by cooking their children or Henry Wright.

I also used John Cage’s method of ‘reading though’ the text using a mesostic with the words “EPICENE WOMEN”, as he did with James Joyce’s Finnegan’s “Wake” in his Roaratorio: an Irish Circus on Finnegan’s Wake (but using the name JAMES JOYCE).

Despite my amusement, I was struck by the use of the word “epicene” in the poster. It implied that women who involved themselves in politics must not really be women, renouncing their sexuality so as to cause infinite trouble with all the devilish potency of a coven of Lady Macbeths. Similar attitudes still exist today, particularly amongst women, and there is still an apparent suspicion of ‘tomboys’ as well as a tug of war between traditionalism and feminism within individuals. It is this ironic fact that interests me the most – that, despite the extraordinary amounts of courage and hard work from women of the past to be seen as equals with men, many women today unwittingly foster oppression by adhering to gender steriotypes.

In this piece I’ve played with aspects of bitchiness, misogyny, sadness, political fieriness, the natural unaffectedness of growing up rurally, the silliness yet appeal of TV commercials, the comfort of crackly old radio songs, and the determination and single-mindedness of women intent on having their voices heard. I’ve also been interested in the potential for double meanings by setting the texts in certain ways, an example being Helen Clarke’s statement about the struggles of her early parliamentary days being sung by the baritone voice. I consider this a rejection of the notion that all people must tidily fit into the category of male or female and therefore must at all times show undeniable evidence either way.

Claire Scholes

• Scholes, C.: Epicene Women; computer-set 

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• Scholes, C: Epicene Women; computer-set 

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• NZ Premieres 2008 Vol. 3 

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• Jansen: God Defend NZ; facsimile 

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• A Royal Occasion - National Youth Choir and Kiri te Kanawa 

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