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During 2007 I spent a lot of time making field recordings of background noise in Paris, and analysing the spectral and rhythmic content of those recordings. I found the more I listened to my recordings, the more musical material I found hidden in these background hisses and hums, chatterings and otherwise banal noises: rhythms, mysterious melodies, energies and harmonic tensions. While working on this commission for the NZSO, I decided to try to capture the intrinsic musical essences I could hear in my field recordings, and interpret those sounds in an orchestral context, with the juxtaposition of the original noise recordings finding musical relationships in the orchestral counterpart. The resulting piece is a conjuring of various energies, or furies, caught in the background noise of Paris, and finding their way into the back of my throat to be sung into a quiet fury.

Lissa Meridan

• Meridan: a quiet fury; computer-set 

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• Meridan: a quiet fury; computer-set 

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• Meridan: a quiet fury; electronic part 

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In Northland, New Zealand, in the Port Albert Public Cemetery, among the graves of three generations of this pioneering forbears, is a plaque commemorating the death of a New Zealand soldier in the deserts of Libya in 1941. His name is also on the Remembrance Gate at the nearby Port Albert Reserve, one of the seven local men who lost their lives in the Second World War. This unknown story, one of many such stories, is symbolised in a poignant photograph – Memorial Arch, North Kaipara/Dargaville area by Robin Morrison that appears in his 1994 photographic essay A Journey.

This music charts a physical and emotional journey across the generations. It tells of a journey to New Zealand by sea in 1862 on the sailing ship Matilda Wattenbach. It tells of the land to which they came – Oruawharo and its bounty that gave then succour. It tells of a place that became home and of love of country. And then of another journey by sea from which there was no return.

This is the third of Northland Panels, a series of four works for string orchestra based on photographs from A Journey. The others in the series are Angel at Ahipara, Night Journey to Pawarenga and Christ at Whangape.

Christopher Blake
May 2006

• Blake: Anthem on the Kaipara; computer-set 

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• Christopher Blake: Angel at Ahipara  Year: 2012 

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My first experiences of the soundworlds of Mahler’s late orchestral works revealed to me the vast distances over which late romantic harmonic language can transport the listener. I was instantly taken by the immense power generated by Mahler’s continual re-casting of the opening melodies of the Ninth (last movement) and Tenth (first movement) Symphonies, in subtlely or radically new harmonic and orchestrational contexts. One waits in expectation of the return of the opening and, no matter whether it’s the first or the fiftieth hearing, is stunned by the genius of the new twist applied.

Aufsatz (German for “essay”) is my attempt at capturing – in some very small way – the gist of Mahler’s regenerative methods. The piece is a lopsided sonata form, where an angular development is followed by a vastly expanded recapitulation, which culminates in a perpetual re-spinning of the opening material, cut short by a brief and optimistic coda.

Aufsatz is dedicated to my piano teacher from an early age, Margaret Carryer. Aufsatz was read by the NZSO in November 2003, and recorded for broadcast in 2006. Hamish McKeich conducted on both occasions.

• Watson, C.: Aufsatz; computer-set 

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• Watson, C.: Aufsatz; computer-set 

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• Chris Watson: Selected Works 

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• Farquhar: Beyond...; computer set 

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• Farquhar: Beyond...; computer-set 

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• Farquhar: Beyond; computer set 

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• Jagger: Breaking Silence; facsimile 

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Two birds inspired this piece: Tchaikovsky’s Swan and Stravinsky’s Firebird. Buzzard is dedicated to my father, a high-speed pilot who loved Stravinsky’s music as passionately as that of Gil Gilberto and Dave Brubeck. A real buzzard… “And as to you Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths;”, Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass (1900)

• Palmer: Buzzard; computer-set 

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• Palmer: Buzzard; computer set 

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• Utting: Cirrus; computer-set 

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• Utting: Cirrus; computer-set 

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• Craig Utting: Cirrus and Spirals 

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• Selected Works: Utting, Watson, Cree Brown 

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This piece is affectionately known as ‘Bugs’ or ‘the Bug piece’ to me, and that is what it is about: the wonderful creepy crawlies native to New Zealand. Motivation for writing this piece came from two sources. As part of my residency with the Auckland Philharmonia in 2004, I was required to write a piece for a concert specifically at children and families. Naturally, it needed simple structures, lots of energy and a bit of fun.

The second motivation with regard to a specific programme was a love for all native New Zealand fauna, and not just beautiful birds. So much music has been written with bird song or in celebration of New Zealand’s landscape. But nothing to my knowledge had been written about the humble creatures which often inspire revulsion rather than awe. Despite their not so cuddly appearance, native insects and invertebrates are just as fascinating and unique to these islands of ours as any other endemic wildlife.

The first movement is Giant Weta. Often the most notorious for exciting disgust, these magnificent insects are quite amazing, but all to often fall prey to introduced mammals.

The second movement is titled Giant Snails. Native giant snails are enormous, and often live in kauri trees, or feed on giant earthworms on the forest floor.

The Nelson Cave Spider is a extremely unique creature. Like so many other creatures and plant life of New Zealand, it is a relic of ancient times and preserved by New Zealand’s isolation.

Finally, perhaps the most unusual of all is the Peripatus, sometimes known as the velvet worm, a blue centipede-like creature that crawls through undergrowth in search of prey.

• Anthony Young: Concertino for Orchestra - hire set 

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• Two works by Anthony Young 

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Using the baroque concerto as a model, this work is designed to feature a baritone voice, of which bassoon, baritone saxophone, and even bass clarinet would work effectively as soloists. The key of B minor was chosen for its ease of playing and dark yet resonant qualities in the string ensemble. The first movement is a deviation from the traditional form of theme-and-variations, in which the theme is expressed with ever-accelerating note values while maintaining the same steady tempo. First, a somber statement in quarter-note octaves arcs across the landscape of strings, from basses and cellos to the first violins and back, then picked up and transformed by the cello solo with an edge of longing. The icy second statement of the theme in eighth notes allows the cello to push against the ensemble a little in the contrast of the solo string tone, while the warm triplets of the third statement give the ensemble a chance to work out. The brief cadenza that follows pushes the theme from quarter notes to eighths to triplets, finally settling on the 16th notes that drive the theme to a bustling conclusion.

The second movement relies on simplicity in its use of the ABA aria form. The cello’s gentle but indulgent melody floats over a cushion of pulsing chords. The strings introduce a countermelody in triplets that leads up to a solemn chordal statement, and then becomes a factor in the development of the original melody.

The concluding rondo blends both the modern and baroque concepts of the “hook,” a catchy phrase that sticks in the mind because of some unusual note. In this case, the snag is a diminished 5th, more common to the blues than to the baroque concerto. Here it is explored using all of the opportunities that the freedom of the rondo form allows, boldly stated at the beginning, punctuating episodes of development, sneaking in at times where it is least expected, then bringing the movement to a close with a feeling of unsettled finality.

• Goss: Concerto in b minor; computer-set 

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• Goss: Concerto in b minor; computer-set 

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• Thomas Goss: Concerto in b minor 

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Double Bass Concerto in e minor was written as a showpiece for the more natural characteristics of the double bass, such as the warmth and solidity of plucked strings, the ease of harmonics, the resonance of open strings, and the extended 4-octave range. The double bass is a member of the viol family, with an inherently more delicate quality to its timbre than its modern orchestral cousins the violin, viola, and ‘cello. As a solo instrument, it offers an alternate view of virtuoso string playing; a low register dark with rich, complex broodings, a middle range filled with anticipation and veiled longing, and an unusually graceful and poetic high compass bereft of throaty tension or shrillness.

This concerto is written in the form of a rhapsody or capriccio, in one movement with an extended, freer exposition. Under alert tremolo, the bass opens with an impulsive statement that climbs three times from its rock-bottom open E string to its highest harmonics. The strings answer with a quiet, gentle elegy, soon transformed by the bass into a more yearning episode that ends on an unsettled note. A bravura melody leaps forth from this cloud, a folk-dance tune that gambols between soloist and orchestra, leading the music through restless changes of key and expectation. A heartfelt strain emerges, eventually guiding the music to a floating, dreamy musical landscape. Over pulsing strings, the bass ponders the themes of the concerto in tender detail throughout its range of pitch and color, suggesting a haven of peaceful beauty. The previous mood springs back to life in a boisterous answer, leading to a cadenza in which the bass’s ruminations are gruffer and more pointed than before. In the final coda the strings return to their elegy, then the bass takes the orchestra back to the beginning, reversing the sprawling gestures to drift down from the heights, fading to silence on a lingering octave E.

• Goss: Double Bass Concerto in e minor; computer-set 

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• Goss: Double Bass Concerto in e minor; computer-set 

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