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John Rimmer  

Galileo

Duration: 1h 30' 00" Year: 1998
a chamber opera using for 6 singers, small chorus and 8 players, also using electroacoustic music and DVD of visuals

  • Instrumentation
    Television newsreader (spoken voice), Nobelman (baritone), Castelli (tenor), Galileo (baritone), Boy/Angel (mezzo soprano), Three Priests (tenor/baritones), Heretic (baritone), Christina (soprano), Military Man (baritone), Sea Captain (baritone), Troubadour (mezzo soprano), Cardinal Bellarmino (tenor), Pope Urban VIII (bass baritone), Pope John Paul II (baritone), small chorus of townspeople; flute doubling piccolo, oboe, clarinet doubling bass clarinet, horn, piano, percussion, violin and cello. Electroacoustic music played through at least eight loudspeakers. DVD of visuals.
  • Availability

William Dart  

Give us a Kiss

Duration: 50' 00" Year: 1981
a musical for 4 actor-singers, narrator and piano

  • Programme Note

    A song-drama exploring gay rights, written at the time when there were moves around New Zealand to pass the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. Many of the songs are based on true incidents and are presented in a cabaret format. The show toured the country in 1982 under the auspices of the New Zealand Student Arts Council.

  • Availability

Dorothy Buchanan  

Greenleaf

Duration: 43' 00" Year: 1984
opera for 8 singers and 5 players

Matthew Davidson  

Love or Money

Duration: 1h 15' 00" Year: 2010
a Singspiel in one act and thirteen scenes

Jack Body  

Love Sonnets of Michelangelo

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 1982
for soprano, mezzo-soprano, voice, and a dancer

  • Programme Note

    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.

  • Availability

Dorothy Buchanan  

Miss Brill

Duration: 25' 00" Year: 1998
an opera in one act

Gillian Whitehead  

Outrageous Fortune

Duration: 1h 58' 00" Year: 1998
a chamber opera in two acts

Philip Brownlee  

Phyllis Remembers

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 1996
chamber opera

Anthony Ritchie  

Quartet

Duration: 1h 10' 00" Year: 2002
comic chamber opera for soprano, mezzo soprano, tenor, bass, and string quartet

  • Programme Note

    Quartet is based around the trials and tribulations of a touring string quartet, the Ithaca String Quartet, with the action being set on the West Coast of NZ before moving to the capital, Wellington, for the tour finale. The seven scenes are continuous, and explore the relationships of Penelope and Buddy (New Zealanders), Nadezhda (a moody Russian violinist) and Julian (a new-age American cellist).

  • Availability

Gillian Whitehead  

Requiem

Duration: 20' 00" Year: 1981
for mezzo soprano and organ

  • Programme Note

    Undoubtedly, this is one of Whitehead’s more unusual collaborations. The work, intended for five dancers and organ, with soprano added at the composer’s request, was to have been performed in five cathedrals around Britain during the summer of 1982. Due to the cancellation of the dance component however, the work received performance in only one of the cathedrals – Carlisle – but was later presented with a solo dancer, Bronwyn Judge, at the 1987 Sonic Circus in Wellington. The singer on that occasion was Glenys Taylor and the organist Douglas Mews. The composer initially delayed beginning work on the piece, since her sister was expecting a baby, and a Requiem did not seem an appropriate preoccupation. The successful birth was however followed by two close-family deaths and it was these which provided the composer with the emotional impetus to proceed with the composition. (Programme note by Emma Carle and Jack Body).

  • Availability