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Commissioned by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra for the 2009 Michael Hill International Violin Competition, Wakatipu is a virtuoso romp around the violin, employing angular driving rhythms and unusual scales built on minor seconds and minor thirds.

The title of the piece refers to Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown NZ, and the Maori legend behind it.

One of the great mysteries of the lake is that its level rises and falls every few minutes. Scientists explain that it is due to changing atmospheric pressure – but the legend has it that this fluctuation is caused by the beating heart of a giant demon.

Long ago, the demon abducted the daughter of a local Maori chief and took her to his home in the heights of the ice clad mountains. After the long climb he became tired and lay down to sleep – however, the girl’s lover had followed close behind them all the way, and set the giant on fire as he lay sleeping. His burning flesh carved into the ice and snow and created a huge lake – but his heart remained indestructible, causing the rising and falling of the water level to this day.

• Farr: Wakatipu; computer set  Year: 2011 

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• Gareth Farr: Wakatipu; video 

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Throughout the last two summers, a tui has sung the same uncharacteristically repetitive song behind my house. This melodic fragment appears as a cadential echo to the flow of the music. The most immediate image is of gentle fluvial movement, agitated by falling drops and stronger currents. Yet beneath the surface there is an insistence, an energy in suspension.

• Brownlee: Water Sketch with Tui; computer set 

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• Brownlee: Water Sketch with Tui; computer set 

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• Brownlee: Water Sketch with Tui; computer set 

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• Brownlee: Water Sketch with Tui; computer-set 

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• Philip Brownlee: Water Sketch with Tui; video 

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• Crehan: Weather States; computer-set 

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• Crehan: Weather States; computer-set 

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Whakatipua for string quartet was commissioned by Morgan Jones as a surprise present for his wife, Pat, who was turning 60. The piece was first played at their wonderful home near Queenstown, on the occasion of Pat’s birthday. It was written for a quartet then resident at the University of Otago Music department. The piece is in a single movement. Slower sections at the beginning and end surround a main quick section. The piece evokes the mountain landscape around Queenstown, and also Morgan and Pat’s place, which is called ‘Whakatipua’. There are elements of folk music in the piece which is characterised by open-sounding sonorities. It is reasonably challenging for the players without being too demanding.

• Ritchie A.: Whakatipua; facsimile 

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Whaler describes the presence of a huge creature underneath
the ocean. It also depicts the violence of the whaling process and the cry of the whale. The piece is best performed in a large resonant space. If the space is not resonant the cello should be amplified with slight delay. The performer need not be too exact with tempo or rhythm, but perform as though improvising.

• Cowan: Whaler; computer set 

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‘Whiria’ is Māori for violin, or fiddle. These seven pieces were written over a period of three or four years for more or less personal reasons. The intention, however, was always to put them together to form one substantial work. There are, therefore, a number of cross-references and some ideas are developed from piece to piece. Although there are seven pieces, the overall shape is in five parts: numbers 3,4 and 5 form a lighter middle section to the whole work.

• Cresswell: Whira; computer-set 

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• Lyell Cresswell: Anake and other works  Year: 2000 

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The mode of perception invoked during aesthetic experience seems to be quite different from that of quotidian experience. We perceive more intensely and in more detail. We are less concerned with the object as being representative of a class of objects and focus more on its specificity, becoming hypersensitive to its form. Certainly, we also look for “meaning”, but in a much more speculative, open fashion. Aesthetic objects often evoke meaning in an intransitive sense – the aesthetic object is allowed to “mean” without necessarily “meaning something”.

In response to these thoughts about the nature of the aesthetic experience I have tried to focus on the finest possible gradations of difference in the sounds I have employed in this work. In particular, the performers must articulate microscopic differences in timbre, dynamics, pitch and speed of repetition, bringing these distinctions to the foreground as the basic material of the composition.

The function of the solo violin, supported by a quartet of violins, is no more significant than that of the remaining ensemble. Together they articulate one unified structure; they simply take different paths through this structure, converging at a point near the end of the piece. When the two paths converge we finally hear the material from which the whole piece is derived. In retrospect, we may become aware of the development of this material, which has been rendered somewhat covert by its non-linear presentation.

A significant factor in the shaping of the whole piece is the title. A recording of the title was subjected to a spectral analysis and the resulting information was used to shape, in a selective and fragmented way, the behaviour of the instrumental parts over time. I avoided directly translating the harmonic makeup of the spectral analysis to the piece, focusing instead on transferring the small shifts and changes in individual partials into microscopic changes in pitch and timbre. The result is that the microrhythmic and macrorhythmic characteristics, as well as the overall compression and expansion of the spectral field are identical in both the finished piece and the spectral analysis of the title.

• Hall: Whispered by the perfumed breath of silence; facsimile 

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The image of the title appears in a poem by the Roman poet Catullus (poem LXX, although it is the image itself, not its context in the poem that attracted my attention). It suggests something fleeting, something ephemeral, something just out of the reach of conscious perception. There are no doubt also more literal echoes of wind, water, and the natural environment, but this is very much a landscape of the mind.

• Brownlee: Written on the Wind, and Running Water; computer set 

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• Brownlee: Written on the Wind, and Running Water; computer 

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• Philip Brownlee: Written on the Wind, and Running Water; audio 

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• Premieres 2004, Volume 4 

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• Two Works by Philip Brownlee  Year: 2004 

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• Bowater: Zingaro; Facsimile 

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• Bowater: Zingaro; facsimile 

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• Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 1 - A Violin and Piano Recital  Year: 1999 

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• Bowater: ¡AY!; computer set 

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• Bowater: ¡AY!; computer-set 

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