Search Music:

violin, cello, piano (some preparation required); all performers required to speak

Piano preparation: the strings between c’’’ and a’’’ need to have a flat metal object laid on top to achieve a bright, jangly ringing sonority (especially from mm 26-37). This/these to be removed by the pianist in the section from m 45.

The three strings F, G, A flat, should have firm rubber wedges between them to create a dull thuddy sonority (for the section at m42), but with a still discernible pitch

At water’s birth is a meditative, ritualistic work, whose sonic palette includes prepared piano sonorities and some vocalising from the players, including whispering, spoken words and whistling.

The pushing out of the boundaries of the conventional instrumental sounds is something I have employed in other works such as the whistling and knocking on the piano lid in small blue for piano and the bell and tamtam playing in Ring True. The meandering sections of the music suggest a relationship with the forces of water, its depth, currents and undercurrents and there is a sense of ritual in some of the chant-like rhythms.

• de Castro-Robinson: At Water's Birth; facsimile  

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $20.00
  • • Quantity:

• de Castro-Robinson: At Water's Birth; facsimile 

  Score and parts | Pdf - facsimile
  
  $17.00
  • • Quantity:

• de Castro-Robinson: At Water's Birth; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  • Borrow

• NZ Premieres 2008 Vol. 1 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

• NZTrio: Flourishes  Year: 2010 

  CD
  
  $30.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

These twenty (mostly very brief) bagatelles were among the first pieces I wrote while on a one-month residency at the Visby International Centre for Composers in Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea, in October 2005.

The musical material I use in these Bagatelles I feel relates to my being in Europe (albeit a rather far-flung part) for the first time, and my subsequent reflection on my ‘European’ classical musical upbringing on the other side of the world in New Zealand. At times the music veers into irony, such as the violin caught in a maze of its own making (bagatelle 7) or the pianist unable to stop her rapid motions at either end of the keyboard (no. 14), sometimes to a laid-back jazzy feeling (no. 11) or quasi-improvisation (no 10); there are dance-like numbers too (4 and 19). The set ends with the longest bagatelle, a chromatic meditation over the open fifths of the cello and low register of the piano.

• Carey: Bagatelles; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $16.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

dirty pixels was written in response to two stimuli: an exhibition of the same name (curator, Stella Brennan) in the Adam Art Gallery featuring New Zealand artwork of a certain rough-hewn, ‘gritty’ nature; and hearing the work Jagden und Formen by German composer Wolfgang Rihm, an unremittingly wild and preposterous discourse of extremes.

These two stimuli caused something of an aesthetic dilemma: leaving behind my rather French fondness for euphonious washes of sound, I became interested in the characteristics of ‘roughness’ and ‘raggedness’, and in how a ‘pure’ conceptual scheme, such as the quite systematic construction I had formulated just prior to starting this piece, became ‘dirtied’ by intuition, by the exigencies of the material and by the reality of having it performed.

Michael Norris
Notes taken from The NZTrio – Spark Morrison Music Trust MMT2066

• Norris: dirty pixels; computer set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  

• Norris: dirty pixels; computer set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $18.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Michael Norris: Rays of the Sun .. and Dirty Pixels 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

• New Zealand Trio - Spark  Year: 2004 

  CD
  
  $30.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

for piano, violin and cello

The composer writes:

Entering the stream
as if a point of no return has been reached
as light illuminating a moment of darkness
or sound log passed into silence
no trace remains, no desire or need
the stream holds life in its sway
constant flow, forever in a state of
flux, of uncertainty, our thoughts
and senses grasp the music
our craving devours beauty
yet the moment of realisation
is when time receds
as fast as we think
we have possessed it.
So, enter the stream
for you will never
be the same again
you were never
the same
ever.

Grateful thanks to NZTrio for commissioning this work, to Creative NZ for the funding to make that possible, and to Jack Body for being part of the process.

• Yudane: Entering the Stream; computer-set 

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $24.00
  • • Quantity:

• Yudane: Entering the Stream; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $19.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

‘Intaglio’ is a printmaking technique in which an image is etched or engraved on the surface of a plate. Ink would then be applied to the plate and removed from the surface, leaving ink only in the incisions. The title refers less to the work itself than to the process of composing it, a small insight into my ideas about how material manifests in musical shape. This piece is written in three uninterrupted movements.

• Gendall: Intaglio; computer set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  

• Gendall: Intaglio; computer set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $16.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• New Zealand Premieres Volume 2 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

• Two Works by Chris Gendall 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

B flat clarinet/bass clarinet

• Hextall: Marx or Smith?; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $11.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Hextall: Marx or Smith?; computer-set 

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $13.00
  • • Quantity:

• Hextall: Marx or Smith?; computer-set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $11.00
  • • Quantity:

• Hextall: Marx or Smith?; computer-set 

  Score and parts | Pdf - computer set
  
  $13.00
  • • Quantity:

• Pieta Hextall: Marx or Smith; video 

  Media on Demand | Embedded
  

alto flute, B flat clarinet

Poems of a Bright Moon for flute/alto flute, clarinet and piano was inspired by the Hsiang-Yang Songs of Li Po, an 8th-century Chinese poet of the T’ang Dynasty (ca.618-906 A.D.).

On a visit to New Mexico in the United States, the discovery of the poet William Carlos Williams and the art work of Georgia O’Keeffe led to the poetry of Li Po, which conjures up visions of mountains and rivers, also very much part of the New Mexico landscape. Li Po was something of a mischievous travelling minstrel and liked to indulge in the drink somewhat. A legend says that “while out drunk in a boat, he fell into a river and drowned trying to embrace the moon.”

The moon appears in over a third of his poems, and the opportunity to combine Li Po’s images of moonlight with the rich dark tones of the alto flute was irresistible. The individual titles of the movements of this piece come directly from the poems, and the music attempts to evoke the spirit of the titles: Hsien mountain rises above emerald Han river, On a moonlit night, a recluse plays his pale white ch’in and A pure ten-thousand-mile wind arrives.

Poems of a Bright Moon was commissioned by Ethos trio with funding assistance from Creative New Zealand.

• Grenfell: Poems of a Bright Moon; computer set 

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

• Grenfell: Poems of a bright moon; computer-set 

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $28.00
  • • Quantity:

• Grenfell: Poems of a Bright Moon; computer set 

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

• Poems of a Bright Moon 

  Cassette
  
  • Borrow

• Music by Maria Grenfell 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

• NZ Composers - Whitehead and Grenfell  

  CD
  
  • Borrow

Seven bagatelles featuring (in numbers one to four) triadic motion, step-wise melodic figures and canonic movement; the fifth bagatelle is a recomposition of a late Beethoven Bagatelle; number six is scored for oboe and marimba and is a gentle melody and accompaniment; while the seventh bagatelle of the set is a passacaglia where the triadic and harmonic movement of the earlier pieces is effectively combined. Composed while I was Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago, and dedicated to Yasuko Takahashi and ‘Le Ciel Bleu’ of Antwerp.

• Carey: Seven Bagatelles; facsimile 

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $19.00
  • • Quantity:

• Carey: Seven Bagatelles; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $14.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

In the first and last movements, ‘Prologue’ and ‘Epilogue’, a ‘harmonic field’ upon which the piece is largely based is announced and subsequently commented upon. The four middle movements combine different melodic strands and timbres to create distinctive musical textures. In the second movement, simple repeated phrases alternate and overlap; movement three is livelier, with quickly interlocking triadic harmonies from all three instruments. The fourth movement is dedicated to the memory of Rev. Ray Oppenheimer – a mirror chorale and refrain featuring the lower register of the celesta, while in the fifth movement pizzicato double bass and guitar come to the fore in dance-like motion.

Composed for guitarist Kazuhito Yamashita and first performed in his concert of chamber works featuring guitar in the Kammer Virtuosen Zyklus at JT Art Hall, Tokyo, in April 2001.

• Carey: Trio for Guitar, Double Bass and Celesta; facsimile 

  Parts - written | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $20.00
  • • Quantity:

• Carey: Trio for Guitar, Double Bass and Celesta; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $16.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

During my stay in Toronto, for a brief time I was able to make use of the piano in a local church in return for singing with the choir on Sundays- as they were, at that stage, short of members with good music reading skills. Although a short-lived arrangement, it was long enough for the contents of the hymnal in the chapel to inspire this Trio on Hymn Tunes. The piece is in four freely composed movements; each is based on one or more hymn tunes, the basis for my investigations being sometimes the melodic aspect of the hymn, and sometimes the harmonic one. Composed for Enamble 3 of Mexico City. Dedicated to my mother Alison Carey, from whom I have had the experience of hearing and singing hymns such as these from an early age.

• Carey: Trio on Hymn Tunes; facsimile 

  Full score | Pdf - facsimile
  

• Carey: Trio on Hymn Tunes; facsimile 

  Parts - written | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $11.00
  • • Quantity:

• Carey: Trio on Hymn Tunes; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $14.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow