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Ronald Dellow  

8 Songs From The I Ching

Duration: 18' 00" Year: 1998
a cycle for high voice and oboe

Bryony Jagger  

A Nursery of Pain

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1989
for solo treble recorder (with optional spoken voice )

Maria Grenfell  

A Pinch of Time...

Duration: 18' 00" Year: 1991
five songs for baritone (or medium voice) and piano

Alexander Cowdell  

A Place of Quiet

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1987
for solo tenor and chamber orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    flute/picc., 2 clar. (2nd dbls bass cl.); tpt; strings
  • Programme Note

    This composition is a setting of a poem by the Australian philosopher, poet and musician Melvyn Cann. The first part describes a spiritual journey through suffering to transcendence and peace. The second part describes a state of consciousness where both thought and time cease, and only feeling remains.

  • Availability

Denise Hulford  

A prayer for the twenty-first century woman

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1999
for bass clarinet, bassoon and 2 violoncellos

Eve de Castro-Robinson  

A Resonance of Emerald

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1988, r. 1990
for mixed chamber ensemble

David Hamilton  

A Shakespeare Garland

Duration: 17' 00" Year: 1999
for SAATB choir, guitar and piano

  • Programme Note

    Every now and then the deputy musical directors of Auckland Choral Society are invited to jointly conduct a concert. In 1999 this took the form of a ’subscriber’s bonus’ concert, containing works requiring minimal accompaniment forces. Early discussions lead us in the direction of a Shakespeare-themed concert. In addition to conducting some American settings of Shakespeare, I decided to write a new cycle using Shakespearean texts. Given the nature of the intended concert, I wanted to write a work which was immediately approachable and contained an element of fun. My original intention was to compose a cycle based on references to flowers in Shakespeare’s writings, as I had a copy of a book which detailed them. However, it soon became apparent that many references were part of texts which were not suitable for a musical setting : some were conversational and others merely a passing mention of a flower. I broadened my scope a little and fashioned a sequence of seven texts which all refer in some way to things botanical and/or seasonal. The first text is from ‘As You Like It’ and sets the well-known ‘it was a lover and his lass’ in a jazzy idiom. A complete contrast of mood is presented in ‘Come, buy’ from ‘The Winter’s Tale’, where the words detail a variety of items which might be purchased to charm a lady. The third piece is a short setting of ‘Hark, hark the lark’ from ‘Cymberline’. Unlike Schubert’s well-known setting, this lark is rather boisterous and rowdy! The music owes more than a little to mid-twentieth century film music, perhaps a film involving a frenetic chase sequence! The centerpiece of the cycle is a setting of Shakespeare’s best-known sonnet ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (sonnet 18). Here the women’s voices are heard on their own, with the 2nd altos given a rare chance to take the limelight. The fifth piece is a reflective setting of ‘I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows’ from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Initially unison voices present the melody, breaking into harmony only for the second half of the song. Throwing caution to the wind, the sixth piece is a madcap, cartoonish setting of ‘When daisies pied’ from ’Love’s Labour’s Lost’. Where better to end the cycle than with the ‘flower-power’ era of the 1960’s and a swinging version of ‘Under the greenwood tree’ from ‘As You Like It’, using just about every harmonic cliche of the music of that time. ‘A Shakespeare Garland’ was written for, and is dedicated to, Auckland Choral Society who gave the first performance.

  • Availability

David Farquhar  

A Short Suite from "Ring Round the Moon"

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1975
for full orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    2222; 4230; timp, perc; strs.
  • Programme Note

    This music was originally commissioned by Richard Campion for the New Zealand Players’ production of Ring Round the Moon by Jean Ahhouil, translated by Christopher Fry. In the second act there is a ball taking place offstage and demanding a large number of dances which are specified in the text.

    The music was first recorded on acetate discs by a ad hoc orchestra led by Alex Lindsay; these small recordings were then played through speakers for the production, sounding very loud to the cast but filtering out more gently to the audience. At the end of the long national tour, the cast knew the music very well and suggested to me that I should do something with it.

    The result, some years later, 1957, was a suite of nine dances first performed by the Alex Lindsay Orchestra. This rapidly became my most performed piece and was commercially recorded by the Alex Lindsay Orchestra in the 1960s, a recording still available today from Kiwi Pacific Reords.

    Ashley Heenen, through the NZ APRA Committee, commissioned an arrangement for full orchestra for the NZ Youth Orchestra to take on a tour of Europe and China in 1975. This version was shortened to six dances by leaving out the first three numbers. The music has also been used for a ballet, The Wintergarden, choreographed by Arthur Turnbull for the Royal New Zealand Ballet Company – this version included a tenth dance not in the 1957 Suite. Since 1975 two further version have been commissioned: Waltz Suite (1989), for string orchestra (five dances) for the Nova Strings, and an arrangement of the original Dance Suite (1992) for violin and piano (nine dances) for Isador Saslav.

  • Availability

Douglas Lilburn  

A Song of Islands

Duration: 16' 00" Year: 1946
for orchestra

Neville Hall  

a splinter of silence in the belly of time

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1994
for string quartet and clarinet