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This song celebrates not only the first European to visit New Zealand, but also his direct descendant and namesake. The younger Abel Tasman flew to New Zealand in 1959 and was especially welcomed by Maori in Golden Bay. The tune is based on a 400 year old Dutch naval recruiting song, probably heard by the original Abel Tasman. Recorded on HMV EP record The Voyagers by Athol Freshney and instrumentalists.

• Macky: Abel Tasman; facsimile 

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• Crehan: Aftermath; computer-set 

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• Crehan: Aftermath; computer-set 

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I was born in Christchurch and lived the first 27 years of my life there. For most of those years I had no knowledge of Ngai Tahu or their history. I became fascinated by Maori beliefs during inspiring Religious Studies lectures given by Jim Wilson at Canterbury University, and launched into my own study of Maori music. But for all that, I had no real awareness of southern Maori. It is only recently that I have learned to say: ‘Tena koutou katoa. Ko Anthony toku ingoa, ko John toku papa, ko Anita toku mama, ko Simon toku tungane, ko Judy ratou ko Jenny ko Liz oku tuahine, ko Sandy toku wahine, ko Tristan aku tama, ko Annabelle oku tamahine, No Otetahi ahau, Na reira, tena koutou katoa.’ It was tremendously exciting, therefore, to be asked to write music for a work celebrating the anniversary of the arrival of the settlers in Otetahi. Here was a chance to be involved in an exploration of the distant past: Ngai Tahu’s own arrival in the South Island, pre-dating the English settlers by many years. Reading Te Maire Tau’s account of Moki’s life and the surrounding history opened up a whole new world to me. This was history full of conflict and struggle, passions and rivalry, and an inspiring source for a composer.

Another exciting dimension for me was collaborating with Keri Hulme. I have long admired her writing since reading The Bone People back in the late 1980s, and setting her poem He Moemoea to music. To be honest, I wondered how Keri was going to condense such a complex history into a libretto. Her solution, to have Moki on his last day on earth remembering back over the significant events in his life, was ingenious and worked very well in terms of the musical genre.

Much of the music is concerned with characterisation. The forceful and head-strong character of Moki is depicted by the orchestra early on. He is a man of action, brave and capricious; much of the life-force of the music comes from his mana, resulting in plenty of driving rhythms. On the other hand, he can be sensitive as in his duet with Marewa, singing to their sleeping daughter. Moki’s arrogance lands him in trouble with two chiefly sisters, who he has slept with. His foolish boasting is reprimanded by the chorus in ‘The Words are loosed’, where the insults are repeated for everyone to hear.

The orchestra and choir is sometimes used to colour the images in the story. Following the Karanga near the beginning, for instance, we hear the choir announce the rising of the sun, accompanied by blazing brass and cymbals. In Moki’s opening song, the ‘thin line of light illuminating the islands from the north to the south’ is portrayed by florid lines on flutes, harp and celesta.

One of the interesting challenges in Ahua was to combine my music with music by Te Ari’s Kapa haka group. This was made more difficult by distance: at present I live in Dunedin! There is a also a big difference between Classical music and Maori music, but it is interesting and worthwhile to discover things in common, and to celebrate the differences. I want to acknowledge my collaboration with Te Ari and Te Maire as regards the music for Ahua and thank them for their input.

• Ritchie A.: Ahua; computer set 

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In 1909 Alice Adcock, a lively and adventurous young woman from Manchester, was on her way to New Zealand. She was 23, and had recently developed TB, for which there was then no cure. Somehow she persuaded her widowed father to let her travel alone to the other side of the world in case a healthy climate would save her life. (It worked – she lived for another 50 years). The family kept her entertaining letter describing shipboard life, and a few postcards from her have also survived, but most of what we know about her time in New Zealand comes from her father’s letters to her, of which he kept copies, or from family tradition. On her arrival in New Zealand, Alice went into service, travelling widely, much to the consternation of her father. As housekeeper (and the only woman) on a farm in Makarora (a remote settlement on Lake Wanaka) she became pregnant to an unknown man, but was ‘rescued’ by marriage to a local farmer, Charles Pipson, shortly before the birth of her daughter. In 1911, her beloved father died; in 1912, Alice and Charles had a son and the following year, pregnant again, Alice took her children back to England to visit her family. Tragically, while she was away, her husband died suddenly of typhoid fever. Alice hurried back to Makarora to claim her inheritance, but left the two babies with her brother Sam and his wife (who were shortly to emigrate to New Zealand) and took only her eldest child, the illegitimate one, with her. This outraged her sisters-in-law, who saw it as an insult to their dead brother; they sent her away from the farm empty-handed. Once again she had to take a housekeeping job, this time in the North Island. In 1914, Alice and her brother’s family met up again, and Alice began a new life. (Fleur Adcock – abridged) The music of Alice is text-driven, ranging between a language at times extremely simple, as was the basic musical language of the settlers, and at times quite complex, evoking a storm at sea, or the unease of the settlers in a new environment, or Alice’s reaction to the problems which beset her. The piece is held together by various referential motifs. The initial idea, which perhaps suggests the instability of the sea, is also present in the bell-like sounds marking Charles’ death, music associated with a storm at sea is later associated with mental stress, while music suggestive of the movement of shipboard lice later underlies Alice’s traumatic encounter with her sisters-in-law.

There are eight sections, which often merge into one another: 1. in a letter to her father, Alice describes shipboard life; 2. in New Zealand, she compares her past life and hopes for the future; 3. a dialogue between father and daughter, expressed through their letters; 4. in Makarora, Alice discovers she is pregnant; 5. Alice hears of her father’s death; 6. in England, she learns of her husband’s death; 7. back in Makarora, Alice is turned away by her sisters-in-law; 8. turning her back on the South Island, Alice looks forward to her new life with her brother’s family in the north.

While writing this piece, I was drawn again and again into the thought that, although this is a true story, set in a particular place at a certain time, it has the resonances of a universal myth, known to all of us who live here. Our forebears, or we ourselves, have crossed the seas to begin a new life, with unforeseen and unimaginable difficulties and felicities, whether ten years, a century or a millennium or so ago.

• Whitehead: Alice; computer-set 

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• Whitehead: Alice; computer-set 

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• Whitehead: Alice; computer-set 

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• Gillian Whitehead: Alice; audio 

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• Whitehead: Quintet and Alice  

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• Gillian Whitehead: Alice 

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This work for clarinet quintet in three movements was written following time spent in the north of Scotland, during which I visited the remote and desolate places that my family left behind when they emigrated from Scotland to New Zealand in the 19th Century. Although the music is not intended to be strictly descriptive, the image underpinning the work is that of an infinite shore that stretches from the line of steep cliffs at Badbea overlooking the North Sea, around the world to the rocky southern shores of Aotearoa New Zealand. The work draws on the tonal colour and extremes of pitch that are possible in the clarinet, and the extraordinary platform of sound of the string quartet.

• Webster: An Infinite Shore; computer set 

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• Webster: An Infinite Shore; computer set 

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• 5 Works by M Louise Webster 

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Originally called A Song of Tamatea, this work was revised in 2000 to become An Offering for Parihaka.

• Hamilton: A Song of Tamatea; facsimile 

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• Hamilton: An Offering for Parihaka; computer set 

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• Hamilton: An Offering for Parihaka; computer set 

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• David Hamilton: A Song of Tamatea 

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• Parihaka 

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• Hill: Anzac Day; facsimile 

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Anzacs Remembered is a setting of a verse from For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon spoken each 6pm at RSA’s throughout Australia and New Zealand.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
- Laurence Binyon

• Rimmer: Anzacs Remembered; computer-set 

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• Rimmer: Anzacs Remembered; computer-set 

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• Rimmer: Anzacs Remembered; computer-set 

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• Rimmer: Anzacs Remembered; computer-set 

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• Sinclair: Balfour & Paterson-A Dedication; computer-set 

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• NZ Works for Orchestra 

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• A Musical Six - Instrumental and orchestral works 

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In 2010, I co-wrote The Lover’s Knot with playwright Renee Liang as part of the 2010-2011 Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra Composer Workshops, which led to a performance with actor Stuart Devenie and conductor Kenneth Young. Stuart played the role of Walter Bolton, the last man given the death penalty in New Zealand, in the hours before his execution.

Various instruments represent various characters in this story – clarinet for Bolton’s flighty paramour Florence, contrabassoon for the stench of death, and harmon-muted trombones for the justice system. Bolton’s ailing wife Beatrice is represented by extensive solos for the cor anglais. At the request of Lee Martelli, Education Manager of the APO, I excerpted one of these into a demonstration piece for an education concert.

• Ellis: Beatrice; hire set 

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• Ellis: Beatrice; computer set 

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• Ellis: Beatrice; computer set 

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