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David Farquhar  

A Little Song-Suite

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1995
Three songs for high voice and piano

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David Hamilton  

At the Lighting of the Lamps

 Year: 1996
a song cycle for soprano and piano

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  • Programme Note

    This cycle was written at the request of Dunedin soprano Judy Bellingham. It represents my first extended writing for solo voice and piano, something which is perhaps surprising given my substantial choral output.

    Ursula Bethell (1874-1945) was born in England, grew up in New Zealand, then spent most of her early adult life in England and Europe. In the 1920’s she returned to live in Christchurch, establishing a garden and becoming a focus for the city’s literary life. She began to write poetry from the age of fifty. It has been suggested that her poetry was influenced by Whitman and Hopkins, and she has been called ‘the truest colonial voice New Zealand possesses’.

    I am grateful to my colleague at Epsom Girls Grammar School, Dr Dot Neutze, for offering the following interpretive comments on the cycle: I’m sure (the cycle) comes from Bethell’s looking westward from her “limen amabile” on the Port Hills, and watching the sun set over the Southern Alps. Section I describes the physical scene at sunset, rather grandly as she is leading up to God (“Light of Lights”). She watches the last light of day give way to “all-encompassing dark”. In Section II the lights of mankind (Christchurch and the settlements of the Canterbury Plains) provide “choirs of golden lights”, but they are only “sparks” in the “deepening dark…deepening night”. In Section III, as it gets darker, the “antiphonal stars” take up the song, extending the music to the lights of the whole universe: “imperial orbs…moons…planets of magnitude…suns to suns reply…serene to serene stars”. In Section IV heavenly beings take up the mortal Christians’ evening hymns “at the time of lamp-lighting”. While “pastoral ministers sleep” the “bright clair-audient angels” continue the praises of the “Master of Music”. The hymn of praise in Section V deals with the deepest Christian mysteries, the paradox of the Creator who became mortal: “Almighty Artificer…human heart”. It’s the light shining in darkness “put out for a night” in crucifixion and “rising mightily” to become the light of the Holy City. At the climax of the hymn “our lights” are consumed in the light of heaven. After the power of this universal hymn of praise the sequence needs the simplicity of word (and rhyme) in Section VI to bring the poem back to the reality of the physical scene: “hidden seas and river…the silent night”, and the darkness of the plains. In Bethell’s poem it shows a reluctance to let go of the vision, a sadness that we are only human. The words seem to tumble over each other, almost in anticlimax, as a very quick winding down.

    Musically the cycle develops from the opening piano gesture. It provides a starting point for much of the melodic and harmonic material. Each section of the cycle begins at the point at which the previous section concluded by picking up on some musical element from its concluding bars. Sections II and VI are most closely linked musically with material from the earlier part reappearing in an altered guise in the later part.

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Gillian Whitehead  

Awa Herea (Braided Rivers)

Duration: 22' 00" Year: 1993
a song cycle for soprano and piano

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Anthony Ritchie  

Berlin Fragments

Duration: 23' 00" Year: 1992
a cycle for mezzo-soprano and piano

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  • Programme Note

    In 1990 I attended the launch of Cilla McQueen’s new book Berlin Diary. This diary made a big impression on me, initially because it brought back memories of my own trip to Europe. I also liked the brilliant mixing of poetic and prosaic styles, and the vivid descriptions of people and places. Something else that impressed me was the strong contrast between the inhuman political situation in Berlin (the wall was still up) and the natural, peaceful beauty of Dunedin, New Zealand (Cilla’s and my own home town). A few months later the Aramoana tragedy (where a deranged gunman killed 13 people – Aramoana is a remote seaside township at the end of the Otago peninsula) changed that around. Cilla’s beautiful, almost ecstatic centrepiece in the dairy “O Aramoana” now took on a terrible subtext, and it seemed as if the inhumanity of Berlin had come to the remote beach community. A year later, the Berlin wall finally came down, and the unification of East and West Germany became a reality.

    When Judy Bellingham approached me in 1991 to write a song cycle for her, I immediately wanted to set extracts from the Berlin Diary, to capture these layers of dramatic historical irony along with the essence of a marvellous text. In reality I was able to only set a fraction of the diary to music, and hence the title of my work – Berlin Fragments (which I would also like to think suggests the breaking of the Berlin wall into bits). After talking to Cilla about the work, I decided to make “O Aramoana” the heart of the work, around which somewhat shorter texts are clustered. Sections are often linked by a recurrent chord in the bottom of the piano (the dyad E-F), which I have imagined as a tombstone in musical terms. Framing the work are brief sections which convey the flight to and from Berlin (the “green below” being an unmistakable reference to a return to New Zealand).

    The 23 minutes of this song cycle run continuously.

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Eve de Castro-Robinson  

Chaos of Delight II

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1996
for soprano (with two metal thumb clickers)

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Ronald Dellow  

Four Songs

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1997
a song cycle for soprano and piano

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Annea Lockwood  

I give you back

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 1993
for unaccompanied soprano

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Ronald Dellow  

Julia

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1998
a song for soprano or tenor with piano

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Helen Bowater  

Makara - late winter

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 1993
for mezzo-soprano and piano

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Anthony Ritchie  

Milking Before Dawn

 Year: 1998, r. 2001
for mezzo soprano and piano

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