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Helen Fisher  

Bone of Contention

Duration: 1h 20' 00" Year: 1993
a dance work for mezzo-soprano and ensemble

Helen Fisher  

Nga Tapuwae o Kupe (The Footprints of Kupe)

Duration: 20' 00" Year: 1992
a bicultural work for school choir, instruments and dance

  • Instrumentation
    choir, percussion, Rarotongan drums, guitars (students), Taonga Puoro (koauau), piano, clarinet in B flat, alto saxophone, horn in F, flute, guitar (advanced performer)
  • Programme Note

    Nga Tapuwae o Kupe is a music drama directed by Rangimoana Taylor. It is based on the story of Kupe’s journey from Hawaiki to Aotearoa and his discovery of various landmarks around Whanganui-a-Tara / the Wellington region.

    While this work maintains a strong Maori theme, with karanga, haka and waiata, as well it weaves in other Pacific and European elements.

    For school choir, instrumentalists, dancers and kapa haka, this work was composed with the financial assistance of a composition grant from Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, was first performed by 140 students from South Wellington Intermediate School in July 1992 for Artsplash, the Wellington Young People’s Festival.

  • Availability

Juliet Palmer  

Self

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1990
For three percussionists

Anthony Ritchie  

Symphony No. 1 - 'Boum'

Duration: 32' 00" Year: 1993
for full orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    (1)222(1)alto sax2; 4231; perc; timp; strings
  • Programme Note

    The title of this symphony comes from the ominous tam tam stroke that opens the first movement, a mysterious sound heard by two of E M Forster’s characters in A Passage to India when they investigate the Marabar Caves. This is a sound which symbolises the mysteries of life and death, although Ritchie warns us not to take it all too literally. “The echo is only a starting point to a general theme of human struggle. The listener can interpret the music in his or her own way.”

    The first movement opens sonorously in the tonality of G, pulsating chords leading us inevitably to the first main theme, a theme that Ritchie himself characterises as a “muscular, Brucknerian theme”, although the momentum that it engages owes more to Shostakovich. A sinuous saxophone theme is very significant in the central section, as is the lengthy oboe theme in the moderato section. The second movement opens with the sharp, bright sounds of oboes and clarinets accompanied by Cook Islands log drums. The log drum punctuates the movement’s textures and creates a sense of propulsion. A light-hearted dance introduced by string quartet offers an opportunity for a change of mood. The third movement is a lament for the victims of the Bosnian wars.

    The highly evocative scoring of the opening pages was inpsired by the wailing of a Maori karanga, while tolling bells imbue this elegy with a special sense of tragedy. The symphony ends with a ‘grand dance’ which shows Ritchie has not been untouched by rock music. Several themes are brought together in an ecstatic coda, after which the music slowly unwinds over a reiterated pedal note. The opening of the first movement returns, and the final sound we hear is a single stroke on the tam tam.

    Symphony No.1 ‘Boum’ was completed while Ritchie was Composer-in-residence with the Dunedin Sinfonia in 1993, and first performed the following year, under the baton of Sir William Southgate. It has received numerous performances, and was recorded for radio by the NZSO, in 1998, Auckland Philharmonia in 1996, Dunedin Sinfonia in 1994.

  • Availability

Helen Fisher  

Taku Wana - The Enduring Spirit

Duration: 1h 02' 00" Year: 1997
for SATB choir, kapa haka, Maori and Irish instruments, 3 soloists and orchestra

Anthony Ritchie  

The Flower of Scotland (arr.)

Duration: 03' 00" Year: 1999
for massed choirs and bagpipes

Helen Bowater  

The Frivolous Cake

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1991
for mezzo, flute, clarinet, soprano saxophone, fretless bass, cello and percussion

Annea Lockwood  

Thousand Year Dreaming

Duration: 45' 00" Year: 1990
for chamber ensemble and slides

  • Instrumentation
    oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, contrabass clarinet, 4 didjeridus, 2 tenor trombones, 2 conch shells, percussion
  • Programme Note

    This work is scored for 10 piece ensemble of winds, brass, percussion and slides from the Lascaux Caves.

    “It opened with an arresting effect I’d never heard before: Art Baron and Scott Robinson blowing through conch shells, played a series of converging glissandi in opposition directions, creating wild beat patterns…Even had you closed your eyes, it was like the piece suddenly emerged from its lair and took over the atmosphere”. Gann, Village Voice, New York

  • Availability