Search Music:

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 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $25.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Webster: An Infinite Shore; computer set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $20.50
  • • Quantity:

• 5 Works by M Louise Webster 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

‘eye-glitter out of black air 1’ is part of a cycle of pieces written for the players of the Slovene wind quintet Slowind. To date, the cycle includes solo pieces for all of the instruments of the standard wind quintet, two wind quintets and a piece for wind quintet and orchestra.

• Hall: eye-glitter out of black air 1; facsimile 

  Full score | Pdf - facsimile
  
  $23.00
  • • Quantity:

• Hall: eye-glitter out of black air 1; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $27.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

‘eye-glitter out of black air 2’ is the second version of a wind quintet that forms part of a cycle of pieces written for the players of the Slovene wind quintet Slowind. To date, the cycle includes solo pieces for all of the instruments of the standard wind quintet, two wind quintets and a piece for wind quintet and orchestra.

• Hall: eye-glitter out of black air 2; facsimile 

  Full score | Pdf - facsimile
  
  $21.00
  • • Quantity:

• Hall: eye-glitter out of black air 2; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $25.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Ross Harris: Fjärran - hardcopy score 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $25.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Ross Harris: Fjärran - downloadable PDF 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $21.00
  • • Quantity:

Hale, 2011, for solo bass trombone, alto flute, clarinet, contrabass clarinet, cello and pre-recorded tape.
‘Dum spiro spero. While I breathe, I hope’

Hale is a sonic meditation on life and death, dedicated to the memory of my mother Brya who died in August 2011. Intimate, incantatory and nostalgic, it contains few instrumental lines, but rather seeks to present a contained meditative ritual in which the listener may reflect on issues of mortality. Recordings of breathing, Brya’s poems, fleeting memories of Bach, church bells and birds provide a sonic halo to the heartbeat tread of the cello and the trombone’s keening of a tune based on Flanagan and Allen’s Hometown.

Leave your shadow when you go So your going’s not complete And I’ll have your company In thin measure till we meet

by Brya Kings (1931 – 2011)

The subtitle of this work is “Variations on a theme of Jenny McLeod”. In late 2012 I had conducted several movements from Jenny McLeod’s “Sun Festival Carols” and was constantly haunted by the music of the seventh movement “Jade”. Something about the vitality of the music and its melodic and harmonic language got stuck in my head (what is often called an “ear-worm”!).

When I was asked if I had anything for a school chamber music group of 3 violins and cello, I thought writing a work based on Jenny’s music might finally exorcise the piece from my brain. To this group I asked if I could add a wind instrument to allow a five-part texture, hence the flute.

The work is a set of variations on the opening section of the “Jade” movement of “Sun Festival Carols”. It’s not a set of traditional variations, in that the harmonic skeleton is not retained through each variation. Rather, it is a set of pieces based on elements of the original music – melodic, rhythmic and harmonic.

The work opens with a fairly straight-forward instrumentation of the original music from bars 1 to 42. The first variation picks up on the opening soprano melody idea, and this is further examined in the 2nd variation. The third variation is a slow and solemn piece using a five beats-in-a-bar time signature, based on a tiny fragment of melody which is initially buried in the 3rd violin part. The lively 4th variation is for just the flute and 1st violin, and draws on melodic elements from the coda of the original piece. The 5th variation is an energetic re-working of harmonic elements using irregular time signatures. The 6th variation is fugal, again based on the opening soprano melody. The theme is treated in a variety of ways eventually being augmented to double its original duration and then to notes four times their original values. This variation leads without pause into the finale which is an instrumentation of the chorus section of the original work, concluding with a glance back at the opening music, A few bold unexpected chords round off the work.

“Jade Variations” was written at the suggestion of Jocelyn Beath for a group of students in New Plymouth.

• David Hamilton: Jade Variations - hardcopy score 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $23.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

This piece is a Mad Scene, somewhat in the operatic tradition, but with a clarinettist instead of a singer as soloist. Mad Scenes serve a dual purpose: to provide plot and character development and also to let the performer show off. Nevertheless, they are often oddly restrained, magnifying the plight of the character and drawing the audience in…

After writing the first seven bars of this work, a quite singular image came to mind: an extreme close-up view of a sparkly, delicately minuscule glasslike crystal – probably much like sugar. Beyond that point (after the first ten chords), what I wrote became less and less crystalline, and less saccharine too. Perhaps calling the piece “Sugar Crystal” wasn’t suitable for the work as a whole, but giving a title is a result of the organic nature of writing music – it still seems right to me.

Sugar Crystal is the fourth major work I have written for Anna McGregor – one per year since 2007. This piece was composed at her request, and is dedicated to her and the yet unknown string quartet who will give its first public performance. I would also like to thank Gretchen La Roche (clarinet), John Thomson and Juliet Ayre (violins), Peter Barber (viola), Robert Ibell (cello), Justus Rozemond (conductor), Gao Ping (tutor) and all participants at the 2010 Nelson Composers Workshop for contributing to the work’s development.

Robbie Ellis

• Ellis: Sugar Crystal; computer-set 

  Score and parts | Pdf - computer set
  
  $17.00
  • • Quantity:

• Ellis: Sugar Crystal; computer-set 

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $17.00
  • • Quantity:

• Ellis: Sugar Crystal; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $14.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Nelson Composers Workshop 2010: Sugar Chrystal  

  CD
  
  • Borrow

Tag: as in the children’s game; the soloist is ‘it’.

Release: a release for the composer (and his performers) from previous modes of engagement with small ensemble music that have almost always required the services of a conductor. In this work perpetual, conventionally written soli are passed between the players. When not playing soli, musicians are reacting loosely to the solo line with a series of gestures; the soloist becomes a conductor of sorts.

Tag and release: from recreational fishing, in the interests of research and conservation.

The work is continuous but divided into three sections.

soli 1-7: introductory (loose) palindrome
soli 8-14: suddenly noise-based…gradual re-emergence of pitch
soli 18-20: intensification

With thanks to the MCL, the Silo String Quartet, Barrie Webb and Jack Body.

• Chris Watson: tag (and release); computer set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $45.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Watson: tag (and release); computer set 

  Score and parts | Pdf - computer set
  
  $34.00
  • • Quantity:

• Chris Watson: tag (and release); audio 

  Media on Demand | Embedded
  

Note by the composer:
I have been attracted to the profoundly sensual and philosophical world of Mu Xin. The three poems I chose to set are simple and straightforward. But one discovers a wealth of wit and poignancy behind the plainness of the Chinese text.

• Gao: Three Poems by Mu Xin (chinese version); computer set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $19.00
  • • Quantity:

• Gao: Three Poems by Mu Xin (chinese version); computer set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $22.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Gao: Three Poems by Mu Xin (english version); computer set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $19.00
  • • Quantity:

• Gao: Three Poems by Mu Xin (english version); computer set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $22.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow