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Eve de Castro-Robinson  

A Mob of Solid Bliss

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 1993
for clarinet, violin, 2 violas, double bass, accordion and percussion

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Eve de Castro-Robinson  

a pink-lit phase

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1997
for flute, viola and harp

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Denise Hulford  

A prayer for the twenty-first century woman

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

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Neville Hall  

a splinter of silence in the belly of time

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

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Lyell Cresswell  

And Every Sparkle Shivering

Duration: 21' 00" Year: 1999
for piano quintet

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  • Instrumentation
    string quartet and piano
  • Programme Note

    And every sparkle shivering to new blaze,
    In number did outmillion the account
    Reduplicate upon a chequered board

    Dante, The Divine Comedy – Paradise XXVIII
    Translation by Rev. H.F.Cary (1814)

    Observe the circle nearest, and know
    the reason for its spinning at such speed
    is that Love’s fire burns it into motion.

    Dante, The Divine Comedy – Paradise XXVII
    Translated by Mark Musa (1995)

    In Canto 28 of Paradise, Dante, the pilgrim, is faced with an unbearably piercing light reflected in the eyes of his beloved guide, Beatrice. He turns and sees nine ever decreasing circles burning and whirling at different speeds. These circles give off sparks that sing hosannas. Dante has seen a spherical universe with God at the centre. He asks why the universe is not really like this, Beatrice tells him that he is now seeing it from a spiritual rather than a physical point of view, and that the reason for the great speed of the inner circle “is that Love’s fire burns it into motion”.

    This imagery of circles within circles whirling, burning and giving off sparks seems to demand some musical treatment. It suggests a number of musical ideas revolving around each other and establishing a smooth relationship, and the warmer notion of love setting these ideas in motion.

    The quintet, which is in one continuous movement, revolves around five central ideas. These ideas are moved around like pieces on a chessboard, each trying to gain some strategic advantage in pursuit of a single objective. Two of these ideas provide the rhythmic drive of the piece. The first, hesitant, but gathering speed and rising in pitch, is introduced by the viola at the beginning. The second, direct and syncopated, is announced by all four strings when they play together for the first time, before it is taken up by the piano. The main source of melodic material is a quiet tune, a love song, that threads its way through the piece, played first by the two violins and viola. The full version is heard in a piano solo played simply in octaves. In another guise this tune becomes the fourth idea, a fast dance that gathers momentum as the quintet reaches its climax. The fifth idea, fast accumulating scales, links the melodic and rhythmic elements and helps provide energy. The piece begins with a piano chord, which becomes a pivot for all these ideas and crops up in a variety of ways at crucial points.

    And Every Sparkle Shivering is something like a mosaic composed by inlaying small tesserae of coloured stone or glass to create a sparkling over-all design. There is conflict between the warmth and vigour of sparking fire and spinning circles, and the coolness of glinting stone and flickering glass.

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John Rimmer  

At the Base of the Whirlpool

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1999
arranged for bass clarinet and cello

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Helen Bowater  

Banshee

Duration: 11' 50" Year: 1998
for two violins, cello and piano

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Denise Hulford  

Before the Stars begin to Shine

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 1994
for cello and timpani

  • Programme Note

    Before the Stars Begin To Shine is written for solo violoncello and timpani. The work is a comment on the period of time between the often picturesque part of the day when the sun sets and the stars begin to shine. In southern regions of New Zealand this part of the day is called twilight and is defined as the time between sunset and darkness. Twilight can also mean the period of time when life begins to draw to a close. When twilight is referred to in the context of a day it may have a joyous meaning, but when associated with the penultimate stage of a life cycle it can bring sorrow. This work was written in memory of a dear friend who was drowned on January 2nd, 1994.

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Neville Hall  

beneath the veil of silence

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1994
for clarinet, alto sax, violin, cello and piano

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  • Programme Note

    Ten years have passed since I wrote beneath the veil of silence. I remember at the time I was reading Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things, which is where I found the title for my piece. The fact that I was reading a book entitled The Order of Things says something about my preoccupation at the time – order.

    This preoccupation derived mainly from a fascination with the visual patterns of nature, in particular patterns found in trees and other flora, as well as patterns found in the movement of water in all its forms. There must, I thought, be a link between order and beauty; and perhaps by exploring this relationship I might also have a chance of making something beautiful.

    The phrase beneath the veil of silence also refers to nature. Specifically, the idea that nature contains a message, it is trying to tell us something, but it is mute and unable to speak directly. Hence the veil – something is concealed from our view, even though we are aware of its presence.

    The order of beneath the veil of silence is also intentionally hidden from view; it resides at a deep level in the structure of the piece. The surface we hear is laced with signs that refer to this deep structure but always in a more or less obscure way. Hopefully, the result is a sense of order – a feeling that something is going on in the background, without our ever being sure exactly what.

    There are two main structural layers to the piece – one that determines the pitch organisation and one that determines the temporal/rhythmic design of the composition. These two conceptually unrelated layers, both products of reiterative processes, are superimposed and interact with each other; in particular, the rhythmic design “smudges” the previously almost geometrically perfect pitch design, shifting elements left and right, and unpicking vertical pitch configurations.

    The “fleshing out” of this structural skeleton, although to some extent elaborating material from the skeleton itself, was largely an act of imagination/fantasy. Perhaps this is why the timbral aspect of the piece is so important. It is really in the interaction of the various instrumental combinations that the “poetry” of the piece (if it exists) is located. Thus following timbral indications, such as sul tasto or sul ponticello, are just as important as playing the right note at the right time; and being clear about how each part fits together, and what each part contributes to the combined timbre of the ensemble, is critical to performing the piece convincingly.

    Listening to beneath the veil of silence now, I can hear that I was preoccupied with a post-serial musical idiom in the early 1990s. This is hardly surprising considering my teachers we very much of the “Darmstadt” generation and heavily influenced by serialism. In recent years, I have moved away from this approach to composing, but the critical role of timbre and the search for the relationship between order and beauty are two things that remain from the early period. There are very few pieces written before beneath the veil of silence that I would now offer for performance, so this work is very much a starting point, the first step down a path that leads who knows where…

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Jeni Little  

Betwixt

Duration: 00' 30" Year: 1999
for flute, bass clarinet, bass trombone, cello and double bass

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