Search Music:

Starting in a field close to Melbourne’s Western Ring Road, a llama lives a placid and slightly bored existence. Absent-mindedly picking at a chain-link fence, a gap appears: the animal can fit itself through and escape its confines. After a few cautious steps, it lurches forward and runs in sudden jerks. Making its way down a grassy hillside, it reaches the freeway crash barrier. Occupants of moving vehicles begin to notice the animal: “there’s a llama!” After a few tries, it successfully vaults the crash barrier and makes it onto the road itself. Vehicles whizz by and drivers honk their horns, but the llama is enjoying its freedom too much to be affected by them. Reports begin to reach news services: we hear a radio news theme and the growing noise of the Twitterverse.

The din of chatter around Melbourne becomes overwhelming and little more than indistinguishable noise, so the llama retreats into its head and to its elated thoughts: “I’m free! I’m my own animal! This is my dream, I’m no longer bound by a chain-link fence! It’s a whole new world! There’s a smile on my face for the whole…”

SQUEAL!! Its reverie is interrupted by an SUV with an absent-minded yet aggressive driver: the vehicle has to brake extremely suddenly to avoid hitting the llama, and misses it only by inches. Police have arrived on the scene and have begun to divert traffic. The llama becomes outnumbered to a greater and greater degree: there’s one last chance for escape, one tricky path to freedom, one last high-stakes roll of the “OOH TASTY TASTY LLAMA TREAT ON THE GRASSY BANK!! I LIKE TASTY LL… oh damn.”

Thirty minutes later, in the same field close to the Western Ring Road, the llama is once again bored. Picking at the chain-link fence, there’s no chance of escape. The fence has been repaired, the gap closed, the llama’s life restored to its former boredom.

More details here: http://www.robbie.co.nz/2012/12/09/llamadrama/

• Robbie Ellis: #llamadrama - hardcopy score 

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

• Robbie Ellis: #llamadrama - downloadable PDF 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $19.50
  • • Quantity:

Antonyms of Trust is a poem about water; about how our water is being stolen and degraded, about the many New Zealand rivers with signs saying “do not swim – may cause illness” or the dry riverbeds surrounded by farmland with constantly pumping pivot irrigators. “Once upon a better time, the poor man’s wine flowed beneath our feet and bubbled up between the streets…”

• Adams, C.: Antonyms of Trust; computer-set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $21.50
  • • Quantity:

• Adams, C.: Antonyms of Trust; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $25.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• The APO Composers' Workshop 2010 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

Since enjoying 2007 as the Ursula Bethell writer-in-residence at the English Department of the University of Canterbury, I had wanted to thank the University in kind by setting one of Ursula Bethell’s poems. On receiving an invitation from the Christchurch City Choir to compose a work to celebrate the choir’s 20th anniversary I immediately thought of Bethell’s ‘At the Lighting of the Lamps’, which carries the subtitle in brackets ‘(For Music)’. In the first three cantos of this she describes, in an extended musical metaphor, the setting of the sun over the Southern Alps, the beginnings of a symphony of light as lamps are lit across the Canterbury Plains, and the heavenly effects of ‘the music of the spheres’ as starlight illuminates the night sky.

Bethell, one of the pioneers of modern New Zealand poetry, was a long-time resident of Cashmere until her death in 1945 and recorded in verse many such sights, and associated reflections, from her elevated vantage point on the hills.

With the tragedy of the 2011 earthquakes and the postponement of many cultural activities, the Christchurch City Choir’s anniversary for celebration passed from the 20th to the 21st. As a result of the earthquakes, Ursula Bethell’s words have assumed new meaning – the lighting of the lamps can now symbolise hope, signs of a city and its surrounds in renewal: ‘from the deepening dark, sudden a new song springs…’.

I have dedicated this work to my muse, Alison, on the occasion of our thirtieth wedding anniversary.

- Philip Norman, 2012.

• Norman: At the Lighting of the Lamps; computer set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  • Borrow

• Matthew Davidson: Bergamasques - downloadable PDF 

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

• Matthew Davidson: Bergamasques - hardcopy score 

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

• Matthew Davidson: Bergamasques - MIDI realisation 

  Digital sound file - MP3
  

burlesques mécaniques is a rather extroverted collection of grotesque miniatures whose characters are not people or animals but dances. These dances have been mechanised, electrified, and often obscured by their own rhythmic impulse. Old forms and formulaic tropes are given new identities, freed from the confines of metric stability and the expectation that they be “danceable”. The essentially mechanical, artificial aspect of music (and of art in general?) is embodied in the piano, here a brittle, seedy protagonist whose string limbs hover and flail about it. Conflicting rhythms dominate the surface, oscillating between insistent repetition and mad, angular flourishes. The generally jerky, muscular rhythmic material is periodically frozen throughout the work, most strikingly in the ninth movement (chain). Here a string of rich, impressionistic chords briefly reveals an alternative, interior world which is then rudely dismissed in an almost haphazard finale.

• Taylor: burlesques mécaniques; computer set 

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $30.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Taylor: burlesques mécaniques; computer set 

  Score and parts | Pdf - computer set
  
  $23.50
  • • Quantity:

Ceremonial Introduction and Dialogue began through a suggestion from my son, Michael, to write a piece for a nonet – clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, percussion (including timpani), violin, viola, cello and double bass – for his colleague musician friends. Periodically, musicians from the Brisbane Orchestra performed a chamber music concert for members and friends – including members’ compositions – calling it “Off the Factory Floor.” The nonet received a couple of rehearsals and was performed, about 1998.

Using, for a start, the theme from Michael’s etude for unaccompanied horn, I “dreamed-up” the idea of setting the ritual opening of a masonic meeting. The order, to which my wife and I belong, is an international one for men and women begun in Paris in 1893. From 1902 it spread it all over the world. The Co-Masonic Lodge in Auckland was founded by C.W. Leadbeater in 1916 and in Wellington, Dunedin and Christchurch later.

The theme from my son’s etude comprised seven pitches each of which later received seven durations. From these I was able to set the ceremonial beginning of a Masonic meeting, followed by the text of the ensuing dialogue. Later, I re-scored the original none for orchestra and revised it in 2012. The music “takes over” in the climax section for full orchestra, leaving behind – for a short while – the obvious dialogue.

- Hugh Dixon 13/08/12

• Hugh Dixon: Ceremonial Introduction and Dialogue - hardcopy score 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  • Borrow

• Toan: Concertino; computer-set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $26.00
  • • Quantity:

• Toan: Concertino; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $31.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

This short work grew out of the middle movement. Originally composed for violin and strings, “Memorial” was first performed in a version for oboe and strings by the chamber orchestra of St Mary’s College, Auckland. It was suggested I might like to expand this into a larger work for oboe and strings, given there was a fine young oboe player in the school.

The completed concertino consists of a traditional three movement form: fast-slow-fast. The first movement has elements of Baroque period writing in it, including a short fugal section based on the opening melody. The second movement, “Memorial”, is a slow and poignant movement written at a time when New Zealand was experiencing a number of tragedies – the Pike River mining tragedy and the Christchurch earthquakes. The final movement, “Hoe-Down”, is a complete contrast, being a purely fun and rhythmic piece of writing suggesting the music of the old time western USA.

• Hamilton: Concertino for Oboe and Strings; computer set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $26.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Hamilton: Concertino for Oboe and Strings; computer set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $22.00
  • • Quantity:

• Alex Taylor: constellations - hardcopy score 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $19.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Alex Taylor: constellations - downloadable PDF 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  
  $16.00
  • • Quantity:

• Adams, C.: Contemporary Triptych; computer set 

  Score and parts | Pdf - computer set
  
  $20.50
  • • Quantity:

• Adams, C.: Contemporary Triptych; computer set 

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $25.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Chris Adams: Contemporary Triptych; video 

  Media on Demand | Embedded