Work

Programme Note

In September 2007 at the University of Auckland, I attended the launch of Spectrum 4, a book of short stories. These stories were the end-product of 24 writers’ work in a third-year English course, ‘Writing the Short Story’, convened and tutored by Witi Ihimaera the previous year. The first story in the book was Leila Austin’s Shadow People.

Leila’s writing – particularly the evocations and contrasts of shadow vs light; the harshly real vs the safely imaginary; and a flighty imaginary companion called Maeve – inspired me to set this piece for solo piano. The solitary nature of the piano and its evocative qualities of shade and shadow suits it, in my mind, to accompanying past recollections.

To accompany the piano part, Leila and I pared down and paraphrased her original story to a small number of lines, which I recorded her speaking. The words on tape come from a disembodied storyteller in the present remembering her past. The piano part accompanies and complements the speaker’s thoughts and memories.

At the root of this piece is the interval of the second, which is found in two guises – major and minor. The major second opens and closes the piece. While it often has dissonant qualities, here it is not strongly dissonant and is used in a very still and suspended state. This interval represents the idea of shadow and the comfort the storyteller found (and finds) in it.

The interval’s other guise is the minor second, a much more jarring harmony. This evokes light, the opposite of shadow, and in particular the sharp fluorescent light of Bars 59-66. Towards the end of the piece there is interplay between the minor and major seconds, and there are even places where the minor second is a consonant interval (e.g. Bars 77-80).

Text Note:

Text adapted from the short story "Shadow People", by Leila Austin

Difficulty:

Intermediate

Difficulty Note:

intermediate to advanced

Performance History

	07 Jul 2009	Performed by Donald Nicholson (piano) and Rohan King (tape operator) at Nelson School of Music, as part of the Nelson Composers Workshop
	28 Mar 2010	Performed by Buz Bryant-Greene (piano), Robbie Ellis (tape operator) at Palmerston North City Library
	09 Apr 2011	Performed by the SMP Ensemble at St Andrew’s on The Terrace, in Wellington
	02 May 2012	Performed by John Van Buskirk (pno), at the Marama Hall in Dunedin.