These two vocalises were written for Elise Bédard, an accomplished performer of avant-garde vocal music. They use the voice instrumentally and are designed t...

Four Medieval Lyrics is a song cycle of settings of 14th and 15th century religious and secular verse. The fusion of old and new, of medieval poetic imager...

"Twenty years old and silent as the tomb til...?"

" Big controlled/uncontrolled rave that sets Blake's Four Zoas for soprano pitted against big brass, d...

“Very strange. Listening to Busoni (songs and sonatinas) and dealing with unbelievable domestic horror, Blue Mountains, Sydney, at night.”

The work was commissioned in 1970 by the NZ Broadcasting Corporation. The texts are taken from Janet Frame's 1967 verse collection, The Pocket Mirror. The ...

A setting of a poem by Walter de la Mare especially written for New Zealand soprano Anna Leese. The music reflects the joy and enthusiasm for music, both in ...

Five short song settings of five nonsense poems (three anonymous, two credited), which reflects my childhood in New Zealand. In colonial countries, a love of...

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Christina Rossetti, a significant voice in Victorian poetry, is best known for ballads and mystic religious lyrics that carefully combine form and imagery in...

First published in 1917 this iconic set of 13 stanzas was described in a letter by the poet as a "group of poems ... not meant to be a collection of epigrams...

This song was commissioned for the 1995 Christchurch Music Competitions by Sarah Dyer, mezzo soprano, who asked for a song to be written since the competitio...

Myself When Young is a cycle of three songs for soprano and piano. They are settings of poems by Jean Alison Bartlett. The poems were published in 1930 whe...

These three evocative songs in contrasting moods continue the series of albums for developing voices.

These three evocative songs in contrasting moods continue the series of albums for developing voices.

For high voice, clarinet in B flat and piano, the five songs are settings of New Zealand poems that evoke poignant memories of past experiences. They are of ...

Amusing short songs for young singers in a semi-contemporary style. Lyrics by Fiona Farrell and Murray Edmond.

Among Helen’s early compositions is this setting for solo voice of a much-loved anonymous poem.

Mary's song of praise is the longest New Testament text attributed to a woman—but was, of course, written by a man incorporating tropes from earlier writers....

The drama and poetry of traditional Scots ballads have a universal appeal, but particularly for a composer who (like many New Zealanders) had a Scots ancestr...

I have long been drawn to e e cummings' extraordinary lyrical gifts. In fact, I set the fourth poem in this set ("my sweet old etcetera") nearly 50 years ago...

This particular composition touches upon the common human fault that is denial. Every day we subconsciously create our own internal realities to cater toward...

Pukeko is a setting of a poem by the prominent New Zealand writer Ian Wedde and was composed in 1972 while John Rimmer was the Mozart Fellow and Ian Wedde ...

Delaney Davidson's reimagining of Trouble, trouble mind for Eve de Castro-Robinson's 2017 album, The Gristle of Knuckles.