• A festival will probably make more money or, more likely, recoup more of its losses, if it actually gets people to come to events. This also helps to justify the festival’s future existence. Because of this, it is most likely a good idea to actually advertise what the festival has on offer. Between the announcement of the programme and the start of the chamber music weekend there seems to have been a complete lack of advertising (exacerbated by the chamber music weekend never having been promoted when the programme was announced). The Festival seems to have chosen instead to promote a handful of theatre works – Sutra and The Sound of Silence. Aside from Apollo 13, which got quite a lot of publicity from the Dominion Post, everything else has been completely under the radar.
• Having decided that you will in fact not bother to advertise an event, it might be wise to pay some attention to ticket sales. Most of the tickets that are sold for an event that is only half-heartedly promoted once are probably going to be sold around that time, so it could well be worthwhile to see how many tickets are sold early on and then reconsider prices (or even better, recognise that an unadvertised show should probably have low ticket prices from that outset.
• Sometimes it looks better if there are actually younger people at chamber music events. Unfortunately, because ticket prices are outrageously high, they will either only be able to get to one or two concerts or none at all. So if you are going to offer NZSM students tickets for $10, it would be real nice to actually offer these from the outset. You know, before they spend quite a lot of money on going to one concert, and then find that they could have gone to every concert at the chamber music weekend for less money. Yeah.
• Having caused immense frustration to at least one NZSM student, please make sure that concert they spent six times too much money on is flawless.

For roughly the same price, you can go to one of the scarce art music concerts at the New Zealand Festival of the Arts. You cannot, of course, go to Mahler 8 unless you were far more organised than me and actually bought a ticket before they sold out (note: I haven’t seen any notice of, say, a repeat of the concert, clearly the most sought after event at the Festival). As a result, I’ll probably only be going to the Keith Lewis and Michael Houston concert, which is disappointing. Instead of Mahler 8, I went to Joanna Newsom, which was great fun and, I suppose, demonstrated why everybody should at least start a composition degree.

Much as I found out about John Psathas’ pretty much unheard of international success by randomly browsing Promethean Editions, I found out about the St Andrew’s on the Terrace Season in the Herald (I only touch it on Saturdays! Don’t shoot!), when their really quite excellent classical critic (maybe he’s just a little too excited about the merits of the APO over the NZSO sometimes) announced it with a large photo of SMP performing. There’s an incredible range of music available, with a fair swathe of contemporary and/or New Zealand music. It isn’t quite a new music festival. It doesn’t have an orchestra. But it does what the NZFotA should have done.

As I listen to increasing volumes of contemporary music – and more serious contemporary music at that – I also seem to listen to less Christian music. This is largely because of the oppositional attitudes of art and religion on the functionality of music, and although this problem may be exacerbated by current trends, it is certainly not a new dilemma. Composers of Renaissance religious music faced two separate questions of functionality; firstly, the textural nature of their music and the technical implications thereof; secondly, the question of language. Debate over polyphony (in Rome) centred at the time over whether the use of melisma rendered texts incomprehensible, and while worship practices dictated that music be sung by the choir without the participation of the congregation (at least audibly), polyphonic singing would have required a high degree of technical skill were congregational singing to take place. The effect of polyphony on Roman congregations was essentially the same as that of Latin singing (and services in general) on churchgoers elsewhere in Europe – one of alienation from worship. These same qualities are no less present in the ears of contemporary listeners; The wondrous complexity of Renaissance masses and motets eliminates much of their religious import.

Much the same might be written about the religious music of composers today. Few composers with truly contemporary styles have devoted a great deal of their output to religious music. Minimalism (particularly the Eastern variant) has undoubtedly been kindest, with apparent simplicity enabling strong communication. It is unfortunate, then, that so little of this music is in English. Arvo Pärt’s music, while deeply involving, is ultimately frustrating in that it is set to Latin texts; it is possibly only his De Profundis that really overcomes the language barrier.

Also a nuisance in the creation of religious art music is the need for the music to act as reinforcement for the text, and yet this is somewhat contradictory to the nature of art, which demands the attention for itself. It seems impossible for such music to actually attempt to break new ground in any way, particularly if married to an ancient, if potentially extremely potent text. Creating a contemporary text for contemporary music, of course, creates a whole new series of problems. All in all, this leaves me rather befuddled. If contemporary music really can’t achieve this, what actually is the point? One other option, of course, is to write religious music sans text which, while possibly helpful from a compositional perspective, may leave the listener dry. Composers have used plenty of different ways to incorporate religious symbolism into instrumental music – the classic example being the use of plainsong melodies – but this does place enormous demands on an audience to recognise the subtext. A curved line in the sand.

…It would have been better had the conductor stayed away, not least because it would have prevented the audience from being subjected to 25 minutes of unremitting noise classed by Button as atonal.

The so-called Symphony No 191 created by Segerstam was so unpleasant that I was rendered physically unwell – so much so I could not get up to walk out. By the end of the piece, I was in tears from the pain of the noise…

Wow. That’s quite something. Perhaps it’s alarming that my eye was immediately drawn to the words “classed by Button as atonal”. Does the letter writer have some better description of her own? How dare John Button make a correct judgement about the harmonic nature of the music? I am 100% certain that the letter writer would have come away free from nausea had she actually made some attempt to listen to the music rather than tried to block it out. Unfortunately, her hatred of Segerstam’s music (I think it might be worth pointing out here that much of the music with which Button compared Symphony No. 191 is eighty years old) also affected her enjoyment of the remainder of the concert

…The Karelia Suite was the NZSO at its best – possibly because they have made it their own and the conductor left them to the performance at one stage, acknowledging this point.

Having been to the pre-concert talk and heard some of the great sopranos sing the Four Last Songs with sympathetic orchestras, Saturday’s soprano didn’t have a chance because the conductor didn’t match the orchestra to her voice, allowing it to override her…

Or alternatively, the Karelia Suite succeeded without much conducting because it is a fairly simple repertoire work and any orchestral player will have performed it dozens of times. A professional orchestra does not need a conductor to keep time with pieces like this – the conductor’s role in shaping the performance to a far greater extent in rehearsal than on the concert stage, but because the letter writer is so determined to steer any credit away from Segerstam she ignores this consideration. If I have understood the comment about the Four Last Songs correctly, recordings of the work were played, which the letter writer feels were more balanced than the actual performance. This is, of course, exactly what one would expect. Recording a work, even live, will naturally create a better balance than the same work live, simply because microphone positioning and mixing will create a false impression of what is actually happening.

• Traditional, arranged by Carol Shortis: Polskie Kwiaty
• Simon Eastwood: Jericho: Walls Will Fall
• Henryk Górecki: Three Pieces in Olden Style
• Witold Lutoslawski: Melodie Ludowe
• Krzysztof Penderecki: Allegro Moderato from Sextet
• Henryk Górecki: Totus Tuus
• Karol Szymanowski: Rymy Dzieciece  – Children’s Rhymes Op. 49
• Karlo Margetic: Hommage  à W.L.
• Carol Shortis: Tesknota (Yearning)

6 November at the ACR

• Traditional, arranged by Carol Shortis: Polskie Kwiaty
• Krysztof Penderecki: 3 miniature per clarinetto e pianoforte
• Grazyna Bacewicz: Quintet for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon and Horn
• Henryk Górecki: Piano Sonata No. 1
• Anton Killin: Podróze
• Aleksander Tansman: Sonatine for Bassoon and Piano
• Aleksander Tansman: Studio from Pièces brèves pour guitare and Canzonetta from Trois pièces pour guitare
• Andrzej Nowicki: Abstand und Nähe

7 November at St Andrew’s on the Terrace

• Traditional, arranged by Carol Shortis: Polskie Kwiaty
• Simon Dickson: Jericho: Walls Will Fall
• Henryk Górecki: Piano Sonata No. 1
• Henryk Górecki: Three Pieces in Olden Style
• Witold Lutoslawski: Melodie Ludowe
• Anton Killin: Podróze
• Henryk Górecki: Totus Tuus
• Karlo Margetic: Hommage  à W.L.
• Carol Shortis: Tesknota (Yearning)

SMP’s final concert series for 2009 was certainly an ambitious undertaking – three concerts featuring seventeen pieces by eleven composers. Each concert opened with a rendition of the Polish folk song Polskie Kwiaty. Jonathan Berkahn’s accordion offered both a connection to folk traditions and a keen timbre that echoed the song’s sentiments and matched well to Olga Gryniewicz’s voice. Her replacement in the second concert by countertenor Laurie Fleming due to family reasons could not be considered particularly successful – Fleming’s voice felt far too light for the arrangement – but this failed to prevent the Polish segments of the audience vocally endorsing each performance. Polskie Kwiaty was also an element in two of the commissioned works – Carol Shortis’ Tesknota and, to a lesser extent, Anton Killin’s Podróze.

Simon Eastwood’s work for trumpet, horn and trombone reflecting upon the Solidarity movement felt less successful. Jericho consists of a series of disjunct miniatures, with few discernable connections. Although it makes use of several appealing musical ideas and brass techniques, but none of these are explored in any detail, but are abruptly dropped in moving to the next section of music. Possibly some of these section changes could have been masked by the use of a slightly larger ensemble and a longer time frame, avoiding the necessity of an uncomfortable silence for the performers to change their mutes. The lengths of the miniatures also creates a rather unnatural, unresolved ending, that feels out of kilter with the messages of the work. Jericho shows defiance in spades, but not much hope.

The music of Henryk Górecki proved an integral part of all three programmes. The utterly unpretentious Three Pieces in Olden Style are amongst Górecki’s best known work and the SMP String Ensemble performed them with appropriate crispness. Only in the third of the pieces is there any hint of the angst that pervades much of the composer’s work; the first two pieces are based on simple folk-like melodies that might come from any country in Europe. These pieces could not be any more different from the Piano Sonata No. 1. This is a proto-minimalist work, foreshadowing Górecki’s later output. The first movement throws out melodic fragments from a thick – and violent – chordal texture before an abrupt departure into a sparse, quiet interlude. When the original texture returns it still possesses the latent fury of the opening, but with more positive undertones. The middle movement is an extreme contrast – a stagnant monophonic theme and subsequent harmonisation. Unfortunately, this does not in itself make a particularly effective piece of music – the movement feels as if it has been thrown in to justify the ‘sonata’ title. The third movement returns to the spirit of the first, although this time it is the chords that seem to be spat out of the melody; Laurel Hungerford experienced some difficulties with this movement during both performances, but still did a great job of harnessing the work’s energy. Totus Tuus simply does not measure up to either of these works. Although the sounds are attractive, they are simply repeated too often, rendering the music almost lifeless. In the first performance there also seemed to be some issues of balance with the choir – which felt a little bottom-heavy – although these cleared up on the 7th.

Witold Lutoslawski’s Melodie Ludowe are hardly the  most exciting part of his output; one cannot help wondering whether the time of both the composer and the string ensemble could have been put to better use. Karlo Margetic’s homage to Witold Lutoslawski has everything that Melodie Ludowe does not; Hommage  à W.L. uses a variety of interesting sounds arranged within a clear structure. The overall tripartite form is delineated by woodblock interludes, while sectional changes within these parts are dictated by the conductor. Particularly effective were the use of bowed cymbal in the first part, which really sang at times, and the densely packed second part. There were some aethetic similarities between Margetic’s work and the Allegro Moderato from Penderecki’s Sextet. Although the music is hardly boneshattering, Penderecki does not flinch from some quite complex instrumental interactions that provide a superb sonic soup. The miniatures performed in the second concert provided a further stripped down iteration of the composer’s style that showcased the skills of Andrzej Nowicki to marvellous effect.

Karol Szymanowski, although a prominent part of Polish compositional history, never made a significant impact in the wider world; his music lacks the distinctive style that propelled Czech and Russian nationalists to prominence. The Children’s Rhymes written for his niece might be a very personal compositional statement, but they largely lacked the most important trait of the genre – that any child or parent might ever want to sing them. Perhaps Szymanowski was simply well ahead of his time in this one area, or perhaps a Polish upbringing is even further from the New Zealand experience than one might imagine, but a children’s song really ought to have an attractive melody. Olga Gryniewicz sang better than the music deserved.

Alexander Tansman provided three works of varying quality for the second programme. The Sonatine for Bassoon and Piano is an attractive work that manages to be energetic without Studio betrays its faults in its title; while it may function perfectly well as an etude for study, the absence of textural or rhythmic variation makes it unsuitable as concert piece, particularly as the somewhat fractured performance revealed an apparent host of technical difficulties for little aural reward. While the Canzonetta was played with more surety and expression, it did much less than the Sonatine to make a case for the composer’s abilities. Grazyna Bacewicz’s wind quintet proved an accessible, yet oftentimes intriguing piece of music. In particular that “Air”, which played with both the musical and literal meanings of the title in the swirling interludes of the flute, oboe and clarinet.

It tends to be quite difficult to consider a piece of New Zealand anecdotal/radiophonic music without thinking of John Cousins, but although Podróze displays many of the signs it manages to move beyond these. The use of unnervingly loud bangs at sectional points is one link, but these tend to be used as part of dramatic events rather than as changes in focus. Podróze is electroacoustic music for an audience not necessarily very familiar with the genre. Unlike in Cousins’ work (and that of his protégés), the narrative takes a linear form, and many of the sound choices are obvious emphases of various elements of the journey – particularly things like water noises. Other sounds, like the long, barely heightening drumroll near the beginning might be assigned several meanings. The gamelan interlude, however, really needs an explanation of some kind.

Andrzej Nowicki’s piece Abstand und Nähe, originally written for gamelan and bassoon, survives the transfer to marimba and bassoon remarkably well. Unsurprisingly, the marimba writing is hardly idiomatic, which leaves the audience to consider the missing elements, but it is still an engaging work. Carol Shortis’ Tesknota, which finished the 1st and 3rd concerts, is an entirely different kettle of fish. Much of its material originates from Polskie Kwaity and a second traditional song, but the string parts appear to reference Górecki’s style. The choir sings a complex array of murmured fragments, while soprano and countertenor bear the pieced together verses. The second performance (with better balance between the soloists) was utterly intoxicating between the unchecked power of the folksong and the churning background noise.

• 26 February 8pm: Mahler Symphony No. 8. Will be awesome. There is a free live broadcast in Civic Square, tickets for the real thing range from $46 to $176. I suspect that the $46 tickets will be really, really bad, probably a worse option than the broadcast, but probably that’s where I’ll end up.
• 5 March 8pm: Simon O’Neill sings a selection of Wagner. The Festival describes this as a “banquet of delights for opera-lovers”, but on the whole I’d rather have an actual opera, or at least a proper orchestral concert featuring contemporary music. In any case, didn’t essentially the same concert happen in Wellington fairly recently? Thanks are due to everybody who didn’t turn up at Resonances at the last festival – you’re the reason we can’t have nice things. $40-$125. Don’t throw your money away.
• 6-7 March between events: Breath of Wind, featuring the Levin Brass Band. I’ve no idea what this will actually sound/look like, but it’s free!
• 6 March 12pm: organ recital by John Wells. Free!
• 6 March 2pm: Stockhausen’s Helicopter String Quartet. Or, at least, a film of it, rather than the actual thing. Free.
• 6 March 4pm: the NZTrio perform a variety of movements from various string trios. The highlight will probably be a new work by David Downes, if only for the fact that it won’t have its integrity compromised by the Greatest Hits concept. Why is this happening at 4pm? $45 (one class of seating).
• 6 March 7.30pm: The Borodin Quartet play string quartets by Borodin, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. Not an astonishingly exciting programme, but it has Shostakovich 8th and there will supposedly be $15 student rush tickets available.
• 7 March 12pm: organ recital by Douglas Mews. Free!
• 7 March 2pm: a (mostly) children’s concert of music inspired by Tolkein and Dahl with the Zephyr Wind Quintet. Tickets are $36, kids $18.
• 7 March 4pm: the NZSQ perform Schubert, Alban Berg, Ross Harris and Beethoven (with Jenny Wollerman). The Alban Berg String Quartet really turned me on to 20th century music. It’s an absolute masterpiece, and definitely worth hearing. The Ross Harris should be interesting as well, although the Schubert is rather dull. $45 (one class of seating).
• 7 March 7.30pm: Keith Lewis in recital accompanied by Michael Houstoun. This is a total waste of Houstoun and of the festival’s money – a professional accompanist would do an equally good job. On the programme are Purcell, Britten, Barber and the inestimable Jenny McLeod. Probably the best programme on offer at the festival. $58 B reserve, $68 A reserve.
• 12 March 8pm: Ravi Shankar is 90 years old. This is the probably the last chance to see him play (I hope so, he certainly deserves a rest at that age) – and he certainly is a great musician – but there is quite a possibility that – as with Pavarotti’s tour a couple of years ago, he’s simply past it. Tickets range from $73 to $120.
• 17 March 7.30pm: The Freiburg Baroque orchestra performs Haydn and Mozart. Although the festival claims they are interpreters of “Classical Romantic and even contemporary music”, their two programmes belie this. It would be a fair bet that these two concerts will sound exactly the same, but if you must go to one, make it this first one, featuring the fourth Mozart Horn Concerto. $46-$98. You’ll need to spend $88 to be in a half-reasonable position.
• 18 March 7.30pm: The FBO snore their way through their second concert of Haydn and Mozart. $46-$98

New Zealand composer John Cousins has occupied a number of roles during his lifetime. While he began his career composing instrumental music that was unchallenging by the standards of the day, he rapidly abandoned this, changing his artistic focus to sonic art and provocative performance work. Cousins’ works are significant not only for their technical achievement, but also the depth of narrative and emotion they possess and the overriding theme of human mortality. His career is also something of a microcosm of the struggles of art music composition – Cousins has had to cope not just with critical misunderstanding and public disinterest but actual revulsion at the nature of some of his music. Despite this, his thirty-five years of composing and teaching at the University of Canterbury have earned him both a strong reputation and a certain amount of influence within the New Zealand electronic music community, amongst whom he is now something of an elder statesman.

Any serious composer of art music must come to terms with the strong possibility that their output will be rejected or ignored by the public. Few composers earn enough money to devote themselves full-time to their work, so what music is completed is not crass commercial fodder, but rather the sum of the energy, emotion and thought poured into each project, and to see this passed over must be heart-breaking at times. Cousins is certainly no exception to this rule, for although he may be a well-known and influential figure within academic circles, he has often been invisible to the general public. To a certain extent this is self-inflicted, for Cousins does not regularly issue recordings of his music, nor does he often allow performances; he does not wish to sacrifice the fidelity of his eight-channel works by mixing them in stereo, nor does he want listeners to experience his music in anywhere but the ideal position. His long academic career – he joined the staff of the University of Canterbury immediately after finishing his studies – allowed him the freedom to experiment with new methods of sound creation without substantial financial restrictions, including starting up the university’s first electronic music studio, essentially for his own edification[1].

That Cousins’ career began at a university illustrates the need for composers to have some form of patronage to assist them in the creation of their work. Although this may not be so applicable today, particularly in electronic music, given the ready supply of inexpensive digital equipment, many of the most important historical developments in electronic music occurred only with substantial financial assistance. Just as Le Groupe de Recherches Musicales developed and exploited the techniques of musique concréte in the post-war period with the financial backing, so Douglas Lilburn and John Cousins worked with the backing of universities.

In abandoning performance and the regular distribution of recordings, Cousins has developed a radical new method of music distribution, inviting anybody interested in hearing his music to come to his studio to listen. This has the distinct advantage of involving only listeners who are either already familiar with Cousins’ work or open-minded enough to desire to listen to unknown and potentially challenging music, and these listeners are able to experience the music exactly as Cousins envisioned it, with the only barrier between them and full comprehension being their different life experiences. Cousins’ choice of this method of distribution marks his acceptance that his music is neither universally accessible nor commercially viable, yet it is also to an extent an abandonment of its radical transforming potential. By artificially reducing the potential audience for his music, Cousins also reduces the number of people – musicians and non-musicians – that it can affect. If the audience going into the studio is reduced to electronic music aficionados and thrill-seekers, then the music will never shock an unsuspecting person into considering different ways of thinking about music.

This issue of confrontation is one that Cousins addressed with his performance installations, amongst them the controversial seven-hour work Membrane, which Cousins considers this to be “one of the best works [he] ever made”[2]. This work, combining aural – breath and drum sounds – with visual – a naked Cousins urinating – elements, is in sharp contrast to the acousmatic practice that dominated electroacoustic music of the time. The stormy reaction that the piece received in Edinburgh begs the question of whether pure experimental music still has the shock potential that it once did. Both curiosity and disgust at Membrane were related not to the sounds it involved but rather to their means of production, which might have been unidentifiable in an acousmatic production, but are revealed in the performance installation by that medium’s visual dimension. Many of Cousins’ pieces both before and after Membrane involve visual elements, although these are often confined to the realm of film. Cousins’ touting of Membrane may be a result of the perfect synthesis of the visual and aural mediums it produced in a brutally abstract work, connecting sight and sound through bodily functions – a organicity almost impossible to achieve in the aural realm alone, particularly when taking into account the added barrier of electronics.

It is perhaps a result of this loss of natural presence in electroacoustic music that many of Cousins’ works uses the human voice – often his own. The voice possesses an aura like no other sound. It is fitting that Cousins should use the voice, intrinsically linked as it is to the development of human civilisation, culture and thought, as a means to articulate his emotional experiences and worldviews. In Sleep Exposure, two voices – Cousins’ and Bing Crosby’s – are used to anchor the abstract, technical elements of the electroacoustic medium to the human experience, yet the two voices are used in radically different ways. Whereas Cousins’ voice supplies the narrative direction of the composition, he uses the recording of Crosby’s voice as a signifier; the way time has ravaged the recording apparently acting as a metaphor for its effects on individuals and society [3].

During his career, much of the mainstream attention Cousins has received has only served to heighten his fears for the integrity of his work. The 1986 work Tense Test, wherein the composer conducts an interview with himself, is a response to a radio incident in which Cousins felt that he and his music were misrepresented by an interviewer. The schizophrenic nature of Cousins’ voice coming from all directions gives the listener a strong impression of the difficulty that he faces in trying to explain himself, particularly as the interview dissolves into a frenzied argument [4]. Considering the uncertainty of the composer himself, the idea that anybody else could gain any real insight into the music seems laughable. Indeed, the particular segment of the original interview around which Tense Test revolves is one in which the interviewer tries to label his motives as being peculiarly masculine. Such an attitude is offensive in both denying the relevance of Cousins’ work to all humanity by implying he is only capable of relating to men and simultaneously denying the individuality of the music. Ian Dando quotes Cousins as stating that there is “no way” that his audiovisual work Eddie’s Wall could be reproduced by another composer.[5] Eddie’s Wall is effectively a retrospective of Cousins’ music, pulling together music from across his career in electroacoustic composition, and in the process illuminating common themes and motifs, particularly of mortality and family. Nobody else could create this work, because nobody else has lived John Cousin’s life.

Part of the difficulty Cousins seems to experience with explaining the forces behind his art is that he is constantly reconsidering these himself, revisiting old material to explore how his opinions of the work have changed. This obsession with his own music is often portrayed as being somehow narcissistic, as if Cousins is completely enamoured by his own brilliance, a portrayal that the man himself can at least partially understand. What separates Cousins from true narcissism is that this obsession is not vacuous self-adoration but rather self-criticism. Furthermore, he talks almost inerrantly humbly about his place in world, accepting that his music will never be universally accepted, and that he will not be remembered long after his death like the classical masters he admires. This is not to imply that Cousins is dismissive of his own work, but rather that he takes the concept of mortality, to which he often makes recourse in his works, particularly seriously. Humans are so closely connected with art that art may take on human characteristics; like humans, works of art or pieces of music tend to have finite life-spans, only powerful within their time and context; only the greatest, revolutionary masterpieces are able to transcend their time. Like Sleep Exposure’s Bing Crosby recording, lesser works of art are savaged by the advancement of civilisation, surviving as mere curiosities, if at all. For every Mozartean figure, there are dozens of Salieris.

While Cousins’ vehement insistence on the veracity of his work and its close relationship with his personality and life story may indeed limit the permanence of his music and message, and while his technical achievements and musical sense may only be influential within a miniscule subset of the world’s musicians and music appreciators, he is nevertheless a vital part of New Zealand electronic music. During Cousins’ thirty five years of teaching at the University of Canterbury, a large number of aspiring composers have come under his wing; the fawning Ian Dando remembers Cousins as both an inspirational teacher and an innovative composer, undeterred by public disinterest [6]. New Zealand expatriate composer John Young, whom Cousins taught and worked on projects with, certainly felt his enthusiasm, learning from his mentor’s inquisitive approach to sound[7]. Young describes Cousins as possessing a “follow your own nose” attitude, perhaps arising from the stereotypical New Zealand “No. 8 wire” mentality.

While he might not be a tree-felling, fence-building, sheep-shearing type of pioneer,, John Cousins is undoubtedly hugely important in the development of New Zealand electronic music. Despite public disinterest and misunderstanding, he has consistently created valuable music, beginning as an academic, and continuing into what for other people might be retirement. Through the years his music has touched and influenced many people within the art music community, even if they rarely get the chance to hear it.

[1] John Cousins, Upbeat (Radio New Zealand Concert), 2 October 2007

[2] Ibid

[3] Dugal McKinnon, ‘Spectral Memories: Radio, Records and John Cousins’ Sleep Exposure’, Canzona, Vol. 25 Issue 46, 2004, pp. 30-35.

[4] John Cousins, ‘Tense Test’ on Sleep Exposure, CD MANU 1436, 1993.

[5] Ian Dando, ‘Eddie’s Wall’, Canzona, Volume 23 Issue 44, 2002, pp. 20-23.

[6] Ian Dando, ‘Inner Lives – John Cousins’, Canzona, Volume 26 Issue 27, 2005, pp. 28-29.

[7] Dugal McKinnon. ‘Sourcing the Subjective: An Interview with John Young’. Canzona. 1994. Vol. 16 Issue 37.

The fourth piece, inspired by the !Xhosa language (no prize for guessing which sounds will feature), provided probably the highlight of the concert, as the only piece to really use the surround sound environment to great effectiveness. Material seemed to originate from a single source, but rather than subsequently flooding the room in noise from all speakers the composer chose to bounce his clicking sounds around the room, creating sounds that were actually directed, rather than part of a uniform mass. This also allowed the work to be energetic without being overbearing, and gave the interesting range of sound-types within the ‘click’ family time to breathe.

Nine television screens provided the focus for the evening’s final work, playing one piece of film together, but in varying states of disrepair – three of the televisions lacked colour. The film consisted of long stretches of nearly static footage – although at some points the epilepsy warning signs on the doors were well-advised; the accompanying soundtrack consisted entirely of drones. The two fit together, to be sure, but they didn’t do a whole lot else. Simultaneously with  this concert, British phonographer Chris Watsson played a soundscape in the Adam Art Galley. On the strength of the last ten minutes, it was hardly inspiring, although obviously technically superb.

• Paula-Therese King: Anna Bolena’s Mercurial Waters
• Johannes Contag: Flock of Starlings with Crows and Dog (equal 2nd prize)
• Blair Clarke: Green and Gold Keys
• Tabea Squire: He Matai: I – Patupaiarehe; II – The Conch (equal 3rd prize and performance prize)
• Carol Shortis: Perfume
• Amanda Creiglow: Experiments in Unity
• Christine White: Dark
• Karlo Margetic: Svitac (1st prize)
• Justin Firefly Clarke: Te Rakau o Nga Patupaiarehe (equal 2nd prize)
• Jonathan Crehan: Utopian Reverie (equal 3rd prize)
• Andrzej Nowicki and Richard Robertshawe: Concertino 5b (performance prize)

Hearing that a Theremin was going to make an appearance was an extra incentive – as if one were necessary! – to show up to Composers’ Competition. Seeing Paula King walk out in period dress before blindfolding herself was utterly surreal. I was less enthusiastic about the music itself, a duet between the Theremin and a pedal controlled fixed media part. While the concept – a depiction of the last thoughts of Anne Boleyn – was certainly a strong one, the fixed media let it down badly. What might have succeeded with a live string quartet, or even a recording of a string quartet, was never going to work with MIDI sounds. Perhaps King was attempting to make a contrast between the ‘innocence’ of Boleyn and the great farce that surrounded her. Perhaps the real issues with the work were firstly the restrictions that the fixed media part (particularly with MIDI sounds) imposed upon the Theremin part, locking it into essentially a tonal frame and defying the instrument’s possibilities for experimental work and secondly the absence of timbral variation that the medium also required.

Johannes Contag‘s work made little pretence of being anything other than what it said on the box. Written for a wind ensemble of three flutes, four clarinets (the starlings), two saxophones (crows) and a bassoon (dog), the piece used cellular construction to build up from a quiet beginning featuring a single flute to a frenetic and rhythmically dense texture, before the intervention of the dog/bassoon. Starlings is amiable and unassuming, a pleasant but unchallenging thing to experience. Blair Clarke’s work was the competition’s only concession to jazz, which must have sorely disappointed composer-in-residence John Rae. Even the programme note acknowledged that it wasn’t really a composition as such – he describes it as a series of exercises. As a result, there were several short sections, each focussing on one type of sound, but never really doing anything with them.

Tabea promised me that she entering a harp piece when we talked about the Competition earlier in the year, so it was a little disappointing to discover that she had, in fact, entered a piece for viola and piano, He Matai. The first part – Patupaiarehe – of her composition is quite barren – featuring a ditonic phrase that alternates between the two instruments. The Conch turns the dial up; the instruments hurtle along with great energy, programmatically representing New Zealand’s historical conflict. Overall it is a highly listenable work, drawing influence from some of the less abstract corners of 20th century classical.

Perfume, for bass clarinet, temple block, marimba, vibraphone and unpitched percussion is a series of nine miniatures that explores many of the possibilities of Shortis’ instrumentation. Separated by interludes from the temple block, each miniature explores a single technique for each instrument to represent various fragrances. The bass clarinettist, who provides almost all of the work’s melodic interest, deals with keyslaps and ‘plucking’, while around him the percussionists deal in subtle rhythmic effects. Perfume is a marvellously subtle composition, radiating with sensuality; the various timbres of the temple bowl combine with beautifully crafted bass clarinet lines to create an attractive exoticism that accurately portrays the subject matter.

Amanda Creiglow’s piece was first performed at a Composers’ Workshop,, where it seemed a little underdone, but the performance was much improved this time around. Written for the unusual combination of four violas, it explores the interaction of subtly different timbres through collisions and unifications of pitch and rhythm. The choice to approach the piece more from an aural than musical angle limits it somewhat, but there are certainly moments of beauty anyhow. Dark was the only fixed media item in the concert and a very impressive advertisement for the sonic arts major. The work uses the sounds of various machines in a chocolate factory awash in a sea of feedback. White subverts her sound-sources by playing down onsets, letting the sounds fall back into granular textures; Dark is certainly more chocolate than factory.

Karlo Margetic’s Svitac, inspired by childhood memories of glow-worms,  features a virtuoso clarinet part accompanied by upright piano. Svitac opens with microtonal fluctuations in a breathy, barely pitched note, creating a curious, flickering atmosphere. The quietness of the opening allows keystrokes to feature extensively. As the clarinet works toward the upper registers both cit and the piano grow stronger; the piano appears to function not as a duet partner as such, but as part of the inner workings of the clarinet. Karlo is a stunning composer, and this is an amazing piece of music.

The slightly bizarre coincidence of having two works in the same concert about patupaiarehe doesn’t diminish the strength of either work, although it is interesting that the two pieces work in very similar ways. Like Tabea’s piece, Te Rakau o Nga Patupaiarehe consists of two sections, the first quite barren, full of harmonics that enshroud a solo violoncello line, the second much faster, formed from contrapuntal lines and motivic interjections that accelerate and intensify toward a high energy state. While I could do without the first part, which is inventive in moments but very hard for the performers to render accurately, the second part might as well be Osvaldo Golijov in (I think) 13/8.

Jonathan Crehan used a prepared piano in a completely non-ironic way, which in itself made his piece somewhat of a rarity. Bone shattering piano combined with violin scrapings to create a disturbing sound-world in places, but these effects were not used consistently enough, coming in only to break up an otherwise fairly directionless piece of music. At these jarring moments Crehan had something rather interesting, but they never seemed to lead anywhere. A recording of Andrzej Nowicki and Richard Robertshawe’s Concertino 5b can be found at the SMP website, but is no match for the real thing in naked aggression and tongue-in-cheek performance. Robertshawe processes Nowicki’s clarinet bangs and shrieks into some quite incredible noises, all while dressed in a labcoat (and Nowicki in some horrible blue pyjamas).

Not that anybody listens to me, this is how I would have awarded prizes:

• Performance Prizes: Anna Bolena’s Mercurial Waters and Concertino 5b
• Third Prizes: Perfume and I – Patupaiarehe; II – The Conch
• Second Prizes: Te Rakau o Nga Patupaiarehe and Dark
• First Prize: Svitac

Conducted by Kenneth Young, Clarinet: Andrzej Nowicki

One always has to prepare to be a little disappointed by student orchestral compositions, because of the time restrictions placed upon them. This was certainly true of Simon Dickson’s piece in the preceding NZSM orchestra concert, but the same could not be said for Ben Woods’ work. True, it could have gone on forever, but at any point Constant Sphere could have ended and still felt perfect. The work moves with immense, noble slowness; every point both static and inexorably pulling on to the next. Woods’ concept of “a shiny ball… rotating in changing light” is an exquisite one; one cannot help but think of the example of our own earth – always spinning, yet always changing. In Constant Sphere as on Earth, it is the little details that make the whole special; I particularly enjoyed the part with the trumpet , just audible inside the texture, playing a constant pitch with subtly changing rhythm, twisting time around it.

Little need be said about Johann Strauss – indeed, the less said the better. The first item from Die Fledermaus was sung competently by all concerned, although there were points toward the end of the opening solo when the orchestra was a little overwhelming. “Cinque… dieci” is a much more proficient piece (even if it lacks the Strauss’ gratuitous final high note – which is completely inappropriate at the beginning of an opera); Olga Gryniewicz sang with great confidence and considerable success.

Usually one sees Andrzej Nowicki playing some esoteric creation of one of the composition students; here he displayed his mastery of classical tradition. Weber is a hugely underplayed composer, at least in comparison to Beethoven, and the Clarinet Concerto No. 2 is a very fine work. The first two movements shun outwardly virtuosic technique and the glorious yet irrelevant tuttis of later Romantic works. Instead the clarinet plays a glorious, almost unceasing melodic line that undergoes some vivid transformations. The third movement has more technical passages, but the performer is still subservient to the music; this might be risky for a performer out to get all the applause they could muster, but of course the mark of an amazing musician is their ability to ability to produce amazing music. Andrzej Nowicki is certainly an amazing musician.

Night on Bare Mountain is probably the best known tone poem by any composer apart from the first bars of Also Sprach Zarathustra. The NZSM orchestra played enthusiastically and with great clarity; playing the  opening sections in particular every bit as viciously as Mussorgsky can have intended. The two choruses from Die Fledermaus were another example of facile music sung spectacularly well, with Ken Young judging the tempi perfectly. The 1919 version of the Firebird Suite is played less often than the subsequent revision; it is short enough to tack nicely on to the end of a concert like this. Although the playing itself was nicely polished, the balance of the piece did not seem to be quite right, with the strings all but disappearing. In the first movement in particular there seemed to be something of a hole in the sound, dominated by brass and percussion.