• Aaron Copland: Appalachian Spring Suite
• Jennifer Higdon: Percussion Concerto
• Lyell Cresswell: Landscapes of the Soul
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral”

First of all, I have not yet forgotten about the NYO. At some point I’ll hopefully write something about it.

Second, a hearty congratulations to the NZSO, who with this incredible concert took Beethoven’s 6th, punched it in the face, and hung a placard around its neck saying “Please stop playing me”. Lined up against one of American concert music’s definitive works, a spectacular concerto by one of the 21st Century’s most important composers and a dazzling new piece of Kiwi music, the Pastoral was finally exposed as an emotionless, music-less corpse, which ought now be interred into the thick loam of music history.

I must confess, I’ve never really appreciated the Appalachian Spring Suite as much as many others. That would be because I’ve never heard it played so brilliantly as at this concert. The chief attraction of the Appalachian Spring Suite is Copland’s thrilling arrangement of the “Shaker Tune” (or, for those of us who treat it as a religious moment, “Lord of the Dance”) near the end of the work, and the transitions between the suite’s images prior to this can be a little hairy. Shelley kept the NZSO in restrained, contemplative mood for much of the work, carefully controlling the  transitions and allowing the beautifully phrased woodwind lines to speak for themselves. To a large extent, this is a pastoral piece, but unlike Beethoven in the Pastoral, Copland clearly understood that the only way to make such music function is through contrast, particularly in timbre, and a clear sense of direction – managed so fluidly by Shelley.

Jennifer Higdon is a somewhat more recent American product, and  something of an unknown quantity for most New Zealand audience members (these members really should spend more time on LastFM listening to contemporary classical composers). Percussion concertos must be an extremely difficult task for a composer to plan: there are numerous instruments to show off, but there needs to be a reasonable motivation for the performer to utilise these. Higdon succeeds admirably, using the orchestra, and in particular the orchestral percussionists, to focus these transitions. Much of the work is built around the relationship between Currie and the other percussionists, creating an amazing sense of space as they play off against each other in imitative fashion. Much of the pitched percussion work appears to be based off the initial marimba phrases. The unpitched instruments receive a little less attention. They feature in a couple of short bursts after a session of mallet swapping with the marimba and vibraphone, sweeping the orchestra along with them in the process. Near the end of the work Currie returns to the drumkit for a ferocious (and rather trippy) cadenza that blurs into another duet with the orchestral percussionists to finish. And of course there’s the seemingly constant, unearthly hum of vibraphone motors. This is simply joyful, passionate, brash music, which is how Higdon works, at least on an orchestral scale. It’s how composers like John Psathas and Gareth Farr work too, albeit with vastly different colours.

Oh, and the audience went pretty wild.

Lyell Cresswell is a funny old composer (well, maybe he isn’t actually funny. I’ve never met him. To my knowledge). The first piece of his I heard, his trumpet concertino Alas, how swift! was fairly unspectacular; the second, The Pumpkin Massacre, was completely different, and considerably more satisfying. Landscapes of the Soul, for string orchestra, fits much more into the mould of The Pumpkin Massacre, but is vastly superior again. Landscapes of the Soul taps into (I believe) our collective memory of Greek mythology – the landscapes being the realm of Hades. Cresswell uses hushed, dissonant noises, rushing, rumbling and tumbling. While the music as a whole flows slowly past, the underlying parts are extraordinarily dynamic. If many of  the sounds may be familiar from the mid-20th century avant-garde, at least they are familiar from quality music, and it is simply impossible to tear one’s ears away from the work. It might not be an audience favourite, it might never be played again after this series, and it will certainly never win a Grammy, yet Landscapes of the Soul is inspired music, for me the unexpected highlight of the programme.

And Beethoven’s 6th! What have I not yet said about it? Frankly, the fact that the first two movements are the dullest twenty minutes in music is less important than (but related to) their complete failure to act like a well-constructed symphony. There is simply no contrast – certainly, there is motific development, but there is no moment capable of arresting the hearer, breaking them out of their slumber. All pastoral music is cursed with being “nice”. Beethoven’s 6th is certainly nice, like an old lady inviting one in for tea, except that after a couple of minutes you work out that the tea is actually mud flavoured with cat dribble. And she has no chocolate biscuits. And she’s knitted you a nice brown woolen jersey. Out of her own hair.

But the Pastoral is not just the sum of its first two movements! Oh no! Because after twenty five minutes you discover that the old lady is actually Megatron in drag! She? tears your face off, then offers you another cup of tea.

Yeah, sorry, Herr Beethoven,, but your symphony is exactly that nonsensical. There is simply no musical motivation for the “storm”, which is not nearly convincing enough to pull off the imagery properly. And don’t tell me it’s pathetic because Beethoven didn’t have the techniques or instruments available to him. It’s just that musicians playing in uniform rhythm just don’t raise that violence quotient very high.

• Jack Body: Turtle Time
• Anton Killin: A Priori
• Simon Eastwood: Jericho: Walls Will Fall
• Karlo Margetic: Hommage à W.L..
• Jan W. Morthenson: Unisono
• Charles Ives: The unanswered question
  Interval
• John Adams: "John Philip Sousa"
• Francis Poulenc: Sonata for clarinet and bassoon
• Henryk Gorecki: Piano Sonata No. 1
• Richard Robertshawe and Andrzej Nowicki: Concertino 5b
• Carol Shortis: Tesknota

SMP Ensemble’s first concert of the year, part of the St. Andrew’s Season running concurrently with the New Zealand Festival of the Arts was promoted in the media only by an article in the New Zealand Herald (although there was a little thumbnail in the Dominion Post). As a result, the audience was undesirably small, particularly considering the number of performers, and the volume and quality of their music. The concert drew heavily on last year’s Podróze series, but mixed in several other works to form a programme that looked (particularly in the second half) towards the more joyful side of contemporary music.

The opening rendition of Jack Body’s Turtle Time saw Karlo Margetic performing his best imitation of an over-caffeinated puppy in the spoken-voice role, bursting through the swirling textures to deliver Russell Haley’s appealingly bizarre text, setting the scene for the other witty music further down the programme. Anton Killin’s A Priori is a diverting exploration of language, opening with a collage of vowel sounds from different languages and speakers, vaguely reminiscent of John Young’s Sju Rather than dissolving into (so-called) abstraction, however, it segues into spoken sentences of German (and possibly other languages – I’d need to listen again). Of course, language is just a different means of organising – and hence abstracting – sound.

Two of the local compositions from Podróze followed in Simon Eastwood and Karlo Margetic’s works. After hearing each of these compositions twice previously the awkward section endings in Jericho feel somewhat less disturbing, but the eighty seconds or so of each section really is only enough to establish its bare features. Sitting on the opposite side of the venue from the previous performances of Hommage à W.L. offered a slightly different perspective, particularly of the first section, with the piano sounding much more clearly above, rather than through the texture.

Unisono, for bassoon, piano and electronics is a curious piece; the performance  at the Adam Concert Room last year was far more successful. The piece opens with the instruments playing sustained unisons, and gathers complexity as the instruments depart from each other and electronics coarsen the bassoon. Unfortunately, something seemed a bit off about the electronics – possibly unsatisfactory speaker position (I’m really not an expert) – which caused them to distract from, rather than add to the performance. Ives’s The unanswered question is possibly as far removed as possible from the stereotype of impossible complexity that his music attracts. This is a proto-minimalist work, founded upon a continuous pattern of soft strings, against which a solo trumpet and woodwind section (which were both positioned at the rear of the church) occasionally interject with their own motifs. On the surface there isn’t an awful lot going on here. Ives’ personification of the instrumental groups offers an explanation better than any that could be provided by a student one hundred years after the work’s composition on the basis of a single hearing.

“John Philip Sousa” is so utterly tongue-in-cheek that one can’t help grinning broadly from beginning to end. Adams’ aleatoric score specifies the directions of changes in pitch, but not the actual values of the pitches, creating harmonic chaos within a rigid rhythmic framework. Although it could be construed as either a homage to or mockery of Sousa, in the end it’s simply a joy to hear. Little changed when the action switched to Poulenc’s Sonata for clarinet and bassoon, which – especially in the third movement – might have been mistaken for fairground music played by a pair of tipsy monkeys, in this case Andrzej Nowicki and Kylie Nesbit.

Gorecki’s Piano Sonata No. 1 has seen a change of personnel since last year, with Sam Jury taking over from Laurel Hungerford. This resulted in a substantially different performance, with Jury treading more lightly than Hungerford in the opening Allegro molto, con fuoco, but balancing the angst-equation with a ferocious Allegro vivace. Now, going simply on the basis of those movement titles, this might seem like the wrong way round, but then I Am Not Henryk Gorecki. In any case, the obviously technically tough third movement received a pleasingly polished treatment. Concertino 5b was an entry in the NZSM Composers’ Competition (besides having an SMP performance). The work’s organic structure make it difficult (in the absence of a lights show) to determine exactly when preparation finishes and music begins. However, the Concertino doesn’t really need lighting to be spectacular, particularly with the ear-shattering tones of the central section. Perhaps neither this nor the Gorecki fit into the narrative of ‘happy’ music, but their turbocharged natures are nevertheless thrilling.

Carol Shortis’ composition is another that leaves one smiling contentedly. Shortis’ use of Polish folksong is stirring; the choir’s canonical half-whispering (or however one might term it) still sounds fresh. Perhaps it doesn’t seem quite so fitting as at the close of two of the Podróze concerts, but it really is a very impressive work. It’s also about the only thing on the Podróze CD that my father can bear to hear.

• Henry Purcell: So when the glittering Queen of night; Not all my torments; Cold Song; Evening Hymn
• Jenny McLeod: Peaks of Cloud
• Benjamin Britten: On this Island
• Samuel Barber: Three songs from Ten Early Songs; Three songs from Collected Songs; Two songs from Hermit Songs

At the time the Festival programme was announced I pondered why the Festival chose to employ Michael Houstoun to accompany Keith Lewis for this concert rather than a professional accompanist. Although Jenny McLeod worked hard in her piano writing to justify Houstoun’s appearance, I’m still not convinced it was altogether necessary.

The four Purcell songs were all artfully and delicately sung, although the use of a piano as accompaniment detracted slightly from So when the glittering Queen of night in particular, the block chords seemingly alien and irrelevant to the finely detailed vocal line. Possibly a spread approach might have lent more homogeneity, but ultimately the piano is simply not the best way to experience this music. Happily, none of the other Purcell songs were particularly affected by this, and the Evening Hymn proved particularly powerful. The Cold Song’s accompaniment is almost amusing in the light of minimalism – Philip Glass could easily stick on some cheesy synthesisers and claim it for his own.

Jenny McLeod’s Peaks of Cloud, commisioned by Lewis and composed in 2007, although not premiered until this concert, may have to wait some time to receive a representative performance. One has to ponder the degree of communication between composer and performer, because Lewis struggled at both ends of his range, sucking the power out of what ought to have been the most effective song. Promise, the fourth of seven songs, possessed a frightening intensity until its ending, when Lewis could only muster a half-hearted “scream”. The following song, Gods, was also beautiful music that suffered from uncertainty in the lower register. This is not to suggest that the entire song cycle was unsatisfactorily performed – the first two songs were especially enjoyable; the dichotomy between the characters of the piano and voice in the opening song I Met a Man was cleverly conceived and executed.

The concert’s highlight proved to be Britten’s cycle On this island, settings of Auden poems. Britten’s songs displayed more of a common nature with the Purcell selection than with either McLeod or Barber’s music. Both composers display a certain English restraint; while his music might not carry quite thee same intensity as Peaks of Cloud, this does not affect its expressiveness. Moreover, Lewis displayed an ability to reach some of the notes that seemed to elude him in the McLeod cycle. The Nocturne displayed a wonderful harmony of intent between performer and composer, never straining for emotional effect, but rather commenting upon the curiosities of the lyrics from a distance.

If nothing else, the Barber songs illustrated the effect that a poor text can have upon a piece of music. Although Barber’s music is impossibly capital-R Romantic in any case, the combination of his music with these overwhelmingly cloying texts (Joyce being the prime suspect) is simply nauseating and unmusical. They offered nothing in any way thoughtful or unexpected, and thus there was no point in either their composition, their performance, or the continued presence of the audience, with the exception of the setting of The Cruxifiction.

• 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.

• 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

I wasn’t sure what to expect in turning up to Sound image EXTREME Lands, but my composition tutor (Alex Hay) was having a composition performed, so I decided to turn up. The concert began slightly unexpectedly, with Australian singer Carol Micallef performing a short set of freak folk songs with Dylan Lardelli. The material was nice enough, but too derivative of a genre that relies on not being derivative.

Hermione Johnson’s The Deep Blue Sky, for amplified viola, bassoon, accordion and guitar, took a completely different direction, relying entirely upon non-pitched or, at least, unidentifiably pitched material, exploiting the amplification to reveal the sounds behind the music. It opened with quiet, scrapings from the viola and breathing from the accordion, with Nell Thomas occasionally stroking the accordion bellows to produce slight variations in the output. The introduction of bassoon and guitar added variety to the sparse texture, although again neither instrument was played conventionally. Johnson used bowing techniques with each, asking the bassoonist to bow their embouchure, as well as using unpitched breath sounds and key-clicking,  while the guitarist provided gestural material by scraping his bow up the strings. The effect was an unsettling juxtaposition between distance and intimacy; while the audience can hear all the sounds that would ordinarily be audible sitting right next to the instruments, the amplification also divorces the sound from the instruments, causing a disturbing sense of alienation.

Alex’s piece also relied on a juxtaposition effect, but a very different one. The composition featured amplified ensemble and electronics with a speaker and slides. The text, focusing on the states of water, and linking these to human interactions, was split between the speaker and slides, with the two at times interrupting each other and at other times forking off in their own directions. The listener’s uncertainty about from where the next scrap of text will come creates a peculiar kind of energy that is reinforced by the ensemble. It does, however, lessen the listener’s awareness of the music itself, which becomes a background element, harnessing and augmenting the flow of energy, but never dictating it. The ensemble is used as a cohesive, but internally diverse whole; parts move independently, but as part of a wider texture-gesture flow, like people functioning ‘independently’ within society.

ExtremeLand uses both the ‘water’ and ‘distance’ motifs of the preceding pieces, but has a more easily identifiable extra-musical than either. King Pan Ng relies on both visual and aural means to protest the treatment of refugees from a Burmese ethnic minority. The music he uses is less abstract than that for either of The Deep Blue Sky or Moon Song, although this doesn’t say much; the ensemble, now playing fully pitched, but not accessibly tonal music that forms broad wave patterns, interacts with samples of electric guitar and other instruments. After dwelling for some time on photographs of sunsets, the slides travel to Antarctica, showcasing great, barren landscapes of ocean and ice, before abruptly switching to photographs of a people in a refugee camp, drowning in muddy water. The message is un-subtle, but clear – this vast barrenness that we call beauty is at the same time utterly terrifying. Here King Pan Ng himself enters, playing a haunting melody on erhu, a poignant relief of all the abstraction that has preceded it.

No, I have no excuse for taking this long to write this.

Stroma’s second concert of the year could scarcely have felt different to the first. The uniquely lyrical modernism of Jenny McLeod, David Downes’ ferocious rhythmic onslaught and Michael Norris’ fierce technicality were replaced  by music of pure aggression, at least for the first half of the concert. American-based New Zealander Chris Gendall, who I have a weird feeling may be an Onslow graduate, won the 2008 SOUNZ Contemporary Award with Wax Lyrical. To be perfectly frank, and although the piece was delicious, delicious soup, it probably shouldn’t have won. Wax Lyrical is based off a single device – a forced gesture that expands into a held note. The interaction between melodic lines – which all seem to utilise this device aside from the harp and piano, which cannot – is quite spectacular, but there is simply too much of it; there is very little contrast of instrumentation, with either the whole ensemble playing or a solo string.

UnCage my HeArt was loud, chaotic, and absolutely hilarious. I really hope that nobody was listening to the radio broadcast of the concert, because it really would make no sense at all. Jeff Henderson’s score is a box, or rather many different boxes, with one unique box for each of the performers and conductor. From what it was possible to take in, each side of each box had particular characteristics and techniques associated with it, depending upon the various colours and images painted thereon. For much of the piece there was seemingly only a single dynamic – as loud as possible – although there were moments of relative calm at box-turning points.

Three theories about UnCage my HeArt:

1. Just a fun piece of music, with no real extramusical meaning. If this is the case, it succeeded admirably. I was laughing. Jo was laughing. Probably everybody else was laughing.
2. “I know what would be fun! I’ll troll a bunch of pretentious snobs by creating a preposterously complex improvised work which will have them nodding in approval as they ponder its implications whilst stroking their beards!” This would, I suppose, explain why it lasted so long, and why it was so utterly idiomatically passé. And why the title makes such pointed hints.
3. Henderson was actually 100% serious. There actually was some significance to these sounds! I want suggestions.

Quaderno di Strada demonstrated a much greater sense of instrumentation than Wax Lyrical. The work is a song cycle, with texts taken from a number of found sources, including a letter from Rainer Maria Rilke. The voice part is surprisingly light on extended technique, but does include a number of potentially difficult registral shifts. Sciarrino uses a cellular method of constructing the instrumentation, slowly developing and layering repeating passages. It is sparsely orchestrated, to make the most of the various timbres, particularly the flute. The dynamics are largely very quiet – a complete contrast to the violence of UnCage my HeArt – in fact, the loudest moment came when Bridget Douglas dropped one of the many flutes in her lap while changing. Nicholas Isherwood sang very finely, bringing out the sense of loss and regret that pervaded most of the texts.

Soloist: Ben Morrison (violin); Conductor: Ken Young

This New Zealand School of Music concert at St Andrews on the Terrace opened with a piece by NZSM graduate student Simon Dickson, written for the Jenny McLeod Composition Award (or something along those lines). With this work, Dickson aimed to capture two of his compositional styles – that with which he wrote earlier in his studies at the NZSM, and that with which he writes today. Although conceptually interesting, this does rather run the risk of disguising the composer’s talents, by forcing him to write using an abandoned – and presumably, to the composer’s mind, inferior – style, to say nothing of the difficulties in marrying the two styles.

As it happened, Dickson did largely succeed in creating a largely unified work. While the structural joints were audible, the atmospheres of the sections were quite similar. The functional atonality of the opening and closing sections was vaguely disquieting but unchallenging, perhaps because there were few individual lines to follow. Here and there were some deft touches, particularly with what was probably intended to be the piece’s climax, where after an initial violent surge the orchestral bass dropped out, leaving exposed notes hanging in the air, as well as Dickson’s reveal toward the end of some of thhe inner workings of the piece, putting the pedal instruments on display. Unfortunately, as usual with such young composers’ orchestral awards, the work really could have done with a much larger span of time to justify the structural decisions made. maybe someday music administrators will work out that student composers’ work is more important than the repertoire works on the programme. Obviously, this wasn’t Shostakovich 1 – but if it had been, nobody would have known.

Ben Morrison, concert-master of the NZSO NYO, is an extremely accomplished violinist, and the Tchaikovsky concerto is certainly one of the most important Romantic violin concertos, so it was no surprise that this performance was, overall, a success. The NZSM orchestra’s playing felt a little stodgy in the opening, but rapidly improved, as they traversed the tutti sections with admirable energy. Morrison’s playing was refined and strong throughout, and there was a remarkable sense of cohesion between orchestra and soloist, during the first movement’s oscillations in and out of quasi-cadenza passages. The chief fault of the work itself lies in these sections, which give the first movement a sense of completion on its own merits, which disrupts the balance of the work as a whole, but this was handled convincingly enough.

The Vaughan Williams, which was on the whole played spectacularly well, is a curious artefact. It seems perverse that such a work, blatantly a ‘war symphony’ of the most brutal variety, could get a free pass from the same English critics who savaged the war symphonies of Shostakovich – and how foolish they look now, with the vast depths of expression and meaning of those works exposed alongside their blatant musical genius! Vaughan Williams’ Sixth is a splendidly constructed work – if only in its central movements. The first movement strives toward violence and spontaneity, but really only succeeds in incoherence, with the relationships between the varied ideas never being satisfyingly explored. While the movement has energy in spades, much of it is wasted.

The next movements share the same violent approach as the first, but are much more directed. The second movement is particularly notable for its climax, in which, after brutally working its way to a sustained level of raw power, there is a sudden drop in dynamic that leaves energy humming through the air. The final movement is in complete contrast to the rest of the work, especially the first movement. It uses a single, gentle theme throughout, at an unflinchingly soft dynamic, obviously – though Mr. Vaughan Williams apparently enjoyed denying this – intending to cause audiences to reflect upon the destructiveness of war. Unfortunately, the soft dynamic leaves very little space for actual expression – or at least this was how the orchestra performed it – so it served largely to leave phrases unshaped.