Prosaic Notes from an Unwritten Journal
I. CALLINGS
i.
I sent a recording to Alistair. [1]
(A younger friend had set to music
his haunting Elegy.)
Three decades saw the Campbells
and me at either end
of the same slow-rolling bay.
We could have waved through binoculars,
but no - these things take time.
Years later we met again.
I asked him what he thought.
'Oh. I haven't listened to it,'
Alistair said blithely.
He'd simply felt no call to.
(I wondered then whether he'd ever
listened in fact to Lilburn's?) [2]
۞ ۞ ۞
ii.
Poets can be surprisingly
ungrateful when composers take
their lines to hang their clothes on.
And composers
can be strangely unimpressed
by anyone suggesting
how they should or shouldn't dress.
MUSIC 1 from 'The Silent One', title theme
iii.
The Trust rang up in late August: [3]
would I give the Lilburn Lecture?
A survey of my work, in the light of all that.
I agreed, hung up and racked my brains.
Search for a something, what was it,
that book of his? And Philip Norman.
Both still sitting in my shelves.
I'd felt no call to read them.
But now seemed to be the time.
۞ ۞ ۞
iv.
Lilburn was still a young man,
not long turned thirty,
when he gave his first talk
at the Cambridge Summer School.[4]
Older than the rest,
he was there as a tutor,
anticipating also
a role as a shepherd.
In fact
he was barely a year older than me
when I first took over at Victoria. [5]
And we both had a lot to learn.
۞ ۞ ۞
v.
I am the black sheep,
dyed in the wool.
The enfant terrible! [6]
Not the lover, more the Glover [7]
of our happy little throng.
We are glad in rags or riches
(though we're mostly clad in britches)
forever doing what we must
(we do not listen)
have to follow
inner probe and inner thrust,
in our birthday suits must trust.
(Cousins [8] understood this.)
MUSIC 2 from 'Vulcan' (Sun Festival Carols)
II. BEGINNINGS
i.
What? No tradition?
In the 'fifties, small-town kiwi-land
seemed to have just about every tradition.
I played piano, piano accordion,
recorder, tambourine, drums, guitar,
and sometimes (not very well)
my brother's trumpet or the clarinet.
(I wanted to play the bagpipes,
but didn't have the breath.)
Could sight-read easily,
anything and everything:
classical (especially Chopin),
Bartók, standards, show music,
old-time dance music,
hymns, anthems, opera, et cetera.
Folksongs learned in the afternoon
were performed that night, and then forgotten.
I sang in three choirs, accompanied the Messiah,
local revues, shows, singers,
choruses, operettas, high school assemblies,
entertained at concerts, talent quests, parties,
improvised vocals washing the dishes,
played by ear for country-hall socials,
piped on the organ at the Methodist Church,
and again for funerals, weddings, receptions,
played with the only violinist in town,
rocked with my brothers in our front-room band,
played guitar and yodelled 'Wake up, Little Susie!'
at the bad boys' home.
To me it was all
one huge tradition, a riotous profusion!
And all of it mine!
MUSIC 3 from 'HeyDown' (Music for Four)
ii.
One night I dreamed a piece of music!
Woke up, and dived out of bed,
wrote it all down - a labour of love!
Oh! so this is what it is to be a composer?
(I was all of fifteen.)
My new career was abruptly called off
on finding that Händel had written it first. [9]
So maybe it's understandable
that for some time after,
I was never quite sure
if I really was a composer
(though everyone else seemed to know).
۞ ۞ ۞
iii.
Much like Lilburn,
I was largely self-taught
until I went to Vic [10]
- a child with many sounds, patterns,
musical shapes, routines
already in my head - I just
didn't know what to call them
needed to take the names in
before I could begin
to assemble any
thoughts as a composer.
MUSIC 4 from 'Cambridge Suite' 1st movement
iv.
In fairly rapid succession
I disposed of Vaughan Williams, Leroy Anderson,
and Benjamin Britten (disposed of him twice).
Once I even dined with him and Pears. [11]
A tall man, standing by the upraised piano lid,
he suddenly bent forward
and warned me in a low voice,
'Beware of fashions'.
Bartók often visited,
Stravinsky too
(our Music Society patron).
We met him at the airport,
waving our placards ('I dig Ig').
Stravinsky stayed for good.
Messiaen when he finally arrived
ascended meekly
and there he remains
ex cathedra [12]
dispensing his manna (and his mana).[13]
MUSIC 5 from 'Little Symphony' third movement
III. GETTING-USED-TO-THINGS
i.
In my first year at Cambridge
there appeared onstage, barefooted,
a funny little chap
in a funny little cap,
and a long night-shirt,
and sunglasses.
This was Maconie. [14]
Robin had a bright, observant,
quite encyclopaedic mind.
His conversations often
began in the middle
instead of at the start.
He assumed his thought
was so absolutely right and obvious
that missing introductions
could be taken for granted.
Robin performed from memory
Webern's Variations, Opus 27.
It was the first contemporary music
music I had ever heard,
and I thought it was a joke -
until he came back
and played it again,
and I recognised
it was the same piece.
MUSIC 6 'Thin Air' (aka 'Sometimes') from Childhood
ii.
When I was young, discord
required some resolution.
At the factory where I worked part-time
my Jewish boss and his wife would often
explode without the slightest warning
into a hellish row, shouting,
screaming, tears, the lot.
This was a terrible shock to someone
whose family bottled things up.
And then, just as suddenly, it would all be over,
as if it had never happened.
No apology, no nothing.
Just - serenity, silence ...
After a while I didn't turn a hair
- I simply got used to it.
It is we that become emancipated,
and not the dissonance. [15]
۞ ۞ ۞
iii.
At Cambridge another year,
on hearing my String Trio,
a lady behind me said to her friend,
'How she must have suffered!'
At first I nearly laughed -
embarrassed, almost guilty.
I was in my early twenties,
and I hadn't suffered at all!
I was just trying to write the best
music I could.
(Don't worry, I made up for it later
- suffered heaps ... )
۞ ۞ ۞
iv.
People have their private
and shared mythologies,
can hardly be prevented
from reading into anything at all
whatever sorrow or joy their inner
landscape conjures forth.
Music can be so much more
than a matter of aesthetics.
۞ ۞ ۞
IV. JOURNEYINGS
i.
The celebrated cellist
John Kennedy (father of Nigel)
at Cambridge again in 1963
played to the composers' class
New Zealand's first Messiaen:
a new tape recording
of his Quartet for the End of Time.
It completely blew my mind.
I'd never heard sounds so glorious -
God! I want to write music like that!
An epiphany!
I had to get to Paris. [16]
MUSIC 7 from 'Little Symphony' third movement
ii.
Maconie preceded me to Paris.
There, in the concours,[17]
he committed the grave French
sin of discourtesy:
the guest does not attack the host.
Before the Conservatoire jury,
with Messiaen sitting right there,
prevented by les règles[18] from saying
anything at all,
Robin proceeded to demolish
his teacher's work, Oiseaux exotiques. [19]
But le maître [20] was unperturbed.
At least 'Monsieur Maconie'('Vous connaissez
Monsieur Maconie?') was not some
passing American, graciously admitted
as an observer into the class, who would then later
try to claim Messiaen as their teacher.
The master did quietly take umbrage at this. [21]
But I remember him laughing
about a rehearsal visitor once
affecting to follow some massive score of his,
that he said he could hardly follow himself.
My own problem in Messiaen's class
was mainly that I had to learn in French
another whole set of musical technical terms.
Again, it came back to language ...
MUSIC 8 'Cat Dreams' VIII
iii.
At Darmstadt, [22]
'heart of the avant-garde',
I was expecting some eloquent
discourse, a superior rationale
from high musical beings
leading us confidently into a new world.
But Stockhausen [23] wasn't there.
۞ ۞ ۞
iv.
Reading Die Reihe [24] in English
I was puzzled by certain passages,
so carried the journal round
and asked everyone I met
(people began to avoid me).
But I found that nobody else
understood them either!
A case of the emperor's new clothes?
More likely of tourist pretenders
hopeful of basking in some glory.
My first experience, really, of a musical 'scene'.
MUSIC 9 from 'Piano Piece 1965'
v.
Boulez [25] gave a talk
that year at Darmstadt (1965).
He was finding his life
as an avant-garde composer
quite an unexpected trial.
He didn't really want to say
anything at all, but felt an obligation
- not seeking sympathy (heavens!) -
just 'telling it how it was'.
This bolt out of the blue from Pierre
was something I never forgot.
Defending himself (though all was quiet)
he said he had the right to be wrong.
He'd even considered
leaving the stage for good
to his rival Stockhausen.
Strangest of all perhaps
the fact that (when it happens) such a thing
is almost never discussed
- not a skerrick,
not a peep from a soul, still knowing
we can, any of us, go through it ourselves
- through our own winter,
and into the black hole.
MUSIC 10 from 'Piano Piece 1965'
V. SOUNDINGS
i.
Robin beat me once more to Cologne,
where he soon apparently became such a pain
that Stockhausen kicked him out of his class,
but afterwards relented, and took him back again.
Maconie Forgiven promptly became
a prime devotee and Stockhausen Expert.
Had Douglas known later
he wasn't the first, but the third
in a line of illustrious preceptors
attacked by Robin the Terrible,
he might have felt less enraged.
۞ ۞ ۞
ii.
The musicians were amazing,
completely in another world -
but twenty years after the war,
the Germans were simply ghastly
- almost as though it was written in the stars.
Excavations disclosed new horrors -
another mass grave just after I arrived.
Hair pulled in the street by yobbos,
false complaints from neighbours, nosy
mandatory cleaning ladies, cautionary
letters from the landlord.
Oktoberfest, and the streets are full.
Young, old, men and women in suits, everyone
staggering drunk, wearing stupid little hats,
blowing bird whistles, squeakers, horns,
kazoos, brandishing bottles, clappers, streamers,
laughing, shrieking, shouting obscenities,
telling filthy jokes.
French friends gaze on open-mouthed,
wondering why they don't spread it all out
and be a little bit crazy every day?
MUSIC 11 from 'For Seven'
iii.
Karlheinz, very engaging, explained
his hopes & intentions with great clarity.
There was no composer like him.
Fresh new ideas - new models for new music -
simply poured out of him.
He could also be quite moody and unpredictable.
Described (by one of us) as 'another Wagner',
became oh! so charmingly boyish
in his laughing denials.
۞ ۞ ۞
iv.
I write a graphic piece, based
exclusively on ratios,
scrupulously measured
and mapped by hand
onto sheets of green graph paper.
Twenty-two years later,
the Israeli woman conductor [26] says:
Oh, it's very free, isn't it!
(No, it's very strict! I do not reply,
pleased my mathematics
are perceived as otherwise.)
She imposes on mine
her own ratios -
gone is my tempo giusto! [27]
Later at Vic the score is analysed
to another hair's breadth,
and assessed all over again. [28]
The student finds, incredibly,
the piece is based on prime
numbers - something I never
entertained for a moment!
How can this be?!
MUSIC 12 from 'For Seven'
v.
At the Berlin Festival in 1966,
Professor Freddy Page
was astounded to hear a piece by me.
This was For Seven, under Bruno Maderna.[29]
(I hadn't warned Fred - I didn't know myself.)
Some Polish composers were there as well. [30]
Later in Warsaw, they asked him if he knew me.
'I was her teacher,' Fred related gravely.
After that, everything went 'swimmingly', said Fred.
MUSIC 13 from 'For Seven'
vi.
Kölner [31] Jenny was desperately homesick.
Not missing any people - but the land!
and the light, the air, the sea and sky.
I shut myself up
reading over and over
Allen Curnow's Penguin Book
of New Zealand Verse.
Those magnificent lines of the first dark,
that drew me like the call of a distant homing,
lines I had loved from the very start,
that struck me in the heart
and cast their spell -
penetrating, nourishing,
propping up my soul;
lines that spoke to me more deeply
than Genesis, than anything -
the ancient story of the Māori creation.
MUSIC 14 from 'Earth and Sky' Act I
vii.
The UK, when I got there,
would be good for fish & chips, I thought
and hopefully for some marmite
(the rest I could find in Paris).
Only, the place,
though oddly familiar,
was awfully gray and dirty,
and the people not that friendly,
and you hardly ever saw the sun,
and the fish & chips were lousy.
'Home' to me has always been
right here where I was born.[32]
Where else?
And this is hardly a new land -
this is Gondwana!
It's been here
for millions and millions of years,
and the Māori long before us.
It is we who are young, and not the land.
MUSIC 15 from 'Earth and Sky' Act I
VI. VOICINGS
i.
A sense of the deathly burden
of the avant-garde followed me,
propelled me as much
in my soaring flight to rock music
as my newfound freedom & joy
in improvising, rhythm & blues
- and smoking dope
to which pleasurable exit
I was introduced in someone's
Cologne bedsit - by two
sons of a famous father,
and a few others
from Stockhausen's class.
MUSIC 16 from 'Shadow People' (Under the Sun)[33]
ii.
Do I really have a 'Voice'?!
Don't ask me! - to me I'm always me,
even when I'd rather be somebody else.
I seem to have as many voices
as I need, to express whatever it is
I want to say that day,
which maybe I don't even know
until I open my mouth.
It's a journey of discovery,
and that's the way I like it.
And if you don't like what I say
- I'll just assume I wasn't
talking to you.
(Perhaps it would help
if you did too?)
Nobody can be talking
to themselves all the time,
or to the whole world,
or their god, or their mates
or the Unknown Listener.
MUSIC 17 'I Have no Name' (Through the World)
iii.
Sometimes
I will speak to a child
as a kind of equal.
Other times the innocent
cry out for protection,
then I become the parent.
Or again it may be time to toughen up
(another sort of parent).
Who knows?
For me these things are sensed
more than verbalised.
Everything I do, I was raised to do
to the best of my ability.
I learned this at my mother's knee
(she also taught me how to persevere
and how to focus - important lessons).
I don't believe in looking down on anyone.
So a trifle or a triumph,
I'll give it all I've got
- or I can find, anyway, at the time.
MUSIC 18 from 'The Emperor and the Nightingale'
iv.
I for one adored our Expo National Film,
the one with the Southern Alps, that mighty
backbone towering into the sky,
and the high three-screen aerial shots,
to the culpably thrilling strains
of the alien Finn, Sibelius.
That last bit left a lurch in my heart.
So one day I wrote the missing soundtrack
to prove a kiwi could have done it.
MUSIC 19 from 'Three Celebrations' first movement
v.
Too American! howls the review.
Environmentally incorrect!
(Why do we always go too far?)
The Japanese conductor
discerns an affection for Sakamoto.
The deputy leader is reminded of Brahms.
'That first movement!' says the principal viola.
A letter of thanks arrives
from an unknown kiwi expat
over the moon to be home,
saying how the music moved him to tears.
Incognito, I'm sitting in the hall.
Somebody mutters during the applause,
'I'd rather have that than Lilburn'.
Time for a quiet grin.
۞ ۞ ۞
vi.
Wot are ya? I'm a kiwi.
(Are you the police?)
I write Kiwi
American music!
Never wrote a yankee
note in my life!
How do I know?
I'm in the Turnbull Archive
of New Zillin Music!
Founded by the Father
of New Zillin Music,
Douglas Lilburn!
Check it out!
MUSIC 20 'Cuckooland' (aka 'Blue Classic') from 'Jazz Themes'
vii.
TV, supermarkets, chewing-gum,
jeans, T-shirts, hamburgers
- have we not completely made them our own?
Sweatshirts, PCs, track pants, laptops,
internet, smartphones, baseball caps
- do they not abound,
redound in Godzone?
(Aren't we just a teeny bit out of touch?)
۞ ۞ ۞
viii.
I'm so sorry to have caused you
such digestive distress,
wouldn't want you
spewing
any more bilge
through that hole
in your head,
or running off
too sprightly
at the other end instead.
Maybe Ludwig put it best:
(cabaret style!--)
was ich scheisse
ist besser
als was du je gedacht! [34]
Or Mister Reger:
'I am sitting in the smallest
room of my house ...'[35]
We'll say nothing of the time you left
before the banquet had even started,
yet wrote next day as if you were there,
though I saw that you departed!
Were you voll?[36] Or were you fasting?
What? No appetite at all?
It's a miracle one so jaded
ever got paid for such pathetic scrawl.
MUSIC 21 from 'Cat Dreams V'
ix.
When it comes to those leading lives
of 'quiet desperation'[37]
I have a tender sympathy -
I'm not worried about their souls.
I'll write them a piece that goes
with a cold beer, and a welcome-home,
and a put-your-feet-up.
I don't call this 'commercial' (far from it!)
I call it fellow feeling.
These folk work
hard enough already.
They don't need me making
more demands.
MUSIC 22 from 'Little Song' (Music for Four II)
x.
I didn't care to be labelled
a 'woman composer' -
didn't think I was one.
Surely we're just composers, I thought -
and a mixture of male and female,
just like music itself.
I found the feminists
rather hard to relate to -
till it dawned on me:
our composing women really
are less competitive,
are more open,
are less threatened by our differences,
are less reliant on prevailing orthodoxies.
Sensibly - and who can be
more sensible than a woman? -
after three national festivals,
the Composing Women's Network,
perceiving indeed no further need,
took a vote, and put an end to its existence.
Self-immolation.
۞ ۞ ۞
xi.
Perhaps I was a surrogate male?
As a kid was always a bit of a tyke,
getting round in my dad's old khaki shorts,
putting up ad hoc [38] huts in the gorse,
or out collecting horseshit to grow my mushrooms,
and excavating (yes! - to my parents' horror)
round the piles in the basement,
to make enough room for my hideout.
I could do anything I set my mind to!
Nobody questioned it, neither did I.
Had anyone ever brushed aside
some dream as impossible
because I was a girl,
I would have been outraged!
Scornful! Contemptuous!
Bitten their heads off!
Dad, what was I like when I was little?
You were very independent, my father said.
MUSIC 23 'Runga i ngā puke' (from 'Maru')
VII. EARTHINGS
i.
At school I belonged to the Māori club,
was leader of the girls' hockey-team haka,[39]
went to the USA on a year's exchange,
and thought nothing of taking my guitar,
my grass skirt, and double long poi[40]
and putting on a sort of solo kapa haka[41] gig
for the Illinois Elks, and the Lions,
and other assorted Midwest animals
many, many times.
I thought it was my duty.
Local Raukawa[42] supported me.
MUSIC 24 'Matiti nei' (from 'Maru')
ii.
The Māori fisherman
salt of the earth
gives us some flounder
points to the stones as we pass,
marking the ground
where the great Tainui lies.
The legendary waka[43] -
it is actually there.
A bolt of invisible
lightning drops from the sky
strikes the top of my head
and shoots right through me,
down through the deck
and into the sea.
The chakras[44] are opened.
Fixed to the spot - not sad,
just tremendously moved -
I begin to weep
silent uncontrollable tears
endlessly streaming
down my cheeks
it goes on for weeks,
months, years
silent tears all over again
each time I remember.
They said it was a tohu.[45]
After that the Great Migration
was something pretty personal.
MUSIC 25 'Toia Mai' (from 'Hōhepa', Act IV)
iii.
Michael King's Te Puea[46]
came as a shock - the cavalier
racial injustice, rank oppression, the raw
greed of our government's rotten deals.
We weren't taught this at school.
I put into the mouths of a massed pākehā[47] choir
a humble apology in Māori.
Alas, the singers had such trouble
pronouncing the words
that the meaning largely escaped them.
My old friend Tūngia of Ngāti Toa,[48]
twenty years later, laughed till she cried
when I told her what I had done.
But the listening Ngāti Rangi[49] back then
honoured my own pained request
for a tīmatanga hōu.[50]
I promised myself,
for the rest of my days
I would be a pākehā they could trust.
MUSIC 26 'Prejudice' (The Poet - Janet Frame)
iv.
I am listening with my whānau.[51]
The words of the country song
I would have described
as mawkishly sentimental.
But these are the people I love best.
They are broken-hearted, weeping bitterly
for the young one they have lost.
I will honour their reality, not mine ...
and so much for aesthetics.
MUSIC 27 'Rere mai ana' (from 'Maru')
VIII. WINTERINGS
i.
Fifteen years Curnow [52] was silent.
When he wrote again, his tone
was radically different -
much less elevated,
much more down to earth.
The same with Baxter,[53]
my old postie mate.
We sat together each day
in the sorting-room,
from seven in the morning.
Far from silent,
Jim kept on loudly, cheerfully
addressing the world, without
lifting his head.
And the same all the way in the car
till I dropped him off at Ngaio.
None of us could understand
a word of what he said
(though his English was fine)
- so nobody ever replied.
We just got used to him.
But in his Jerusalem Daybook
he finally spoke in a natural voice
- simple, telling words
that we could all recognise.
MUSIC 28 'The Poet' (from The Poet - Janet Frame)
ii.
It's no secret that the great Finn's
last thirty years were spent
sitting in his summer house
reading westerns.
His musical means had worn out.
But he could find no great composer
in the Schoenberg of Erwartung
or the Five Pieces, or Pierrot Lunaire.
Douglas heard for himself
what was coming out of Darmstadt,
and realised the last breath of autumn had come;
returning back home, self-chastened,
reluctantly engaged face-to-face
with the Twelve-Note Row,
and with a mighty effort entered
into the winter of his Third Symphony.
MUSIC 29 from 'I Wander Thro' (Through the World - William Blake)
iii.
Plenty of others, great and small,
felt challenged by Pierre and Karlheinz
- such as a Paris classmate, Decoust,
a composer in his thirties
who became the talk of the group
by destroying all his scores.
(Completely over the top, we thought.)
MUSIC 30 from 'Rock Sonata No. 2' first movement
iv.
After the second Rock Sonata, I had to concede:
my musical language
of the past fifteen years or more
had finally proved
too familiar, too limited,
too like some dear old well-darned
patched-up poncho -
essentially incapable
of the kind of deepening
I now understood
was for me a necessary citadel.
Long dead in the water
was my back-breaking modernist youth.
No respite there.
I had no idea where I might strike out next,
was in a state of despair, ready to turn up my toes,
when I met the Dutch composer, Peter Schat,[54]
in Louisville, Kentucky.
(We had both been invited to the same festival.)[55]
۞ ۞ ۞
IX. NAMINGS
i.
Schat talked a lot, and fondly,
of his tone clock theory.
I was intrigued.
Forgotten lines of thought returned,
of primitive discoveries made
in my music-theatre heyday.[56]
It's so hard to keep on thinking about
things for which one has no words.
I saw I was in need again
of a whole other lexicon,
before I could move on -
exactly the same process
I first went through at Vic, then in Paris,
only now it was me inventing the names -
a vital orientation into a wider world
already well-travelled by ear, but uncharted -
just as things might have been once
for Rameau and Bach.
۞ ۞ ۞
ii.
So I came naming landmarks,
marking out each new landfall
in once unknown seas,
(as much to avoid this place or that
as to travel again the same way).
The whole chromatic world
seemed now to reveal itself as never before -
this time with a vast and bright appeal:
I was starting to know where I was
in a world becoming ripe
with hidden old friends
that had carried me all along,
identities difficult to place and remember,
until you give them names.
MUSIC 31 from 'Peaks of Cloud' (Janet Frame)
iii.
A new terminology
a bigger way of thinking - something
simple, practical, workable,
full of fresh potential
like finding C minor-major
magically refracted through a twelve-fold prism
into a whole radiant spectrum, free of old laws
a rich-in-colour system of 12-note networks
a kind of chromatic thoroughbred
wellsprung offspring:
Equal Tempered Octave
out of Peter Schat
out of Pierre Boulez
out of Arnold Schoenberg [57]
out of Jean-Philippe Rameau [58]:
my whakapapa [59] pedigree,
my intellectual tūpuna.[60]
۞ ۞ ۞
iv.
Lack of any pitch meanwhile has ceased
to leave us in the doldrums,
for some is a release, leading
right off any map
and straight into FX-land,
into the amorphous,
a place where extended techniques,
microsonics, can produce things
beautifully intricate, fascinating - but not my province.
(Apart from the odd poi, stamp, or cluster or clap
amorphically speaking, I'm a sleeper.)
Or into electronics,
which (in the absence of a map) is where
Douglas ended up,
content to realise those other
sounds in his head. [61]
I so much more lean towards
longitude and latitude
that I became the keeper of the maps.
CUE 32 from 'Tone Clock Piece No. 5'
X. HOMECOMINGS
i.
Lots of birdsong,
though I make it all up
- it comes out by itself.
And water, waves, crashing
on the cliffs, the rocks,
wind in the trees, the flax
and more mysterious
'inner' sounds I've always loved,
bells, chimes, small & large,
glass, brass, crystals, jewels, gongs
(intermittent tinnitus
I simply made friends with?)
liquid wood sounds, gestures, echoes,
arabesques, snatches of childhood
(my dad was someone who never grew up)
quasi-fanfares, flourishes, sounds
suggesting incipient
movement of all kinds:
this is what I hear.
۞ ۞ ۞
ii.
The thought of 'trying'
to write kiwi music
is to me quite odd.
Like trying to be yourself.
Who needs that when you already are?
My workroom overlooks sea and island magic,
Kapiti the guardian, haven of birds - today,
set in shimmering, sparkling blue
on a still, hazy summer afternoon.
Over the years my whole imaginative
soundworld has become imbued
with the atmosphere and presence
of this place.
My music can't help but speak of it.
۞ ۞ ۞
iii.
A lovely African lady came to visit.
She walked into my house,
went straight to the high front window
overlooking the bay,
and after a silence
uttered her first words:
'You give everything to the sea.'
She got that right. Who could help it?
The ocean is so vast,
so much bigger than we are.
Living by the sea, you become
part of it somehow.
After more than half a life,
here at the heart of my existence
is an almost unconscious sense
of deeply comforting 'deep waves',
the music of an islander,
descended from islanders.
Shetland, the Hebrides, Ireland.
Aotearoa.
MUSIC 33 from 'Tone Clock Piece No. 4'
iv.
What is a deep structure?
Something like a subtext, or a grammar,
such as a major or minor key,
or any kind of chord structure, any sort of scale.
The twelve-bar blues is a deep structure,
sonata form is a deep structure,
or any matrix, any kind of network.
Something that's there before the music, telling us
nothing about the music
beyond a kind of global call,
something hidden, that must first be lived with.
We must have it in our bones
before we can work with it.
The way in which we work with it (and it with us)
is our own algorithm.
The spontaneous living language
- what we hear with our living ears -
is the music itself.
MUSIC 34 from Tone Clock Piece No. 6
v.
Maconie noted an absence
in Lilburn's Return,
was predictably upset - accusations
of 'shoddy aesthetics'
(not technically Gesang-isch enough,[62]
no mind-based infra-structure).
But for those who can feel it,
something deeper, more immanent,
something more permanent resides,
that shapes, breathes
like a mother
presides.
We have it in our senses,
in our bones and blood:
the sweet smell of home,
the presence of the land,
Aotearoa-Gondwana.
The difference others feel
but cannot put their finger on
lies here: they sense by instinct
a living algorithm
other than their own.
۞ ۞ ۞
The valleys carved
and the rounded hills
nakedly portray
giant human forms
of all desires
and all persuasions
resting in peace.
Home is where the heart is,
deep within,
a living force
unto your end.[63]
MUSIC 35 'E Te Kawana Kerei!' (from Hōhepa, Act II)
vii.
For the Great Leap Forward,
get in behind!
(Little Bro'-Peep
have you lost your sheep?)
Pull them back by their wool,
and then let go!
('Never underestimate
the power of reaction.')
Leave them alone and they'll come home,
(with or without any prod or hook)
waggin' their tails behind, you'll find them:
Cousins, Cresswell,
Cree-Brown, Body,
Harris, Whitehead, Rimmer,
Bowater, Lockwood, Young,
Psathas, Eve, Elmsly, Ker, Speak,
Lodge, Ritchie, Nock,
Holmes, Downes, Scholes,
Norris, Farr, Buchanan,
Williams, Fisher, Bisley, Kelly,
Dadson, Hirini, Horomona, Morvin,
Broadbent, Hemmingsen, Meehan,
Dobbyn, McGlashan, McKinnon,
Nunns, the Finns, the Twins,
Moana, Sharon, Shona,
Herbs, Dalvanius,
Bic, Mahinārangi, Croft ...
(et cetera, et cetera ...)
with or without any shepherd's crook
(or any crook shepherd)
you make me proud to be a kiwi.
MUSIC 36 from 'Jonasi's Theme' (The Silent One)
۞ ۞ ۞
END-NOTES
[1] Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (1925 - 2009), New Zealand poet and friend, born in the Cook Islands.
[2] Lilburn's Elegy (1951) was a setting of eight other early Campbell poems, not actually including Alistair's own poem 'Elegy', all of these published in his first collection, Mine Eyes Dazzle (1950).
[3] Peter Walls of the Lilburn Trust made the call.
[4] The Cambridge Summer School was a ten-day summer music school held at St Peter's School in rural Cambridge, New Zealand for about 25 years from 1945.
[5] The Victoria University of Wellington Music Department was founded by Frederick Page in 1945. I took over his job as senior professor and head of department when he retired at the end of 1970. I resigned in 1976 - an unusually early retirement.
[6] French: 'terrible child'.
[7] Denis Glover, New Zealand poet and publisher (1912-1980), founder of the Caxton Press - a friend, and something of a reprobate.
[8] John Cousins (1943 - ), New Zealand composer known for his electroacoustic and performance art works.
[9] A piece entitled Prelude, in an old piano album of my mother's. I had played it through once, and completely forgotten it, but my subconscious mind retained it intact.
[10] The Victoria University of Wellington Music Department (which later became the New Zealand School of Music).
[11] Peter Pears, English tenor, life partner of Benjamin Britten, and his star performer.
[12] Latin: 'from the (teacher's) chair', 'from the throne' (e.g., of the pope). Messiaen jokingly referred to his Conservatoire teaching as 'un peu ex cathedra' (somewhat 'from the throne').
[13] Maori: 'prestige, authority, influence'.
[14] Robin Maconie (1943 - ), New Zealand composer and author.
[15] The Emancipation of the Dissonance was an expression used by Schoenberg and others, including Webern, described as a 'meta-narrative to justify atonality'. 'All I could do was to swim against the tide,' wrote Schoenberg.
[16] French composer and organist, Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 1992) taught at the Paris Conservatoire from 1941 to 1978.
[17] French: 'competition'.
[18] French: 'the rules'. Messiaen was very particular about his concours students observing 'les règles'.
[19] French: 'Exotic Birds', the title of a 1956 instrumental work by Olivier Messiaen, commissioned by Pierre Boulez for his Domaine Musicale concert series.
[20] French: 'the master'.
[21] Messiaen chose his own students, twenty per year: fifteen French, and five foreigners (the latters' fees paid by the French government) - and he also spent a month testing all the hopefuls before making his decision - it was all quite rigorous. False representations could reflect poorly on his name.
[22] The Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music was founded in 1946 by Wolfgang Steinecke, and is still going today. NZ composer 26-year-old Celeste Oram recently won the 2016 Kranichstein Music Prize there. The jury described her work as 'strangely entertaining, informative, and engaging with history in a striking manner', also as 'utterly relevant'.
[23] German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928 - 2007) was, with Pierre Boulez, one of the leading figures in the 1950s musical avant-garde movement that emerged at Darmstadt.
[24] German: 'The Row', meaning the 'series' or twelve-note row, which also referred to the broader serialism of the nineteen-fifties.
[25] French composer, conductor, writer, and theorist Pierre Boulez (1925 - 2016) was a leading figure in the 1950s musical avant-garde that emerged at Darmstadt and Donaueschingen.
[26] Gisele Ben-Dor (1955 - ).
[27] Italian: 'strict tempo', a musical term.
[28] Mārire Goodall was the Master's student concerned.
[29] Bruno Maderna (1920 - 1973), Italian composer and conductor, another significant Darmstadt figure.
[30] I had previously sent the score to Witold Lutoslawski, who showed it to the others.
[31] German: 'inhabitant of Cologne'.
[32] To earlier colonial generations in New Zealand, England was always spoken of as 'Home'. I have never felt any such attraction and always found it incomprehensible.
[33] The recording is not the greatest, sorry, but this excerpt from my first (and very long)pop song is, in the verses, also the first tone clock pop song (1971).
[34] 'What I shit is better than anything you ever thought!' - a lovely rude note scribbled by Beethoven in the margin of a bad review.
[35] The German composer Max Reger to a critic. The quote continues: ... 'I have before me your review ... '
[36] German: 'full'.
[37] A quote from American 'transcendentalist' philosopher, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).
[38] Latin: literally 'to this', meaning: serving a temporary purpose.
[39] Māori: 'dance', commonly referring to a traditional or newly composed shouted dance.
[40] Māori: traditionally a small flax ball swung rhythmically on the end of a string.
[41] Māori: 'dance team'.
[42] Māori tribe based in the Otaki area, just south of Levin.
[43] Māori: 'canoe'. The Tainui canoe was one of the legendary great canoes in the Great Migration of the Māori people from their traditional place of origin, Hawaiki, about a thousand years ago.
[44] Sanskrit: 'wheels', In Hindu thinking, there are seven chakras, which are sources/nodes of energy or spiritual power, located more or less along the 'backbone' of the 'subtle human body'.
[45] Māori: 'sign'.
[46] Princess Te Puea Herangi (1883-1952) was a famous leader of the Kingitanga (King Movement) in New Zealand's Waikato region. The historian Michael King in 1977 published a biography of her, Te Puea: A Life.
[47] Māori: 'European New Zealander', a term long absorbed into New Zealand English.
[48] Ngāti Toa Rangatira is a tribe based in Porirua, south of Otaki. Tūngia Baker (1941 - 2005) was a film actress, a traditional performer, and an old friend.
[49] Māori: 'the Sky People', 'my tribe' based in Ohakune, at the foot of the volcano Mount Ruapehu and elsewhere in the Waimarino district.
[50] Māori: 'new beginning'.
[51] Māori: 'family'.
[52] Allen Curnow (1911-2001), New Zealand poet.
[53] James K. Baxter (1926 - 1972), New Zealand poet and friend.
[54] Peter Schat, Dutch composer (1935 - 2003), close friend and colleague.
[55] SoundCelebration, a 10-day contemporary music festival in 1987, marking the 50th anniversary of the Louisville Orchestra.
[56] I.e., Earth and Sky and Under the Sun. The vast size of those shebangs, by the way, was pre-determined, and not by me - by some other lunatics.
[57] Jewish Austrian-American composer, music theorist and painter, Arnold Schoenberg (1874 - 1951) developed the twelve-note technique.
[58] French composer and music theorist, Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683 - 1764) formulated so well the basis of our conventional diatonic tonality, in his Treatise on Harmony (1722), that his theory is still taught today in our music schools and universities around the world.
[59] Māori: 'genealogy'.
[60] Māori: 'ancestors'.
[61] Lilburn suffered from tinnitus later in his life.
[62] Maconie compared Lilburn's Return unfavourably with Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinger (Song of the Young Men [in the Fiery Furnace]).
[63] My English translation of the Māori words (also mine) for the last song (No. 15) in my Māori song cycle of 2012, He Whakaahua a Maru ('A Portrait of Maru'). The Māori words are themselves based with permission on earlier English words by my friend Mike Nicolaidi, in his book A Greekish Trinity: tales from the book of Michael.
MUSIC CUES: PERFORMERS & RECORDINGS
All music by Jenny McLeod, and also all song texts, unless otherwise indicated.
1. 'Main Title Theme' from The Silent One Original Soundtrack, Wellington Regional Orchestra conducted by William Southgate, Wellington Bach Choir conducted by Roy Tankersley. Jayrem CDJAY 321. NB The film was also set and shot in the Cook Islands, original home of Alistair Campbell.
2. 'Vulcan' from Sun Festival Carols, on Pohutukawa Carols, Schola Sacra Choir, Wanganui conducted by Mark Leicester; piano, Alan Wendt. Schola Sacra Choir non-retail CD.
3. ' HeyDown' from Music for Four, Diedre Irons and Michael Houstoun, pianos; Bruce McKinnon and Nicolae Albulescu, percussion. © RadioNZ 1987.
4. 'I. Introduction' from Cambridge Suite, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young. © 1999 RadioNZ Ltd.
5. 'III. Allegro vivace' from Little Symphony, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young. Continuum CCD 1073-2.
6. 'Sometimes Things Just Disappear' from Childhood, on The New Zealand National Youth Choir On Tour North America 1993, conducted by Karen Grylls. CD MANU 1471. Also on Winds that Whisper: New Zealand Choral Music from the 20th Century. Morrison & Co Music Trust MMT 2016.
7. 'III. Allegro vivace' from Little Symphony, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young. Continuum CCD 1073-2.
8. 'No. 8. (Catalonian Birds)' from Cat Dreams, Stroma conducted by Hamish McKeich. © RadioNZ 2009.
9, 10. From Piano Piece 1965, Bruce Greenfield, piano. © RadioNZ 1979.
11. From For Seven, on New Zealand Women Composers, Lontano conducted by Odaline de la Martinez. LORELT LNT116.
12, 13. From For Seven, on Composer Portrait: Jenny McLeod, The Waitetata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. V, Stroma conducted by Hamish McKeich. Waiteata Music Press WTA 005.
14, 15. From Earth and Sky, Act I, 1970 Auckland Festival production conducted by Ian Harvey. Philips (vinyl) 6503001-2.
16. From 'Shadow People', Under the Sun, Act IV, Palmerston North Centennial production 1970, Grant Bridger, vocal; Hunt Brothers band. Philips (vinyl) 6641 009-3.
17. 'No. 3. I Have No Name' from Through the World (words by William Blake), on Burning Bright: Four New Zealand women composers, Margaret Medlyn, soprano; Bruce Greenfield, piano. Kiwi Pacific CD SLD-110.
18. From The Emperor and the Nightingale, on The Emperor and the Nightingale, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Uwe Grodd. Naxos 8.572671.
19. 'I. Journey through Mountain Parklands', from Three Celebrations, on The Emperor and the Nightingale, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Uwe Grodd. Naxos 8.572671.
20. 'No. 4. Blue Classic' (aka 'Cuckooland'), from Jazz Themes, Zelanian Ensemble (Uwe Grodd, flute; Debbie Rawson, soprano saxophone/B-flat clarinet; Donald Maurice, viola; Rae de Lisle, piano). © RadioNZ 1987.
21. 'No. 5. (Cats Go Completely Mad)' from Cat Dreams, Stroma conducted by Hamish McKeich. © RadioNZ 2009.
22. 'II. Little Song' from Music for Four, Diedre Irons and Michael Houstoun, pianos; Bruce McKinnon and Nicolae Albulescu, percussion. © RadioNZ 1987.
23. 'No. 6. Runga i ngā puke' (Up on the hills) from He Whakaahua a Maru (A Portrait of Maru), Jenny Wollerman, soprano; Karen Batten, flute/piccolo; Emma Sayers, piano, poi; at the Adam Chamber Music Festival, Nelson 2013. © RadioNZ 2013. See also complete video by Chris Watson, vimeo link available from www.sounz.org.nz
24. 'No. 13. Matiti nei' (whisper haka - Stretched out [as corpse]) from He Whakaahua a Maru (A Portrait of Maru), Jenny Wollerman, soprano; Karen Batten, flute/piccolo; Emma Sayers, piano, poi. © RadioNZ 2013. See also complete video by Chris Watson, vimeo link available from www.sounz.org.nz
25. 'Toia mai' (welcome haka - Haul up [the canoe]) from Hōhepa, Act IV, New Zealand International Festival of the Arts production, Wellington 2012, New Zealand Opera conducted by Marc Taddei. © RadioNZ 2012. See also full-length opera (c. 1hr 45mins) available free as video film by Craig McLeod, on YouTube (search: 'Hohepa the opera').
26. 'No. 8 (track 23). Prejudice' from The Poet (words by Janet Frame), on Jenny McLeod Vocal & Choral Works, The Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music, Vol. XII ,Voices New Zealand and New Zealand String Quartet, conducted by Karen Grylls. Waiteata Music Press WTA 012.
27. 'No. 14. Rere mai ana' (You flow here [O river]) from He Whakaahua a Maru (A Portrait of Maru), Jenny Wollerman, soprano; Karen Batten, flute/piccolo; Emma Sayers, piano. © RadioNZ 2013. See also complete video by Chris Watson (c. half-hour),vimeo link available from www.sounz.org.nz
28. 'No. 4 (track 19). The Poet' from The Poet (words by Janet Frame), on Jenny McLeod Vocal & Choral Works, The Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music, Vol. XII ,Voices New Zealand and New Zealand String Quartet, conducted by Karen Grylls. Waiteata Music Press WTA 012.
29. 'No. 14. I Wander Thro' from Through the World (words by William Blake), on Burning Bright: Four New Zealand women composers, Margaret Medlyn, soprano; Bruce Greenfield, piano. Kiwi Pacific CD SLD-110.
30. From Rock Sonata No. 2 for Piano, first movement, New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, Wellington 1988, Rae de Lisle, piano. © RadioNZ 1988.
31. 'No. 3 (track 11). Lament for the Lakes' from Peaks of Cloud ([invented] words by Janet Frame), on Jenny McLeod Vocal & Choral Works, The Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music, Vol. XII , Keith Lewis, tenor; Michael Houstoun, piano. Waiteata Music Press WTA 012.
32. From Tone Clock Piece No. 5 on SOUNZ: fine music from New Zealand, Vol. 1, Margaret Nielsen, piano. New Zealand Music Centre non-retail CD.
33. From Tone Clock Piece No. 4 on SOUNZ: fine music from New Zealand, Vol. 1, Margaret Nielsen, piano. New Zealand Music Centre non-retail CD.
34. From Tone Clock Piece No. 6 on Composer Portrait: Jenny McLeod, The Waitetata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. V, Jeffrey Grice, piano. Waiteata Music Press WTA 005.
35. 'E te Kawana Kerei!' (O Governor Grey!) from Hōhepa, Act II, New Zealand International Festival of the Arts production, Wellington 2012, New Zealand Opera conducted by Marc Taddei. © RadioNZ 2012. See also complete opera as video film by Craig McLeod on YouTube: 'Hohepa the opera'.
NB: the piccolo part in this aria (about the Whanganui Māori being driven off their Hutt Valley land) is a transmuted homage to Lilburn (on whose 'crystalline ground we [composers] once stood', self-quote from a letter to Douglas) - loosely based on my favourite Lilburn, his early A minor/C major prelude for piano, second of the Four Preludes (1942-4).
36. 'Jonasi's Theme' (end theme) from The Silent One Original Soundtrack, Wellington Regional Orchestra conducted by William Southgate, Wellington Bach Choir conducted by Roy Tankersley. Jayrem CDJAY 321.
© Jenny McLeod 2016.
