Total Duration 57:21
MMT2016 Digital Stereo Recording
© 1999 HRL Morrison Music Trust
P 1999 HRL Morrison Music Trust

Kyrie from Requiem
Sam Piper

Sam Piper’s Requiem was composed in 1994. The setting of the Kyrie is simple in construction, employing minimal fragments of rhythm and melody woven together to create pulsing, vibrant textures that seek to evoke a deep sense of ritual.


Canary Wine
John Ritchie

For the Canary Wine cycle John Ritchie selected five poems from Shakespeare’s companion and fellow playwright, Ben Johnson and set them in 1974 for the Wellington Girls College Special Choir, Christchurch Girls High School Singers and the Cecilian Singers. Ritchie’s title also comes from Johnson - ‘But that, which most doth take my muse, and me, is a pure cup of rich canary wine’.


Lie Deep My Love (2 and 3)
David Griffiths

David Griffiths selected three James K Baxter poems for his deeply felt cycle Lie Deep, my Love. The second and third are performed here. The second, ‘Earth Does at Length’, is punctuated with solo highlights with movement and variety in the underpinning choral fabric. For the third song, ‘Blow, wind of fruitfulness’, Griffiths employs canons to evoke the wind’s restlessness and its effects upon the land. Both songs mirror New Zealand images which run through much of Baxter’s work.


Lovesong of Rangipouri
Douglas Mews

Douglas Mews created the Lovesong of Rangipouri (1974) for Auckland’s Dorian Choir. His text is a chant recorded at Makara, near Wellington in 1963. It tells how a fairy chief, Te Rangipouri, won and lost the first human woman to ever reach New Zealand’s shores.


Hinemoa
Te Wehi Whanau

Hinemoa tells the story of a famous Maori legend of Tutanekai who loves Hinemoa and woos her with melody. Though forbidden, Hinemoa swims out to the island of Mokoia to be with her lover.


The Moon is Silently Singing
David Hamilton

David Hamilton’s The Moon is Silently Singing (1985) is scored for two horns and two five-part choirs and together they complement verses by Spanish poet Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936). At first the text is delivered in a fragmentary manner highlighting single key words. Stillness and calm is the governing mood. The setting closes as choristers alternate the words ‘canta’ (singing) and ‘luna’(moon).


Childhood
Jenny McLeod

Childhood, based on 10 related poems by the composer, depicts a representative experience – a day in the life of a small boy, seen as if from the ‘inside out’. McLeod’s words are thoughts that tumble through the youngster’s mind, unaware of any audience. He inhabits a world of spontaneous joys, perceptions that puzzle and delight him,
fragments of legend and nursery rhymes, hazy understandings of much his parents say – a place where magic, everyday reality and dream are bundled together. The parents appear briefly – in song 7, the father tells a bedtime story and bounces the lad on his knee, and in the last piece, mother sings to her sleeping child.