News

The Alfred Hill - the New Zealand Dvorak?

17 January 2008

Byline:	Professor Donald Maurice (New Zealand School of Music)
Source:	Humanities Research Network

A paper given at Transformations '07: Composing the nation: ideas, peoples, histories, languages, cultures, economies, the Congress of Te Whāinga Aronui The Council for the Humanities (VUW, Wellington, 27-28 August 2007).

As we reflect on our cultural heritage, it is appropriate that we review long-held attitudes to all manner of traditional perceptions, and test their acceptability in light of current scholarship and societal attitudes.

As a musician growing up in New Zealand in the 1950s and 60s, followed by extended residencies in the UK and USA in the 1970s, I became a product of that era, convinced that any sense of national identity in western art music in New Zealand was non-existent until Douglas Lilburn, in his "Search for Tradition" address in 1946 at the Cambridge Music School, to the emerging composers of the day, urged the establishment of a sense of national identity in their music. It was a defining moment in the history of New Zealand music because, by default, Douglas Lilburn effectively annulled any previous notion of national identity in the music of earlier New Zealand composers, and by denying the possibility of a past tradition of nationalistic composition, he was in effect defining himself as the father figure of any future national identity in New Zealand music.

For the first five decades of my life I unconditionally accepted this as the indisputable truth, assuming that all western art music written in New Zealand before the Second World War was composed by immigrants, primarily from Europe, continuing to write in the style of their mother countries, with no attempt or desire to develop an antipodean identity. Names that come to mind that reinforced that perception are predominantly the English composers and musicologists who populated our emerging university music departments and cathedral choirs, as being English appears to have been a pre-requisite for securing such posts in the early twentieth century. These imported musicians included Dr John Bradshaw, Professor Vernon Griffiths, Professor Charles Nalden, Professor Victor Galway, George Tendall, Harry Wells and Charles Foster Browne.

I ask you to conjecture what might have happened to our historical record if a composer emerged who was born in Australia, spent his childhood in New Zealand, trained in the top music school in Germany, worked with Brahms, Tchaikowsky, Strauss and Bruch, established a twenty-year career back in New Zealand, and then returned to Australia for the last fifty years of his life, becoming the "grand old man" of Australian music?

The answer to that question is that this sequence of events did in fact happen. After the Second World War that person, with a few notable exceptions, became persona non grata in this country's teaching of music history. The few references that can be found to Alfred Hill's contribution to our music history have, until very recently, been condescending on the quality of his composition and dismissive, even derogatory, with regard to his use of Maori music as an influence. Even John Thomson's excellent biography of Hill, published in 1980, failed to rescue his music from near oblivion in this country.

When I first attempted to familiarize myself with Hill's music in the late 1990s, I was surprised to find that acquiring published music or recordings was virtually impossible in New Zealand and I had to source what little there was from Australia, and even there it was not available in any mainstream retail outlets. When I questioned some of his harshest critics about his music I found that most had only ever heard Waiata Poi or Hinemoa and had formed their opinion on those two works and on accepting a 60-year legacy of patronising comments from New Zealand composers and musicologists. None were familiar with any of the thirteen symphonies, the six concertos, the ten operas, the seventeen string quartets, the four violin sonatas or any of the many dozens of chamber works, piano solos or songs. Whenever I have discussed his music with Maori, particularly of Te Arawa, I have heard only praise and at times sentiments approaching reverence for his engagement with their forbears. To this day he is remembered by the elders as Arapeta Hira. The late Bubbles Mihinui knew him personally, held him in very high regard and had nothing but praise for what he had done for Maori music.

After hearing his very fine String Quartet No. 1 at a summer music school in Australia I became determined to locate as much of his music as was possible. This mission culminated in June this year with a festival in Wellington of ten concerts of Hill's music representing the orchestral, choral and chamber music genres. Almost all this repertoire had to first be published, as the manuscripts had languished for more than half a century in boxes in Australian library archives, accessible only to dedicated and determined researchers. For creating these performing editions we must be grateful to Australian scholar and publisher, Dr Allan Stiles. The first of these ten concerts showcased the Commemorative Ode, a major work not heard since its first performance at the Christchurch Exhibition, 100 years ago. Celebrating New Zealand's new dominion status, this very grand work is scored for vocal soloists, choir, orchestra, brass band and organ, numbering about 200 on stage.

In addition, the ten concerts presented four major works for orchestra, three works for brass band, part of a choral mass, six string quartets, two concertos, four violin sonatas, twelve chamber works and a full programme of songs with piano. Almost all works were being heard for the first time ever in New Zealand.

The performance of Symphony No.1 was in fact the world premiere of the complete work, written in Wellington in the late 1890s, making it New Zealand's first symphony. In his radio review of its first performance on July 15, Concert FM's Peter Bechen describes his impression of this music as "...reflecting colonial New Zealand. Hill was often compared with the influences that shaped him, such as Mendelssohn and Schumann, and it stands up to the masters whom he revered".

The festival also provided an opportunity to launch the international release by Naxos of the Dominion String Quartet's CD of Hill's first three string quartets, the first two of which were composed in New Zealand. The first is subtitled the "Maori" quartet and the second "A Maori Legend in Four Scenes".

The local reception to the festival and international response to the quartet recordings has demonstrated that a full review of the role of Alfred Hill and his significance in New Zealand's musical history is essential and long overdue. It is also clear from my research and from personal dialogue with Maori, especially of Te Arawa, that his role in the interface of western art music with Maori culture must be re-evaluated.

Before this year, broadcasts in New Zealand of any of Alfred Hill's music were few and far between. However I am pleased to report that since January 2007 Radio New Zealand's Concert FM has broadcast music of Alfred Hill on 15 occasions:

January 13

• HILL: Symphony No 4 in C minor, The Pursuit of Happiness - Melbourne SO/Wilfred Lehmann (Marco Polo 8.220345)

January 26

• HILL: Symphony No 6 in Bb, Celtic - Melbourne SO/Wilfred Lehmann (Marco Polo 8.220345)

March 17

• HILL: Symphony No 6 in Bb, Celtic - Melbourne SO/Wilfred Lehmann (Marco Polo 8.220345)

April 2

• HILL: Symphony No 5 in A minor, The Carnival - Queensland SO/Wilfred Lehmann (Marco Polo 8.223538)

April 14

• HILL: String Quartet No 10 in E - Sydney String Quartet (ABC Classics 426 992)

April 20

• HILL: String Quartet No 11 in D minor - Australian String Quartet (Marco Polo 8.223746)

April 25

• HILL: String Quartet No 5 in Eb, The Allies - Australian String Quartet (Marco Polo 8.223746)

May 14

• HILL arr Vidulich: Viola Concerto 1910 - Donald Maurice (vla), Massey Chamber Orchestra (Hill Records 002)

June 23

• HILL: One came fluting; Doves; The poet dreams; Valse triste; Dancing faun - Tamara Anna Cislowska (pno) (Artworks AW 005)

July 10

• HILL: String Quartet No 1 in Bb, Maori - Dominion Quartet (Naxos 8.570491)

July 12

• HILL: String Quartet No 6 in G, The Kids - Australian String Quartet (Marco Polo 8.223746)

July 22

• HILL: String Quartet No 3 in A minor, The Carnival - Dominion Quartet (Naxos 8.570491)

August 2

• HILL: Symphony No 4 in C minor, The Pursuit of Happiness - Melbourne SO/Wilfred Lehmann (Marco Polo 8.220345)

August 4

• HILL: Blue evening; Valse lente; Waltz caprice - Asmira Woodward-Page (vln), Scott Davie (pno) (Artworks AW 034)

August 6

• HILL: String Quartet No 2 in G minor - Dominion Quartet (Naxos 8.570491)

Several more broadcasts are in the pipeline, including the Commemorative Ode, recorded live on June 2 in the Wellington Town Hall, and the only recording of the work in existence.

I would now like to share with you some of the reviews from the recent concerts and recordings. Firstly I quote excerpts from reviews of the Commemorative Ode.

Lindis Taylor - Dominion Post
A variety of elements made this a curiously interesting evening... This newspaper had the foresight to celebrate the centenary of one of its forebears with a concert of Hill's music. The major work...the Commemorative Ode... a considerably more impressive affair [than the cantata Hinemoa], clearly designed to make its mark at the Exhibition, was directed with energy and conviction by Michael Fulcher, opening with a hugely self-confident trumpet fanfare that subsided for the chorus to take up the story in Elgarian vein...Timua Brennan sang the second section "Long, long she lay" with remarkable beauty and power, Wagner's Brunnhilde was at hand... and bass Bruce Carson handled a distinctive Maori element in "Not unsought the Isles were found"... [Hill] shows all the skills of a well-schooled European composer of his age. His music has its own voice; he was singularly aware of Maori musical qualities and handled them intelligently. This concert's music was as deserving as a lot of that being unearthed and recorded overseas.

Garth Wilshire - Capital Times
The highlight and real discovery was the reconstructed "Commemorative Ode" written for the Christchurch International Exhibition of 1906-07 with words by Johannes C. Anderson. It is a distinctive, rousing and patriotic piece in celebration of Empire, but most effective and affecting. It shows influences of other European composers. It is strong, well written and well constructed. Using the combined orchestras, brass band, organ, full choir and soloists it was vibrantly stirring stuff, the performance excellently held together by [Michael] Fulcher. [Timua] Brennan really stood out in full, rich and powerfully soaring voice with all the orchestral forces behind her. [Hill's] soprano writing reminded me of Wagner and Brünnhilde in full flight. The whole was thrilling and exciting with all the performers giving of their best and the weight of orchestra, organ, brass band and the excellent Orpheus choir making a resounding impression. I wish there were more in the audience to experience the rediscovery of a great piece by Alfred Hill, 100 years after its last performance.

Robin Maconie - "Finding Alfred" - website of SOUNZ
The Commemorative Ode is a masterwork of which we should all be proud. Even if only for its mastery of technique, we should be proud, but it is much, much more. It would be a mistake, on a single listening, to deliver more than an impression of a work on this scale that has so many riches on so many levels. After all, this was a music of the people, for the people, by the people. The bravura performance, with Mahlerian touches (brass choir at the back) and even hints, avant la lettre, of the grandeur and panoramic splendour of American Charles Ives' symphonic studies, is proof of the music's integrity and affinity with the feelings and skills of the New Zealand community of amateur and professional musicians. Particularly moving to me at first hearing was part four, the pastoral "Tillage and shepherding" first for tenor solo, then repeated with all four soloists in harmony; this was music of a very high order, of an eloquent simplicity and truthfulness that touched the heart. Likewise the Lutheran style chorale, "Open stands New Zealand's gate", set to words of a plain frankness that is not only our style, as we know it today, but for a century ago, as modestly prophetic of our aspirations in 2007, as Julius Vogel's 1889 vision, in Anno Domini 2000, of a nation connected by telephone line and air travel, committed to peace, and governed by a woman prime minister.

I would now like to share with you some excerpts from international reviews of the Naxos recording of the Dominion Quartet playing Hill's first three string quartets.

Dave's Corner - Naxos website
Had the name of Dvorak appeared on the title page of Alfred Hill's first string quartet, it would probably have become part of the standard repertoire, the music more worthy of repeated hearing than any of the Czech composer's early works in this genre. Australia and New Zealand now vie for a claim on the composer's musical soul, and during the first half of the 20th century he had to represent on the international scene the aspirations of both nations. Born in Australia in 1869, he had lived his formative years in New Zealand where his love of music was carefully nurtured before departing at the age of seventeen to study in Leipzig where he fell under the many influences of Brahms, Dvorak, Strauss and Tchaikovsky. His return to New Zealand marked a residency of twenty years, before moving back to his homeland in 1910 where he was to spend his years to his death in 1960. A prolific composer, and while much of it remained unpublished, there are ten operas, thirteen symphonies and seventeen string quartets. The bulk of his highly productive life was in Australia, and though the first quartet was started in Leipzig in 1896, its first performance did not take place until 1911 in Sydney.

During his years in New Zealand he had become much involved in the Maori culture, but while I acknowledge the fact that he may have used Maori melodies in his first two quartets, I find the subtitles more to do with commercial than musical reasons. In sum these are beautifully crafted scores which I commend wholeheartedly to you. Maybe lacking in Dvorak's rhythmic zest, the music is melodically highly attractive, immaculately scored and with a deep understanding of the functioning of a quartet - Hill studied the violin. At times Mendelssohn creeps in - as we hear in the scherzo to the second quartet - and there is real Brahmsian strength in the opening movement. The three quartets on the disc show a time period of sixteen years, yet Hill's style through his life was largely locked in a time warp, which to many ears will be a blessing, the Third, as the subtitle will suggest, is a happy and vital score with a particularly engaging scherzo. Performances show the Dominion Quartet - largely formed from members of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra - have the measure of these works... I do so urge you to get to know these beautiful and highly engaging quartets. I wait with eager anticipation the remaining quartets.

Bob McQuiston - Classical Lost and Found
Leave it to Naxos to come up with some terrific chamber music by a composer most people in the Northern Hemisphere have never heard of. Except for the five years he was in Germany studying at the Leipzig Conservatory, Alfred Hill (1869-1960) spent all of his life in Australia, where he was born, and New Zealand. After you hear this release you'll probably have to agree that he was the most outstanding late romantic composer from down under. This initial volume in Naxos' new survey of his string quartets (he wrote seventeen) gives us the first three. Number one contains ideas from his student days (1886-1891) and is in the traditional four movements. The middle two were replaced in 1896 with others incorporating some exotic sounding Maori folk melodies. The outer ones show the influences of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Antonin Dvorak. They contain some lovely themes that reveal Hill was a melodist of the first order. The Maori influence becomes even more pronounced in the second quartet (1907-1911), which is entitled "A Maori Legend in Four Scenes." It's quite programmatic and the composer even provided a narrative for it. The opening movement owes a great debt to Dvorak. The following adagio is called "The Dream" and might best be described as Maori impressionism. The agitated scherzo is notable for some ethereal ear-catching tremolando effects. The finale is a tune-swept delight that ends this fetching musical folk tale on a real high. The third quartet (1912) certainly lives up to its name of "The Carnival." As its number would imply, this is the most advanced work here, and very much in the Central as well as Eastern European romantic mold. Again in four movements, it begins with an optimistically bustling theme very much in keeping with the first movement's caption of "In the Streets." The andantino takes the form of a heartfelt aria predominantly for the first violin and set to another of Hill's lovely melodies. The scherzo revolves around a tune that could well be based on some English country dance. The finale kicks off with an energetic Klezmer-like melody that alternates with some appealing, slower, Slavic-sounding themes. The quartet ends enthusiastically with an intense outburst of energetic bowing from all concerned. Incidentally, in 1955 the composer expanded this piece into what would be his fifth symphony, also known as "The Carnival". The Dominion Quartet of New Zealand plays up a storm in all three selections, making a strong case for Hill's music.

James Mannheim - All Music
The American influence of Antonin Dvorak as a champion of national styles was replicated in New Zealand, where the European-trained composer Alfred Hill drew on Māori melodies in the same ways as Americans by turns tried to fit African-American, Native American, and Anglo-American folk tunes into the frameworks ready-made by the Czech composer's popular works. It's terrific that the Naxos label has been giving various national schools a new hearing, for it is in this way that insidious and invidious notions of a single arc of "progress:" will finally be put to rest. ... The opening String Quartet No. 1 in B flat major, "Māori," is an early work by Hill, composed in several stages ending in the late 1890s. Māori thematic elements - apparently, unlike Dvorak's, actual preexisting tunes - are precisely incorporated according to the patterns of Dvorak's popular quartets of the period: they do not constitute the main material but provide the lyrical element that the nineteenth century mind would have thought of as feminine...

The most successful of the three quartets on the album is the second, the String Quartet No. 2 in G minor, subtitled "A Māori Legend in Four Scenes." This work has a detailed program, reproduced in full in the short but informative booklet. The quartet is a vigorous and immensely attractive fusion of traditional chamber music forms (the four movements correspond roughly to the usual string quartet sequence) with the magical idiom of Dvorak's nature-inspired scenes, and it is joyously played by New Zealand's Dominion Quartet... The disc as a whole will intrigue string quartet lovers, students of musical nationalism, and those who have caught the rising wave of interest in music of the Anglophone world.

Ian Dando - NZ Listener
HILL STRING QUARTETS VOL 1. DOMINION QUARTET. Naxos 8. 570491. Alfred Hill (1869-1960), although born in Australia, lived in New Zealand from 1872 till 1910 before relocating to Sydney. The souvenir programme lists over 10 Hill concerts in Wellington recently. He pioneered integration of Māori folklore into art music as in his cantata Hinemoa.

No 1 is unoriginal but very rich in melody. The Dvorakian No 2 has an emerging originality in the striking double pizzicato opening movement and the melodic sweep of the finale. No 3 (1912), his first Sydney one, is fully mature and assured Hill. Involved performances and excellent recorded sound enhance this launch. I hope [this] will lead to a revaluation and recording of many more Hill works. The popularity of this release is well deserved. On cduniverse.com it is currently No 1 in quartet CDs.

In my closing comments I leave you with some sales statistics.

• Within one month of release, CD Universe had rated this recording as the top selling quartet CD in the world. It has continued since to be rated amongst the top four 20th century quartet CDs
• It has remained in the top four of the Radio New Zealand classical charts since its release, reaching No.1 in mid July and is currently in its second consecutive week in the No 1 spot

Given these outcomes, one must question to whom the responsibility and authority can be entrusted to determine what defines a national musical identity. In this case it appears that the voice of the people has overturned a century of a collective and concerted effort to suppress the music of the founding figure of a national identity in New Zealand music.

As we listen to the opening of the Second String Quartet, "A Māori Legend in Four Scenes", I ask you to reflect upon the title of my presentation:

Was Alfred Hill the New Zealand Dvorak?