Alfred Hill’s Hinemoa and Musical Marginality

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 28, 1 January 1995, Page 61

Sarah Shieff

Alfred Hill’s Hinemoa and Musical Marginality

/\lthough enormously popular at the time of its composition, Alfred Hill's 1896 cantata Hinemoa has all but disappeared from the symphonic concert repertoire. Its first New Zealand performance in over forty years took place in 1990 as part of a sesquicentennial programme entitled 'A Celebration of New Zealand Commemorative Music'. This article does not, however, attempt to resurrect an unjustly forgotten work. In it, I aim to contextualise one small fragment of pakeha music history, bearing in mind Terry Sturm's remarks about yet-to-be-written histories of cultural practices in New Zealand: 'ln most genres a substantial amount of primary research needs to be done, in order to recover what had been lost or marginalized in earlier accounts of the country's past, which have always been highly selective, and strongly biased towards the promotion of canonical authors and texts'. Re-examination of marginalized music as much as of plays or paintings enlivens and enriches a sense of the past while complicating a sense of the present. After briefly outlining Hill's career, I will go on to examine the circumstances surrounding///«emo<z 's composition and first performances, and then look at Hinemoa in its more recent context. I Working in New Zealand until early this century and thereafter mostly in Australia, composer Alfred Hill was the

most prominent and prolific colonial composer of his generation. He has been called ‘the grand old man of Australian music ’ and is, as yet, the only New Zealand-affiliated composer to have become the subject of a book-length biography. 2 Apart from Hinemoa and the song ‘Waiata Poi’, for which he is perhaps best remembered, Hill also wrote thirteen symphonies, seven concerti, nine operas, string quartets, suites, sonatas, songs, and a considerable amount of film music.

Alfred Hill was bom in Melbourne in 1870. In 1872, the Hill family moved to New Zealand, and in 1887 the seventeen-year-old Alfred left Wellington for Leipzig, where he studied violin and composition. For colonial musicians, the pull exerted by traditional centres of high culture was enormously strong, and throughout his life Hill’s primary musical allegiance was towards these centres. Despite what was to be a life-long musical debt to Europe, however, Hill returned to New Zealand late in 1891 and set up as a teacher of violin, theory, and composition. 3

By the time of his return, a vigorous choral, orchestral, brass band, and domestic musical life had taken root in New Zealand, enriched by visiting opera companies, singers, and instrumentalists. William Saurin Lyster’s Melbourne-based opera company toured successfully in 1864, and the Simonsen Grand Opera Company made tours from the 1860 s until the end of the century. Australian impresario J. C. Williamson’s long association with New Zealand began in 1882, with a Dunedin production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience. The Pollard Opera Company made a successful tour of the pantomime Aladdin in 1893, followed by Djin Djin in 1896. 4 Adrienne Simpson has established that between the years 1871 and 1889 there was always at least one foreign opera company on tour in New Zealand. 5 Hinemoa was to capitalise on the popularity of the musical extravaganza which, by 1896, was well established as a genre: a large public had by then acquired a taste for musical dramas which took as their subjects romanticised Maori themes. 6

On his return to Wellington, Hill took over the position of conductor of the Wellington Orchestral Society. Following the successful premiere of Hinemoa, Hill resigned from the Society and joined American violinist Ovide Musin’s Company. He travelled with Musin as far as Sydney, where the Company disbanded. Soon after, Hill settled in Sydney, where he devoted his professional life to the promotion of local musical performances, professionalism, and education; he was a founder of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and became one of its first professors. From 1915, when he was appointed Professor of Composition, Hill’s ties with New Zealand weakened. Apart from visits in 1930 and 1938 to write film music for Alexander Marky and Rudall Hayward respectively the directors had chosen Hill because he was regarded as an expert on Maori music 7 Hill only returned to New Zealand occasionally to visit family and to take part in concerts. In 1937, he was awarded a Coronation Medal for his services to music. Hill was awarded an OBE in 1953 and made CMG in 1960. He died in Sydney on October 30 1960.

Alfred Hill’s Hinemoa

II Hill began work on Hinemoa in late 1895, with Arthur H. Adams as librettist (see Figure 1). Despite an initial lack of interest in Maori subjects, Hill professed a longstanding desire to work on the Hinemoa legend. He later recalled that Adams had conceived the idea of 'writing Hinemoa as a legend'. 8 Arthur wrote the legend, and I decided to set it to music. The citizens of Wellington rather laughed at the idea that we could get anything from the dirty lazy Maori. At that time of course they lived so near to the Maoris, and there were so many of them about, that they didn't think much of them, especially artistically. 'You wait and see' I said. 9

Hill’s status as an authority on Maori music is still largely unchallenged, and may be ripe for re-examination: while his interest in Maori music was no doubt sincere, it was also expedient and opportunistic. His introduction to Maori music had come via Wellington journalist E. D. Hoben. Hill remembered that Hoben had ‘lived among the Maoris all his life and he sang me a song, and I said “By Jove! Here’s something novel. If I can’t make a success any other way I might make it by this idea of developing Maori music” ’. 10 This ‘song’ formed the basis ofTutanekai’s flute motif, which opens Hinemoa. The melody was later found to be (ostensibly) Rarotongan in origin:

The Maori air which runs through this work, was obtained many years ago from a white man, Mr E. D. Hoban [sic]. Years later a half-caste Maori, Wi Duncan, asserted that it was a Raratongan [sic] melody. Others claimed that the Rev. Williams of Hawkes Bay wrote the words and a Maori friend the tune. Finally, Hari Hongi, a Government Interpreter and author of the well-known Maori Grammar etc. verified Wi Duncan's assertion that the air came from Raratonga. It appears that a Chief who came from Raratonga in 1868 to visit the Maori Chief Tawhio, first brought the air to New Zealand. The Maoris quickly appropriated it and turned it into a Hymn. 11 Despite this long and complex chain of transmission, the tonality, range, and metric structure of the tune point to its European origins. Hill's contemporaries nevertheless remarked on the 'weird, romantic' nature of the music, and made special mention of the opening flute motifs origin: 'The leitmotif of "Hinemoa" is a genuine Maori melody, a lament which is sung by one of the Native tribes of the Poverty Bay district'. Hinemoa was first performed on 18 November 1896, to mark the opening of the Wellington Industrial Exhibition. The entire concert was performed by Mr Maughan

Barnett’s Musical Society, with various conductors and soloists. Apart from the patriotic inclusion of ‘God Save the Queen’ at the conclusion of the evening, the programme consisted of entirely locally-composed works, with Hinemoa as the programme’s centrepiece (see Figure 2, overleaf). Maughan Barnett’s short Concert Overture, conducted by the composer, opened the concert. Hinemoa followed, under the baton of Alfred Hill. Madame Eveleen Carlton (Soprano) took the role of Hinemoa, and ‘Mr. Harry Smith [Baritone], of Dunedin, [was] specially engaged to sing the part of Tutanekai’. Alfred’s older brother John sang the tenor role of Tiki, and the role of Tohunga (bass) was taken by Mr Harold Widdop. 13

The second half of the programme contained a setting of Psalm 8 (‘O Lord, our Governor’), composed and conducted by Mr Robert Parker. This was followed by Thomas Tallis TrimneH’s setting of Psalm 24 (‘The Earth is the Lord’s, and the Fullness Thereof). The composer conducted. The programme concluded with the National Anthem, all three verses of which were printed in the programme. This was to be sung by the evening’s ‘combined choruses and the audience’. 14

Two more Wellington performances of Hinemoa followed, to great acclaim: Hinemo afeatmed in Maughan Barnett’s ‘Exhibition Music Festival’ held in December, in the Industrial Exhibition Hall. 15 By the time of the third performance on 18 December, the popularity of the work was such that ‘ every seat in the hall was reserved twenty-four hours before the performance, and last night crowds stood vainly importuning entrance at the doors, while several hundreds got upon the grandstand on the roof and heard the work under absolutely novel conditions’. 16

We gave Hinemoa at the opening of the [Wellington Industrial] Exhibition. I remember the Governor was sitting in the body of the hall and he was so impressed after Hinemoa and the people kicked up such a row about it and they were so enthusiastic that he called Arthur and I in front of him, in front of that vast audience, and complimented us. The result was that the work was given again a few days later and so much interest was aroused in it that as near as most people got to it was the roof of the concert hall. The roof of the concert hall had seats on for a bicycle ground outside where bicycle sports were held. There was a lean-to roof and it had a thousand seats on it. That’s as near as most people got to the second performance of Hinemoa. They heard it through the roof. 17

Hill had joined Ovide Musin’s Company earlier in 1896, and the Company later performed Hinemoa in Hastings where Hill himself took the role of Tutanekai and in Napier, Wanganui, and Auckland. The Company took the same production to Sydney, where it was first performed in July 1897. 18 At a private read-through at Palings, prior to the first Sydney performance, ‘the composer (who has the voice usually associated with composers) not only doubled the important baritone part of

Tutanekai and the bass role of the Tohunga, but also sang the soprano, alto, tenor and bass of the choruses, the trombone, flute and various other orchestral voices that were missing, and acted as conductor, and interpreter of the plot'. Hill later recalled that Hinemoa had been performed 'in every city in New Zealand and in many towns in Australia'. A photograph of a stage set, assembled for the Auckland performances of Hinemoa {\-A March 1897), has been pasted in the front of the conductor's score of the cantata (see Figure 3). Colourful tokens stood in for the single group most obviously absent from the production. The Auckland City Hall was festooned with nikau palms, garlands, and fronds of punga. Maori items included the prow and paddle of a canoe and carved posts. A small pataka appeared behind the harp and the conductor's podium was obscured by toe-toe fronds. The whole was ranged in front of a painted backdrop depicting Lake Rotorua. Members of the chorus, dressed in white, 'wore a white feather in their hair after the Maori fashion': Since 'Hinemoa' was produced at the City Hall, and the female chorus singers took to sticking feathers in their hair, half the roosters in Auckland fowl-yards are going about in a dismantled condition, looking as if they had been struck by a cyclone. 21 The flags at either side of the setting are possibly part of the flag of the United Tribes. Adopted in 1834 and flown to prevent from seizure unidentified ships trading from New Zealand, the flag consisted of a red St. George's Cross on a white ground, and, in the first quarter, a red St. George's Cross on a blue ground pierced with four white stars. This flag remained New Zealand's national ensign until superseded by the Union Jack in 1840. The choice of this, rather than the Union Jack, suggests the background of intertribal (rather than inter-racial) conflict against which the legend is set. Also stuck in the front of the score, from which Hill conducted, were two sonnets by J. Liddell Kelly of Woolston, published in The New Zealand Mail of 23 September 1896. 'Tutanekai' and 'His Wooing and Wedding' appeared two months before the premiere of Hinemoa (18 November 1896) and attest to the current popularity of the Hinemoa story. There are also obvious parallels, suggested by Kelly's titles, between the popularity of Longfellow's poem 'Hiawatha', set as a three-part cantata by Hill's near-contemporary Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and the local fascination with the Hinemoa legend. (The first part of Coleridge-Taylor's cantata, 'Hiawatha's Wedding Feast', was composed in 1898, two years after Hill's Hinemoa.) 11l Hill's daughter Isolde's version of the familiar Te Arawa legend prefaces the vocal score of Hinemoa. This is the version Adams used as the basis for his libretto.

Against a backdrop of war, the characters play out ‘A story older than the ages ... Yet ever new recurrent like the dawn’. 25

Hill scored his nine-scene cantata for Soprano (‘Hinemoa, A Maori Maiden’), Tenor, Baritone (Tiki and Tutanekai respectively, ‘Maori Youths’), and Bass (‘Tohunga, A Maori Wizard’), four-part chorus (taking the part of various ‘Maori Maidens, Fairies and Ra-Ha Warriors’) and orchestra. 26

The Tohunga’s brief moralising Prologue follows the thirty-two bar orchestral Introduction, in which Tutanekai’s flute motif is heard for the first time (see Figure 2). The score notes that the flute solo ‘a traditional Maori air’ —is to be played offstage. Scene 1 (‘A Maori Pa (Village)’) consists of the female chorus (‘Comes a Merry Chorus of Maori Maidens’, Allegro), singing Hinemoa’s praises. Hinemoa’s ballad ‘When the Tired Winds are Sleeping’ takes place at ‘The Lake-Side, Evening’ (Scene 2). Here Hinemoa declares her love for the absent and presumed unaware Tutanekai.

The male warriors’ chorus ‘Ra-ha!’ {Allegro) gives the first hint of intertribal conflict. Next, in recitative, Tutanekai’s friend Tiki tells Hinemoa of Tutanekai’s love for her, and that she should go to him across the lake, under cover of darkness. A barcarolle-style orchestral interlude follows, in which ‘Tiki’s hom and Tutanekai’s flute are heard across the water’ (Scene 4, Tranquillo). Scene 5, in which Tutanekai calls on his flute to convey his love to Hinemoa, takes place on Mokoia Island at evening. Hinemoa’s song of secret farewell to her tribe (Scene 6, Tranquillo) takes place during the same lakeside evening.

A dramatic hiatus follows (‘Scena Hinemoa’, Molto allegro). After hearing Tutanekai’s flute across the lake, Hinemoa finds she cannot go to him, as all the canoes are drawn up on the shore. Fairies come to Hinemoa’s aid {Andante), offering to guide her over the water. Hinemoa ‘plunges into the lake’. The fairies cast a protecting charm over Hinemoa as she swims (Scene 1, Allegro). Tutanekai discovers a figure hiding in the mshes, and thinking Hinemoa is an enemy slave, threatens her with death {Allegro). Hinemoa speaks, and realising his mistake, Tutanekai proclaims her bravery. In their final duet {Allegro con fuoco), the lovers are reconciled, and vow never again to be parted. The Finale (Scene 9: ‘The Native Pa (Village), Morning’) begins with a forty-bar orchestral introduction {Maestoso). The chorus praises Hinemoa’s courage, and the power of love to bring peace: ‘Maiden’s love has vanquished war’.

The orchestration calls for double woodwind, comets, tympani, triangle, strings, and harp. (For the ‘Ra-ha! ’ chorus, Hill added piccolo, cymbals, two tenor trombones, and one bass trombone.) The harp part, written especially for the English-trained harpist Constance Hatherly, shows Hill capitalising on the high public profile of one of his performers. Hatherly was prominent both as a musician, and as the ‘champion lady plunge-diver of the colony’, having ‘carried off gold medals both for

high and long distance diving (competitions open to both sexes)'. Hatherly also travelled to Sydney with Ovide Musin's Company. On their arrival, she was described as 'a kind of Chrichton in petticoats, being a chess player of weight and a swimmer of amazing mettle, [who] has already, though young, won distinction as a harper'. For librettist Adams, characterisation by and large took second place to the demands of the narrative. He did, however, make Hinemoa exotic and voluptuous. Her 'bosom bare' throbbed 'with longing for her love' and gave her a slightly risque quality. The warrior Tutanekai displayed both savagery and tenderness: ready to kill the lurking stranger who later turns out to be Hinemoa herself, he also sings to his flute, asking it to speak for him, his own voice failing for love: Wake, my tender thrilling flute, For my voice is all too weak: O'er the waves my love salute. Speak the words I dare not speak! The secondary figures of Tiki and the Tohunga are not individually characterised. Their main function is to advance the narrative. The male and female choruses have set pieces which add atmosphere. The first women's chorus sings Hinemoa's praises. Their next contribution is as a 'fairy chorus'. The first male chorus number five on the programme was probably intended to show the 'warlike nature' of the Maori, and the background of war against which the story is set. Ra-ha! Ra-ha! Ra-ha! Ra-ha! On the breast of the tempest is borne through the land The Spirit of war with the ravening hand, With his wide waving pinions the faction is fanned, And peace is no more! Known as the 'Ra-ha' chorus, this was Hinemoa's most frequently encored item. (The name 'Ra-ha' itself appears to be an abbreviation of the name of the Ngati Toa warrior-chief Te Rauparaha: Thomas Bracken uses the same abbreviation in 'The March of Te Rauparaha'.) The famous 'Ra-ha' chorus for male voices [is] perhaps the most effective more eau in the composition. One can imagine a band of dusky warriors, with their grotesque contortions and deep-mouthed growls of fury, executing a real war dance, with the fine crescendo ending in a 'fff ugh' as a climax. 30

The ‘Ra-ha’ chorus for Maori warriors ... is a marvel of musical cleverness. One can see as it were the warriors in ranks, leaping, gesticulating, grimacing, clanging their rude weapons of war, the while they make the earth shake with the rhythm of their feet-beats. 31

Hill and Adams depicted Maori as their audience might have liked to imagine them: savage, warlike, colourful, and passionate. They fictionalised and romanticised their subjects in much the same way as Goldie treated his Maori sitters. Along with the Maori music that Hill 'invented', Goldie's Maori were essentially his own creation, 'characterised by picturesque, nostalgic, decorative and anecdotal effects that were at several removes from contemporary social and psychological reality'. Apart from the pakeha-ised narrative and the names of the characters, a few carefully-glossed Maori words and phrases are the only identifiably indigenous elements in Hinemoa. Ironically enough, Maori were perhaps the most marginalised group of all the participants in this 'weird, romantic' pakeha production. IV Any contemporary understanding of Hinemoa must bear in mind the warmth of its initial reception. Praise came from all quarters. Poet and politician Edward Tregear wrote to Hill that he ■ could not have believed that any European music could have so well interpreted the genius of the Maori feeling. The Ra-ha chorus had all the fire and martial rousing that I have felt stir the blood and light the eye in the native war-dance, while the instrumental effects and live songs were very fine and pathetic 'simpatica'. 33

Politician Robert Stout ‘most heartily [congratulated]’ Hill on the production, and James R. Purdy hoped that ‘Hinemoa will be heard of again and again and that its original performance will be of great interest’. 34 The press was similarly ecstatic, as the Evening Post and the Wairarapa Daily Times respectively attest:

The main theme of the work the ‘magic flute’ melody fascinated the listeners with its weird charm. The cleverly descriptive lake music was also much admired, but the great descriptive power shown in the ‘Ra-ha’ chorus ... simply carried the audience away, and caused the talented composer to receive a perfect ovation. 35

There must have been fully two thousand people in the concert hall to hear the musical entertainment, the feature of which was the production of Messrs Adams and Hill’s cantata ‘Hinemoa.’ This proved one of the

greatest musical treats ever heard in Wellington. Everyone was delighted with it and the very clever melodies and choruses were received with most enthusiastic applause. The composition is both original and clever, and sufficient to entitle Mr. Hill to the title of the Mascagni of New Zealand. 36

News of Hill’s triumph carried as far as London. The London Musical Courier noted that at the conclusion of this first performance, ‘Mr. Hill received an ovation, and was presented with several floral tributes, one taking the form of a shield of white flowers with “Hinemoa” in blue flowers traversing it’. 37

Despite its popularity and its scale, few noted Hinemoa's importance as an early locally-composed symphonic work. One of the few commentators to mention Hinemoa' s status found the work’s programmatic elements more noteworthy than its signal position in an embryonic pakeha tradition:

We reached a marked stage in our musical history with the production of a national cantata —Hinemoa by two young New Zealanders,... who have succeeded in producing an effort instinct with Maori poetry, and breathing of war and love, of lakeside whispers, of thundering waters, of the shale of the waves, and the throb of the seas by night. 38

Notwithstanding/fmemotf’s initial success, there were no calls for sequels. Although fully-staged productions on New Zealand themes were not uncommon, hopes and plans to turn the cantata into an opera came to nothing. ‘M. Musin, ... will, in conjunction with Mr Hill, produce [Hinemoa] in Melbourne and Sydney. If it “catches on” there, it will probably be turned into an opera and performed in America, London and Paris’. 39 Adams’s hopes to turn the cantata into an opera were never realised, and Rudall Hayward’s planned film of the cantata never eventuated. 40

The popularity of Hinemoa did however lead to a further production on a Maori theme. The opera Tapu followed, again written in conjunction with Arthur Adams. Produced in New Zealand by the Pollard Opera Company, the first performance of Tapu took place on 16 February 1903.

With such sure-fire items as a haka and a poi dance, with a large number of attractive solos and ensembles, and with the opportunities it offered for scenic display a Maori Pa in Act I, the Pink Terraces in Act II it is not surprising that in 1903 Tapu exerted a wide appeal and scored such a clamorous success. 41 V In the final sections of this article, I will look atHinemoain some subsequent contexts. Even though the work has disappeared from the modern concert repertoire, it has received performances at widely-spaced intervals. Historically marginal or aesthetically remote works may be resurrected for any number of reasons: while Hinemoa , s initial success may have been in part due to the colourful treatment of its ' exotic' subj ect, more recent performances have generally been organised to celebrate the composer himself.

The New Zealand Music Council brought Hill to New Zealand in 1952 to take part in the Auckland Music Festival, and his visit was commemorated with a performance of Hinemoa. Reviewing that concert, Owen Jensen wrote:

Written when he must have been in his early twenties —he is past eighty now it is, of course, of the fashion of those days. Placed in its period, however, Hinemoa has an astonishing freshness, with passages of orchestral colour of real beauty. It is characteristic of Alfred Hill that he should account for some banality in the final passages of Hinemoa by suggesting that he owed it to his audience not to make their listening too difficult at that stage of the concert.... Hinemoa may be too pallid to excite today, but, historically, it is a significant work. 42

Saturday 16 December 1959 saw a performance of Hinemoa given in Sydney by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, as part of an 89th birthday tribute to Hill. 43

Hinemoa was performed most recently as part a concert entitled 'A Celebration of New Zealand Commemorative Music', given by the Wellington Regional Orchestra and the Orpheus Choir, conducted by Patrick Thomas, in St. Paul's Cathedral, Wellington, on 26 October 1990. While not initially commemorative, Hinemoa has been performed sufficiently often on occasions celebrating Hill's significance as a musical pioneer for it to acquire a certain 'commemorative' status of its own; it also has significance as one of the largest-scale orchestral works until then composed in New Zealand. 'A Celebration of New Zealand Commemorative Music' was a 'New Zealand 1990' sesquicentennial proj ect, funded in part by the 1990 Commission. The New Zealand Composers' Foundation had put a proposal to the Sesquicentennial Committee to ... do for New Zealand Music in 1990 that which the New Zealand Government had done for New Zealand Literature in 1940. Regrettably, the Government in 1990 did not... provide the basis on which such a scheme could be implemented .... However, salvaged from the wreckage was a proposal to present a concert in Wellington of certain historical New Zealand work. 46

All the works on the programme told stories of one kind or another, and all had texts. The first item on the programme was Terence Vaughan’s setting of Ruth France’s poem ‘The Stream and the Discovery’. This ‘royal ode’ was the outcome of national competitions, for both the poem and its musical setting, organised by the New Zealand Broadcasting Service to commemorate Queen Elizabeth ll’s first visit to New Zealand after her accession to the throne. This was followed by Allen Cumow’s and Douglas Lilbum’s more frequently performed Landfall in Unknown Seas. Poet Cumow narrated his own poem, written to commemorate the tercentennial of Abel Tasman’s 1642 landfall in New Zealand. Hinemoa concluded the programme. Soloists were Soprano Anne Cheng (Hinemoa), Tenor Peter Baillie (Tiki), Baritone Roger Wilson (Tutanekai), and Bass Bruce Carson (Tohunga). 47 As with the first performance, and perhaps unsurprisingly, none of the 1990 soloists were Maori; notwithstanding its nominally Maori subject, Hinemoa has always belonged to pakeha culture.

The programming of a work such as Hinemoa possibly posed certain problems. The very elements which made it initially so popular are perhaps those which might cause modem audiences greatest difficulty: the juxtaposition of a traditional narrative and an inflated high-Victorian idiom, plus the romanticised depiction of Maori and the decontextualised ‘use’ of the Hinemoa story, may have combined to make an uncomfortable experience for a modem audience. John M. Thomson’s preliminary presentation and written notes provided context for a work that otherwise

might have appeared a mere Victorian curio. Both oral and written presentations included relevant historical and musical anecdotes. An interview with Hill, recorded by Thomson in the late 19505, provided further personal and historical context. 48

John Button reviewed the concert for the Dominion, and a review by John M. Thomson appeared in Music in New Zealand , 49 Both pointed out the historical significance of the occasion, and given this, the relevance of the choice of programme. Both writers emphasised the content of the programme rather than the performance itself. Button descvibedHinemoaas ‘the least distinguished music on the programme; a curious mish-mash of Sullivan, Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, set to some of the most banal words imaginable’. Thomson noted that Hinemoa ‘encapsulated the weaknesses rather than the strengths of the composer’s style, one which, instead of developing, remained virtually unchanged for the rest of his life’.

It is important to note that such remarks tell at best an incomplete story. Neither writer emphasised the extent to which Hinemoa 's audience has changed in the nearhundred years since its first performance. Gauging from contemporary commentary, Hinemoa's first audience was large and popular—perhaps the closest analogy is with the audiences which recently assembled to hear Kiri Te Kanawa sing in the Auckland Domain. The audience for modern 'indoor' symphony concerts, however, tends to be smaller, and may come expecting to consume 'high' culture. The initial response to the work suggests thatHinemoamay have been experienced in relation to 'popular' genres such as melodrama, or the light operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. A modern audience accustomed to 'higher' symphonic genres may indeed find the work derivative or banal. Yet these judgements provide answers to unprofitable questions. The initial 'popular' context and audience for Hinemoa has gone; perhaps it is inappropriate to judge the work according to conventions belonging to another genre. VI The significance of Hinemoa as an important work in a relatively 'thin' pakeha music history can be gauged by the effort expended to save the score for posterity. In 1987, Allans Music had sent Hill's autograph manuscript to the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra 'on perusal'. Mended with sellotape and beginning to disintegrate, the composer's score had been sent as a working conductor's score. Composer Ashley Heenan approached Allans to make the original full score available to the National Archive as part of the 1990 Special Events. 'As a 1990 commemorative project the New Zealand Composers' Federation had proposed to record an anthology of recorded New Zealand music covering one hundred and fifty years. One part of the project was to record Alf s Hinemoa'. In exchange, the Composers' Foundation of New Zealand offered to arrange for a newly-copied full score. On 28 February 1989, Allans Music offered the manuscript to the National Archive on permanent loan. 'The Composer's Foundation paid for its restoration removal of sellotape etc.' 55

The Alexander Turnbull Library now holds the work, deposited to mark New Zealand's sesquicentennial celebration. 'ln recognition of New Zealand's sesquicentenary, Allans Music (Australia) Pty, Ltd. has generously deposited [in the Alexander Turnbull Library] the original full orchestral score of Alfred Hill's cantata Hinemoa. This score, from which Hill conducted, is a unique working document and a companion document to the piano score which the composer donated to the Library in 1952'. The score was displayed to the public in an sesquicentennial exhibition mounted by the National Library of New Zealand, entitled Musical Images — A New Zealand Historical Journey 1840-1990. VII As a musical 'pioneer', Hill was both marginal and central. Marginal in his relationship to Western music as a whole, he was nevertheless central in terms of the transplantation of that tradition to New Zealand and Australia. Like Hill himself, Hinemoa is also both marginal and central: marginal to the modern symphonic repertoire, it also occupies a central position in the history ofpakeha New Zealand's musical culture. Especially pertinent on occasions of national historical retrospect such as the sesquicentennial celebration, careful modern performances of such works marginal to the canon can give a fresh sense of the remoteness of the past; such performances may also remind audiences of the past's constituting pressure on the present, and the present's on-going re-invention of the past. Another way of looking atHinemoa, which may at first glance appear second-hand or of limited interest, is to see it as a musical hybrid: it is a retelling of an indigenous narrative in a transplanted European musical idiom, and has its own patchwork material history of marginalisation and resuscitation. This hybridisation characterised colonial society at large as much as it did the formation of Hill's musical vocabulary: both were defined by their borrowings, exclusions, and inclusions. Such borrowings are always chronologically and geographically specific, and, as much as defining Creole identities, also define for Hinemoa its at once central and marginal position in the history of pakeha music in New Zealand.

Turnbull Library Record 28 (1995), 61 —78

References 1. The Alexander Turnbull Library holds both the original piano score of Hinemoa and the composer's full orchestral score. Alexander Turnbull Library, Alfred Hill Collection, fMS 4304. Sturm quotation: Terry Sturm, 'lntroduction', in Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, edited by Terry Sturm (Auckland, 1990), p. ix. 'Re-examination': see Adrian Kiernander's introduction to George Leitch' s melodrama The Land of the Moa (Wellington, 1990), also Leonard Bell, Colonial Constructs: European Images of Maori 1840-1914 (Auckland, 1992). Peter Gibbons suggests that 'those who want less bookish subjects could explore the theatre and symbolism of railway accidents, race meetings, street stalls, royal tours,

and school picnics'. Peter Gibbons, 'Transporting Culture: The View from the Kermadecs', Turnbull Library Record 26 (1993), 9-20. 2. 'Grand old man': John M. Thomson, 'Charting a Tradition: On the Writing of A Distant Music: The Life and Times of Alfred HilV, Comment 7 (1979), 32-34. 'Book-length biography': JohnM. Thomson, A Distant Music: The Life and Times of Alfred Hill (Auckland, 1980), hereafter ADM. Martin Lodge is currently preparing the biography of Dunedin composer Anthony Watson. 3. For more on Hill's life, particularly his studies in Leipzig, see John M. Thomson, 'The Ebb and Flow of Cultures: Some German and Austrian Influences on New Zealand Music', Turnbull Library Record 27 (1994), 75-90. 4. John M. Thomson, Oxford History of New Zealand Music (Auckland, 1991), pp. vii, 72-87. 5. Adrienne Simpson,' "Caterers to the Public Entertainment" ', Turnbull Library Record 27(1994), 7-21 (p. 15). 6. See H. McNaughton, 'Drama', in Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, pp. 271 332, also Kiernander's introduction to The Land of the Moa. 7. Ben Biddle, male lead in Alfred Marky's silent film Hei-Tiki (c. 1930), remembered quite clearly Hill's involvement. Hill was to provide some music to accompany preparations for war. 'Alfred Hill made some mess over here because he is a great Maori song composer Alfred Hill was supposed to be, but he doesn't speak a word of Maori. You see this day we were down the beach at Omouri, Marky wanted the old Maori, the real old Maori and we had several of them there to do the haka "Ka Mate Ka Mate". Well "Ka Mate Ka Mate" there's no beat in the old Maori song nothing, just war and vicious and all this sort of thing. But Alfred Hill wants a beat.' By the time Hill had finished arranging the haka, the chant had become a tune, and the rhythmic complexities of the haka rhythm had been ironed out into a regular 3/4 metre. {Hei-Tiki: Adventures in Maoriland, written and directed by Geoff Steven, produced by John Maynard. A Phase Three Film Production, 1982.) 8. Alfred Hill, 'Hill Talks about "Hinemoa" and "Waiata Poi." '. Audiotape, rec. 1952. Radio New Zealand Sound Archive, D 925. 9. Hill, D 925. 10. 'Portrait of Alfred Hill', sound recording from Radio New Zealand Sound Archive, T 1935-7. 11. Alfred Hill, Composer's Note to Hinemoa: An Epic of New Zealand, vocal score (Melbourne, 1935), p. 7. 12. 'Weird, romantic': Evening Star, 2 March 1897. Alfred Hill Papers: Newscuttings 1854-1960. Mitchell Library, Sydney, MSS 528/10-13 (hereafter ML MSS). 'Genuine Maori melody': New Zealand Times, 19 November 1896. ML MSS. 13. Evening Post, 13 November 1896. ML MSS. 14. 'Wellington Industrial Exhibition 1896-97'. Alexander Turnbull Library, Ephemera Collection, B Music. 15. Thomson, ADM, p. 63. 16. Evening Post, 19 December 1896. ML MSS. 17. Hill, D 925. 18. Hawkes Bay Herald, 21 January 1897. ML MSS; Thomson, ADM, p. 68. 19. 'The composer ... doubled': Sydney Mail, 27 March 1897. ML MSS. 'ln every city': Alfred Hill, 'Portrait of Alfred Hill' [l9sos], Radio New Zealand Sound Archive, T 1934. 20. New Zealand Herald, 2 March 1897. ML MSS. 21. New Zealand Observer, 6 March 1897. ML MSS. The same writer asked 'Why the Maori warriors in "Hinemoa" didn't tattoo their faces, seeing that the maidens of the chorus stuck feathers in their hair to shew they were quite up in the latest Maori fashions'. 22. John M. Thomson's unpublished typescript 'Hinemoa'. John M. Thomson, letter to the author, 11 July 1992.

23. Flags of Early New Zealand (n.p., 1959). The New Zealand blue ensign, consisting of four stars on a blue ground, with the Union Jack in the first quarter, was not officially adopted as the New Zealand flag until 1902. Keith Sinclair, A Destiny Apart: New Zealand's Search for National Identity (Wellington, 1986), p. 39. 24. Leonard Bell has also noted the popularity of the Hinemoa legend. See Bell, Colonial Constructs, pp. 211 -12. Peter Harcourt documents a later' musical play' based on the Hinemoa legend. Written by Percy Flynn, the work was first performed in August 1915 by the Maori Opera Company, led by Rev. Frederick Bennett. See Peter Harcourt, 'Hinemoa The Play, The Film, The Musical', Music in New Zealand (Autumn 1994), 46-49, 61. 25. The full score is prefaced with the note that 'There are many versions of the story of Hinemoa, the maiden of Rotorua, and the version chosen as the argument for the present musical setting is merely that which was most suitable for the purposes of a cantata'; Hinemoa, Tohunga's introduction. 26. These nine scenes are shown only in the vocal score: the programme for the Wellington Industrial Exhibition Opening Concert divides the work into fifteen 'numbers' (see Figure 2). 27. 'Carried off gold medals': Sydney Mail, 20 March 1897. ML MSS. 'Chrichton in petticoats': Bulletin, 3 April 1897. ML MSS. 28. Painters too used the story of Hinemoa as a pretext for eroticised images of Maori women. See Bell, Colonial Constructs, pp. 210-18. 29. 'Crushed beneath the hero's might; / Cries their chief "Oh, Raha, save /My people" False Waikato, run, /Dim not Ngatitoa's sun!'. Thomas Bracken,Musings inMaoriland (Dunedin, 1890), p. 53. 30. 'The Stage', Sporting Review, 4 March 1897. ML MSS. 31. Evening Post, 19 November 1896. ML MSS. 32. 'At several removes': Leonard Bell, The Maori in European Art (Wellington, 1980), p. 72. A few nouns are the only Maori-language component in the libretto. Pronunciation guides and the occasional gloss appear at the foot of the page on which they occur, e.g. 'Haere ra "Hi-rey rah" a Maori farewell'; 'Mere pronounced "Merry". A battledore shaped club; a stone weapon for hand-to-hand fighting'. 33. Edward Tregear, letter to Alfred Hill, 20 November 1896. Mitchell Library, Alfred Hill Papers, 528 Box 8 Item 1 (hereafter Hill Papers, ML). 34. Robert Stout, letter to Alfred Hill, 19 November 1896. Hill Papers, ML; James R. Purdy, letter to Alfred Hill, 19 November 1896. Hill Papers, ML. 35. Evening Post, 21 November 1896. ML MSS. 36. Wairarapa Daily Times, 19 November 1896. ML MSS. 37. London Musical Courier, 4 February 1897. ML MSS. 38. Hastings Standard, 18 January 1897. ML MSS. 39. 'No calls for sequels': John M. Thomson, personal interview, 17 March 1992. 'America, London and Paris': Wairarapa Daily Times, 19 November 1896. ML MSS. 40. 'Adams's hopes': Evening Post, 19 November 1896. ML MSS. 'Hayward's planned film': Tarn writing to see if you would be interested in the idea of making a sound-film version of your Maori Opera "Hinemoa" for overseas release .... It would be necessary to change the story somewhat for picture purposes but the music and lyrics could be adapted with great advantage'. Rudall Hayward, letter to Alfred Hill, 14 September 1932. Mitchell Library, Alfred Hill Papers, 528/3. 41. Jeremy Commons, 'Alfred Hill's Tapu\ Opera in New Zealand News (Nov.-Dec. 1990), 5-7. 42. Owen Jensen, 'Alfred Hill, Douglas Lilburn, Burl Ives and All', Landfall, 23 (1952), 236-38. 43. Thomson, ADM, p. 218. 44. TheHawera andNormanby Star reported that Hinemoa was 'the boldest work of the kind that New

Zealand has yet produced', 5 December 1896. Hill Papers, ML. 45. The 1990 Commission was established to 'co-ordinate and promote activities for the 1990 year which will involve all in the community in a way that gives full expression to what it means to be a New Zealander'. 1990 Commission, 'Mission Statement', 1990 Commission Auckland launch, Auckland War Memorial Museum, 4 August 1988. 46. Ashley Heenan, letter to author, 9 September 1992. Heenan may be referring to the series of New Zealand Centennial Surveys, published at monthly intervals throughout 1940, the year of the centennial of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. The series' [presented] a comprehensive picture of the nation's development'. F. L. W. Wood, Centennial Survey XI: New Zealand and the World (Wellington, 1940). 47. 'A Celebration of New Zealand Commemorative Music' [programme], St Paul's Cathedral, Wellington, 26 October 1990. Alexander Turnbull Library, Ephemera Collection, B Music, WRO 1990. 48. Hinemoa was the only work on the programme introduced in such detail. Ashley Heenan provided a written programme note for Landfall in Unknown Seas. Terence Vaughan provided his own programme note to The Stream and the Discovery. 49. ' 1990 Spur for Imaginative Concert' ,Dominion, 29 October 1990; Music in New Zealand (Summer 1990/91), 75. 50. Ashley Heenan, letter to J. Sturman, Managing Director, APRA, Sydney, 30 September 1988. Ashley Heenan. 51. Ashley Heenan, letter to Peter Nisbet, 8 November 1987. Ashley Heenan. 52. Ashley Heenan, letter to author, 9 September 1992. 53. Ashley Heenan, letter to J. Sturman, 30 September 1988. Ashley Heenan. 54. B. Chapman, Managing Director, Allans Music (Australia) Pty, letter to Ashley Heenan, 28 February 1989. The score was given with the proviso that when displayed it was to be accompanied by the acknowledgement 'Displayed by Courtesy of the Publishers Allans Music (Australia) Pty'. Ashley Heenan. 55. John M. Thomson, letter to author, 11 July 1992. 56. 'Notable Acquisitions', Turnbull Library Record, 23 (1990), 170. In 1952, Heenan had persuaded Hill to deposit the original manuscript piano score of Hinemoa in the Alexander Turnbull Library. Ashley Heenan, letter to author, 9 September 1992; John M. Thomson, Musical Images: A New Zealand Journey 1840-1990 (Wellington, 1990).