Exploring notions of national style : New Zealand orchestral music in the late twentieth century

Abstract

The question of cultural identity in New Zealand literature, visual art and music has been an important one for many decades. New Zealand's relative isolation, sparse population, short history and colonial past have all contributed to a heightened national awareness of, and sensitivity to, its cultural condition. This study aims to explore, with an analyst's eye and ear, notions of national style through a group of orchestral works. Contemporary critical musicology, which flourished in the 1990s, typically integrates various frames of reference and suggests that analysis be framed in the broader cultural context of a work's genesis and performance. Examining the ways in which New Zealand's notions of national identity have affected its artistic production, this study considers claims that the particular environmental conditions of the land have imprinted themselves onto the nation's music. Furthermore, it investigates claims that New Zealand's remote and open spaces have generated perceptible effects in the nation's musical style, while also asking whether the purported importance of the landscape is not actually a myth which sits alongside the nation's other myths of identity. The literature regarding notions of 'musical space' is surveyed, bringing to light a number of musical elements which may connote space. Seven New Zealand orchestral works, composed between 1976 and 1995 and signalled by the composers as having some connection with the land, are found to share musical features, thus suggesting a national style insofar as 'landscape' works from this period are concerned. I then examine the works for 'space' elements, to investigate whether there are identifiable elements which connote a 'sense of space' in New Zealand music. A corollary of this belief in a national style is that any influences at work from New Zealand land(scapes) on New Zealand music will produce different musical results from those at work from other land(scapes) on music in other countries. After noting the most prevalent musical elements in the New Zealand works, four comparable 'landscape' orchestral works from other countries are also discussed, in order to offset and contextualize the New Zealand findings. This is the first detailed study of New Zealand music that has investigated national style, concepts of landscape-in-music, and musical space through analytical examination. It thus contributes to the small but growing body of New Zealand musical studies, and to an overall picture of New Zealand cultural identity.