Call of the Huia - old songs made new

Prolific New Zealand composer Alice Forrester Mackay wrote a moving song early in World War 1 called The Grey Ship, part of a cycle called Māoriland. A setting of poetry by her sister-in-law Jessie Mackay, it depicts a woman watching a troop ship carrying her new husband away from shore.

Last month RNZ Concert broadcast The Grey Ship and other songs by the Mackays in a programme of 37 songs titled Call of the Huia, volume one of a “rediscovery” project by conductor and music editor Michael Vinten, 2020 recipient of the Lilburn Research Award. 116 art songs of the three-volume collection were composed in New Zealand between 1895 and 1950 and are being published with accompanying CDs featuring New Zealand singers. Volume one, Call of the Huia, includes songs composed until 1929 and also includes fascinating composer and poet biographies.

Most of these songs were previously unavailable. Aware that New Zealand singers and teachers were troubled by a dearth of good New Zealand repertoire, Vinten sought high quality songs “that people would want to perform these days.”  The collection is not, he says, an historical overview, although some songs create a picture of life in Aotearoa at the time.

About a third are by women. “Women have always been accompanists, singing and piano teachers; it’s not surprising to find them writing music on this domestic scale,” Vinten explains. Māori women were both poets and composers. Four waiata in te reo Māori by Erima Maewa Kaihau are part of this volume, including Haere Ra, originally published as Now is the Hour.

Another third of the songs are by men who travelled to this country from overseas, the rest by New Zealand-born men, many with careers outside music. “For the upper middle class an acceptable education included poetry and music,” Vinten explains. “They wrote music and poetry in their teens and early twenties. Mathematician Alexander Aitken, for example, wrote a fabulous song while a student but didn’t continue composing. He became Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University.”

Some who immigrated to New Zealand were musicians. Englishman Bernard Page, Wellington city organist, dedicated two songs to Katherine Mansfield’s younger sister Jeanne Beauchamp. Vinten notes that Page’s “risqué” songs Your Grave Grey Eyes and Cinnamon Curls were probably compromising for the married composer.

He has ended Volume 1 with three songs about New Zealand birds, Tui, Morepork and Moki, by composer Doris Prentice. “They’re whimsical and absolutely charming,” Vinten says, “and extremely odd, experimental for their time. She worked a lot with a poet called Charles Allen; they were both from Dunedin.”

Singing teachers are already pouncing on the collection, which fills a significant gap.

Volume One, score and CD, is available from SOUNZ, Centre for New Zealand Music.

You can listen to the songs on RNZ’s website here.

A shorter version of this article was published in the NZ Listener issue 21 August 2021