HOMAGE TO MY BOOTS (1998)

RAIN (1998)

SKETCHES OF STARS (2000)

STORIES FOR OCEAN SHELLS (2000)

MELODRAMA (2001)

JOY (2003)

101 (2003)

RED FLAME BLUE FLAME (2003)

Red Flame Blue Flame (2003) was commissioned upon winning the Apeldoorn Young composer meeting in 2003 to be premiered the following summer at the International Masterclass Series. Inspired indigenous Thai music, the piece is a depiction of the mercurial and hypnotic dance of a flame as it spats and sinks, twists and emerges in an ever changing seductive yet menacing way. Fragile and dangerous, warm and untouchable, the flame cannot be tied down.

SENSITIVE SPOT (2005)

Luister Naar Kassandra (2005)

IN THAT GATE THEY SHALL ENTER IN THAT HOUSE THEY SHALL DWELL (2005)

ZOMER (2006)

Zomer was written in the late summer as golden sun gleamed through the windows of the studio. It is a miniature constructed upon a folly, written after another composition written by Moore for Orkest de Ereprijs entitled “In that Gate They Shall Enter”, inspired by an excerpt of John Donne’s Sermon XV

And into that gate they shall enter, and in that house they shall dwell, where there shall be no Cloud nor Sun, no darknesse nor dazling, but one equall light, no noyse nor silence, but one equall musick, no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession, no foes nor friends, but an equall communion and Identity, no ends nor beginnings; but one equall eternity.

The piece captures the essence of simplicity and complexity in balance in one equal eternity.

ECLIPSED VISION, A NEVERENDING SONG (2006)

Eclipsed Vision – a never-ending song for everyone, by composer Kate Moore, is a fascinating living sound sculpture where silhouettes of people in slow procession, pitted against the twilight mid-summer sky, emit evolving harmonies in gradual transformation. The result is an otherworldy experience where performers and audience alike are drawn in to the act of music making, engaging with the sacred harmony of the beautiful natural surroundings of the festival and the intangibility of the ineffable evening sky.

Participants from every walk of life, male and female are given a note to sing in procession around a site-specific location within which the audience listens to the slow progression of evolving harmonies. The notes are set out on a sequence of individual cards. Every card contains a specific musical tone. As a singer takes a card, they sing this tone as they follow the previous singer, creating a moving line of vocalists. The harmony gradually changes as people exit and re-enter with new tones. The progression of people alludes to the trajectory of planets around the sun or cells of blood around the body.

The aim of the piece is to unite people, bringing together the variety of communities interested in participating in a fascinating large-scale living sound sculpture. Eclipsed Vision, a never-ending song for everyone, calls for a large body of amateur and/ or professional voices to come together to sing a note each, inviting the potential audience to also be the performers of the piece, blurring the line between where performance stops and the audience begins where the audience and the performers are in the same space.

The harmony gradually changes as people exit and re-enter with new tones. The progression of people alludes to the trajectory of planets around the sun or cells of blood around the body. Each page of the score is set out on a sequence of individual cards kept in a box. Each card contains a specific musical tone. As each singer takes a card they sing this tone as they walk around the perimeter of the performance space.

Uisce (2007)

“Uisce”, meaning “water” in Irish, is an installation for voices, where the voices tumble over each other like water falling. The performers read the score in a unique way so that each performer forges an individual pathway through the piece like a current of water in a river. The original score is a visual artwork set out on five ceiling to floor panels representing a waterfall.

This piece, written at the Inishlacken artist in residence in Ireland curated by Rosie McGurran, was premiered by The Song Company in 2007 during the Modart07 composers meeting in Sydney directed by Roland Peelman.

SPIN BIRD (2008)

The title Spin Bird was inspired by Richard Bach’s novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull.[1] Like the bird who distances himself from the flock to practise and improve the art of flying and diving, the performer demonstrates virtuosic technique modulating at speed through all major and minor keys in a rapidly evolving passage where each note is replaced one at a time by the next note in a progressive sequence. This piece focuses on the soloist’s mastery of technique, reiterating the instrument’s symbolism as a means to self-mastery, thus allowing oneself the exhilaration of flight. We are reminded that the “power over oneself (is) better than a thousand years of power over others.”[2]

[1] Bach, R. Jonathan Livingston Seagull New York: Scribner 1970.

[2] Shah, I. ‘When Death Came to Baghdad’, Tales of The Dervishes, London: Octagon Press 1977, p.191.

THE OPEN ROAD (2008)

In 2008 The Open Road was commissioned by the Korzo Theater in the Netherlands. It is a song cycle adapting lyrics from a set of poems by Walt Whitman under the title Song of the Open Road. Song, the depiction of poetry, chant or other forms of communication through melody, is the most rudimentary form of musical expression, coming straight from the soul. Having the ability to directly reflect the inner shape, dimension and state of a person, it is a language perhaps more effective than any other form of communication to instigate empathy between people in common experience.

The instruments were chosen for their significant symbolic value. The trumpet connects past with present, heaven with earth. Traditionally it is associated with the rising and setting of the sun, a call to battle and the last judgement. The harp, with seven strings held tenuously at tensions in the order of the harmony of the spheres, symbolises mastery of oneself over good and evil. The organ, representing the heavens, speaks with air compacted and pushed through pipes to capture the very breath of the universe. The vocalist is the guide pointing the direction of the road simultaneously reflecting the progression of the journey.

The musical material continues the language of allegory narrating the evolution of the traveller. Melodies built on octatonic scales represent the key or point of origin. The progression of cadences through major and minor triads played by the harp, at times accompanied by the organ, represents the road. Sustained drones illustrate the infinite bounds of the universe, a horizon that lies beyond the limitations of the body played by the organ. Diatonic scales indicate a progression of seven notes representing the cyclical nature of days of the week and seven planets Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. The passing of the hours is suggested by the repetition of regular pulse, a resounding heartbeat, a memory of the transitory nature of life.

Using sparse resources and a purely acoustic setting, the subtlety of foreground and background play an important role, giving the songs a sense of depth that suggest a mobile quality where sound and words hang in the air, fragile subjects to the changeable qualities of the surroundings. Being unamplified and evidently quieter as a result, the audience must acutely attune their attention to the act of listening with a more defined focus.

KLEPSYDRA (2009)

RIDGEWAY (2009)

DEBRIS AND ALCHEMY (2009)

VIOLIN AND SKELETONS (2010)

Broken Rosary (2010)

Broken Rosary, originally a movement from a larger work commissioned by Holland Sinfonia. It is based on the decades of a Rosary. The title comes from a childhood memory, where one day, a long time ago, this child that I was, on a very hot day in the middle of summer wandered into my mother’s bedroom to play with the small trinkets that belonged to my grandmother, Oma, that I found in a little wooden box in a drawer. Inside was a little ring, a prayer book, and a metal rosary. These objects were intriguing to me as I did not know what they were. I took the little ring out of the box. It was too big for my tiny fingers. I opened the prayer book with illustrations of Mary and the saints that I opened and closed and placed back in the box, and then lifted out the Rosary, but as I did so, it dropped to the floor and broke. I felt my skin burn with shame and sorrow. I stood in the shadows of the dark bedroom with the broken beads at my feet, that contained the memory of my grandmother. The sound of the ceiling fan became unbearably loud. From this moment I devoted myself to repairing lost memories, stringing each one back together, connecting each one bead by bead, note by note to make the string whole again.

Kate Moore 07 October 2024

No Man’s Land for cello octet

FATAL STRANGERS (2010)

Fatal strangers (2010) was commissioned by Ensemble Lucillin. It is an electric quartet for EWI, electric violin, synthesizer and drums. The music is trance-like, hypnotic and ritualistic. The strange psychedelic qualities of the piece, emphasized by the electronic sound of the instruments, draws the listener in to its web of sonic intrigue and escapism. It could have taken place in the dungeons of a nightclub in the early hours of the morning. A late-night train rattles by. The band plays on in the backrooms of a derelict building, smokey, decadent, strange, dark.

VELVET (2010)

Commissioned by Ashley Bathgate and Lisa Moore, with the assistance of The Australia Council for the Arts, Velvet was inspired by the depiction of cloth in Renaissance paintings – movement, vitality and earthiness are captured and distilled within the frame and stillness of the painting. The shades of light and dark are emphasised by the lines and creases where the sun catches its outlines. Where the tactile fabric is inverted, shadows are made darker by the turgid grottos and canyons carved into the tectonic landscape of its folds.

The Body is an ear (2011)

Commissioned by Stichting Orgelpark, The body is an ear was originally a composition for solo organ. The piece explores the different registration and stops of the organ, creating stereo dialogue within the instrument itself. She was given the opportunity to arrange the piece to be performed on two organs on opposite walls of Orgelpark, which translated into an arrangement for two pianos. It was inspired by the reflection of an ancient Iranian folk story told in the modern Sufi exegesis The Mystery of Sound and Music by Hasrat Inayat Khan, whereby the soul happily floating freely was encouraged by God to enter the body so as to be able to hear the beauty of the music of the spheres.

DAYS AND NATURE (2012)

Sphinx for double cello octet

THE HERMIT THRUSH AND THE ASTRONAUT (2012)

Written at The MacDowell Colony. Commissioned by The Hartt School/University of Hartford with funds from the Faculty Development Fund for bassist Robert Black.

Something ancient, something modern, something timeless:

At this moment there is a carved astronaut caught amidst engraved vine leaves on the pillars of an ancient cathedral and there is a bird that has for centuries sung the same song but refuses at all costs, each time it sings, to repeat it in the same way. The bird’s tune is captured by a distant memory of an ancient forgotten past. It bubbles to the surface, overflowing with the excitement of coming to life as something new, never heard before.

Written while on residence in New Hampshire, the piece was inspired by the infinitely varied birdsong of the hermit thrush, a native bird to the area, and the stone engraving of an astronaut on the door of the Salamanca cathedral in Spain. The collision of old and new worlds forms the crucible in which the music is forged.

HEATHER (2013)

Commissioned by the Bendigo festival of music for Anna McMichael and Zubin Kanga, Heather was written whilst hiking in the inner and outer-Hebrides of Scotland. Taking her notebook with her, the composer drew patterns of the ancient ruined walls that scatter the islands, upon which the purple flower of the heath grew. The title Heather alludes to a wild hedge of purple flowers that grows in patterns marking the lines where a building once stood. The piece is rich in resonant textures that intertwine and slowly rotate like undergrowth as it gradually overtakes the ruined wall.

BESTIARY (2014)

Telephone (2014)

Telephone was geschreven als een verjaardag cadeautje voor Louis Andriessen voor zijn 75 verjaardagfeest. De première was in het Muziekgebouw voor twee trumpets uit Asko Scho…dan heb ik een bewerking gemaakt voor Leine Roebana en zat het in mijn Herz Cyclus. Nu is het in de repertoire voor Herz Ensemble. De naam Telefoon kwam uit mijn eerste herinnering van mijn eerste gesprek met Louis in een publiek phone booth bij de jeugd hostel in Den Haag. 

Telephone was written as a birthday gift for Louis Andriessen for his 75 birthday concert and feast. The premiere was in het Muziekgebouw and was performed by two trumpets across the balconies of the foyer of the concert hall. Subsequently I made an arrangement of the piece for Leine Roebana that was included in the dance cycle Herz. Now the piece is included in the regular repertoire of Herz Ensemble. The name Telephone came from my memory of the first conversation I had with Louis in a public telephone booth next to the youth hostel in The Hague. The piece is based on the notion of a hocket. An ancient compositional device wherein the notes of a melody are exchanged between the instruments. This was embraced by Louis in his seminal work Hoketus.

THE ART OF LEVITATION (2014)

FERN 

canon (2014) 4 pianos

BUSHRANGER PSYCHODRAMA (2014)

Bushranger Psychodrama is a psychological melodrama performed by Iarla O’lionard about a highwayman in the bush. Drawing from the iconic bushranger Ned Kelly who dictated his dramatic and ruthless manifesto to his fellow highwayman Joe Byrne in 1879, and the mythology, landscape and narrative of Australian colonial history where bushrangers became heroes of the people under the oppressive governance of the Redcoats, English officials who saw to the policing of the penal colony. Figures including Irish felon Ned Kelly became a symbol of the rebellion of the repressed. The work is 20 minutes in duration, a one movement monologue that enters into the darkest reaches of the human psyche pitted against the most isolated and harshest foreign landscape imaginable to an Irishman. Set loose in the most remote wilderness, wild, raw and untamed, a bushranger battles the dark hollows of his mind. He is rebelling against the authorities and fighting for the dispossessed but his real battle is his own fear of an insatiable emptiness leading to nowhere not even the horizon. He is terrified of being caught but who will find him out here where there is nothing but ghosts. Bushranger Psychodrama is strange and disconcerting story about a man pursued by his own shadow. Iarla O’lionard sings in a dialect stemming from Irish language, reminiscent of that which was spoken amongst the earliest European settlers of the south east of Australia. 

THE DAM (2015)

The Dam is based on the rhythms of the sounds made by cicadas, crickets, frogs, birds, flies, spiders and other creatures that inhabit a waterhole in the bush. Far away from human intervention, their evening song becomes a great choir joyously singing out into the vast universe. It is possible from far away to hear where the waterhole is without being able to see it and it is also possible to hear the shape of the landscape around it as many tiny creatures create a sonic pointillistic landscape. I am attracted to the almost but not quite polyrhythmic tapestry of sound they create.

Voiceworks II (2015)

Voiceworks II is about the fluctuating rhythms and durations of breath as it changes over time. The artist records herself singing a melody line where each note is the duration of one breath. Multiple recordings are made of the same melody across the hours of a day. Each recording is then overlaid and the micro changes in the length of each breath varies according to the time of the day, mood, emotion and energy of the artist, creating a rich tapestry of sound. The essence of the artist is encoded within the recordings as the music is directly related to her physicality.

dies irae (2015)

Dies Irae for violin and piano was written at Tanglewood as part of the composer fellowship program A Piece a Day challenge. The composer, deep in her own world, peered out the window over the grounds of the Boston Symphony summer residence while the theme of the Dies Irae drifted between the floorboards from as student practising below. The composer thought about the words of the Requiem Mass and as a result her piece became a miniature glimpse into an inner world seeking transcendence. It is spiritual meditation on forgiveness and redemption.

Sliabh Beagh (2015)

TARANTELLA (2016)

Tarantella, inspired the tradition of Italian tarantism, was written upon the eve of the feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in 2016. It is a tarantella, invoking the frenzied dance mania of a spider bite, a crisis call, that provides a release for the poison entrapped within the body.

 LIDY’S PIECE (2016)

Lidy’s Piece – Kate Moore (2016)

Written for cellist Lidy Blijdorp to be included in the Herz Cycle set for the Leine Roebana dance company, Lidy’s Piece is a whimsical dance piece and musical portrait of Lidy. It begins with a cadenza followed by a melody loosely based on lydian mode, telling a mysterious ancient tale that, like birdsong, cannot be deciphered. Speckled with natural harmonics, polyphony can be heard between high and low within the solo line, not unlike the complex multi-dimensional melodies woven into the single line of a Bach cello Suite. It winds up to a ferociously spinning maelstrom that stretches to the highest reaches of the cello, taking flight like a bird, transcending into the blue light of the sky.

HERZ CYCLE (2016)

Herz cycle – program notes (taken from liner notes from CD)

In 2008, I wrote a song cycle called The Open Road after Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman. This poem resonated with me, drawing the parallel between a journey as a metaphor for the path each person takes from birth to death and the interrelationship of all living things through the universal soul. It is transcendental and radiates with sublime positivity where every creature can find strength within themselves, forming giant well-meaning jigsaw puzzle. I think of the Herz Cycle to be a comment on this, thinking back to that poem and concluding a darker side to the beaming positivity portrayed by Whitman. The darker side of Herz cycle explores elements of struggle, of hidden torment and unseen mystery. Hints of forbidden witchcraft, blood, an ominous stormy sky and monolithic stones against a darkened horizon can be seen only in the reflections on the surfaces of ponds and puddles. Herz Cycle is about engravings of Holy Mary and her depiction through religious iconography from ancient times to the present day. As the dance piece evolved and the trio emerged as main characters in the narrative of this piece, I began to obsess about the image of the trio and its relationship to the triple Goddess Hekate, who was worshipped and revered in Scotland. Many stone carvings of her are strewn across the ancient countryside. She features prominently in “the Scottish Play”. I began to ponder the concept of the all-powerful female deity steeped in the mysteries of the divine feminine, witchcraft, sorcery, ritual, divination, premonition, hidden wisdom and healing. The cycle takes on a ritualistic quality where each piece could perhaps be a spell.

Spel I from Coral Speak (August 2016)

Spel I from Coral Speak, written for Louise Devenish, is a solo piece for vibraphone that is part of a percussion suite of laments and playful dances in homage to the fragility of the Great Barrier Reef, where the corals are currently under threat due to climate changes and human intervention. Each piece imagines the colourful interplay of movement between the living corals, joyful sentient creatures celebrating their idyllic surrounding and utopian waters. The pieces have a melancholic edge at the prospect of the corals retreating and dissipating as the water changes. The ebullient dance of life and beauty comes to an abrupt halt as it is silenced and abandoned, leaving behind a skeleton like a ruined underwater city that once thrived, never to return.

CASSINI SUITE (2017)

Cassini Suite – by Kate Moore
24-10-2017

Cassini is a sound sculpture made to honour the passing of the Cassini probe in Saturn’s atmosphere. Cassini took images of the rings of Saturn that were revealed to be an infinitesimal array of thousands of shards of glistening minerals suspended in Saturn’s atmosphere. The rings glisten as they reflect the Sun’s rays and appear as delicate and fragile as the fine white surface of porcelain. Comprised of hundreds of shards of broken pieces of porcelain and clay, the pieces of the Cassini sculpture gently sway and tap each other to create a very soft and subtle gentle sound sculpture so sensitive that it moves with the slightest fluctuation in the air. This sculpture was created at EKWC (European Keramiek Werk Center) in Oisterwijk and is incorporated into the performance “Porcelain” by Slagwerk Den Haag in the Netherlands. The sculpture was realised and first exhibited at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria Italy.

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Cassini Suite is a sound installation, sculpture and performance featuring five sets of thirty original, hand-made percussion instruments, a set of porcelain pipes and hundreds of suspended porcelain shards, built and designed by the composer. The objects explore acoustic pieces including disks, bowls, tubes, and irregular shapes and the subtle differences of sound found in each in relation to pitch, resonance and amplification. The instruments were commissioned by Slagwerk Den Haag and were built at EKWC The European Ceramic Work Centre wherein the composer underwent a three month residency. Here she learned how to wield clay, mix and construct porcelain and build and design plaster molds. Working intensively during that period, she constructed hundreds of porcelain musical objects.

The composer’s interest in porcelain as a musical material came about soon after arriving in The Netherlands 2002, searching for ceramic museums and factories to engage with Dutch history and culture. The China Trade coincides with the rise of the iconic Delftware, depicting Dutch scenes of life intricately hand-drawn details in blue designs upon vases, tiles, plates, cups and jars. The sound of porcelain objects when pinged is delightful. By gently the flicking the surface of a piece of porcelain, the object emits a pure pitch like a bell. The sound of the ping indicates the purity of the material, its shape, how large it is and how thick its walls are. Well-made porcelain has a beautiful sound, whereas any crack or impurity in the material causes the ping becomes a thud or a rattle. Large objects tend to have a deeper pitch, yet the thinner the wall of the object, the lower the pitch due to the resistance of the material. Information about the quality of porcelain, carried by the sound of the object is a critical part of the technique of porcelain making.

Inspiration for the performance installation comes from the exploration of the cyclical passing of Time, temporal, conceptual, philosophical and mythological. Time through history can be marked by the passing of generations. Archeological sites reveal the intimate secrets of our ancient ancestors through thousands of pieces of broken pottery recovered from the ground. Piecing together these pieces can be likened to reconstructing a jigsaw puzzle, one of long forgotten civilisations, places, memories and stories. A klepsydra was an ancient water-clock made of alabaster. As water seeped through its surface, images of deities depicting the planets and decan stars became visible corresponding to the passing of hours held in the heavenly bodies. Saturn, the slowest planet to make its cycle across the sky, with sidereal orbit of 30 years, came to represent Time itself. Saturn, the melancholic Roman god of generations, a hooded grim-reaper, devours youth and life and plants the seeds of new life in return. Cyclical in nature, the rings of Saturn remind us that all that goes around comes around.

The Cassini Space probe embarked on a journey in 1997 to observe the rings of Saturn. Saturn’s rings were revealed to be many thousands of shards of glassy material of minerals and rocks reflecting light from the sun. Like the pieces of broken ceramics recovered from earth by archeologists, the broken splinters of Saturn’s rings reveal the ancient history of the planet itself. The images, taken by Cassini before meeting her death on the 15 September 2017 by plummeting into Saturn’s atmosphere, allude to the suspension of time as broken shards drift in rings around the iconic planet’s gravitational field as though the broken pottery remains hidden beneath our feet, cold and dry, encased in earth had been extracted by Time itself and immortalised in the heavens, encapsulated in a giant celestial clock.

CASSINI (2017)

Cassini is a sound sculpture made to honour the passing of the Cassini probe in Saturn’s atmosphere. Cassini took images of the rings of Saturn that were revealed to be an infinitesimal array of thousands of shards of glistening minerals suspended in Saturn’s atmosphere. The rings glisten as they reflect the Sun’s rays and appear as delicate and fragile as the fine white surface of porcelain. Comprised of hundreds of shards of broken pieces of porcelain and clay, the pieces of the Cassini sculpture gently sway and tap each other to create a very soft and subtle gentle sound sculpture so sensitive that it moves with the slightest fluctuation in the air. This sculpture was created at EKWC (European Keramiek Werk Center) in Oisterwijk and is incorporated into the performance “Porcelain” by Slagwerk Den Haag in the Netherlands. The sculpture was realised and first exhibited at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria Italy.

SACRED ENVIRONMENT (2017)

Sacred Environment – eco-oratorio

The eco-oratorio Sacred Environment is not about any specific nature region but is about the Sacred nature of The Environment – globally and universally. This is my statement about The Environment. Commissioned by The Holland Festival to be performed by the Dutch Groot Omroepkoor and Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, it was premiered in the Concertgebouw for the Zaterdag Matinee and Holland Festival in 2017. I use the landscape of Dharug, Yengo and Wollemi national parks in NSW Australia as the imagery to set the scene of my eco oratorio because it is the forest I that I know best that was connected to my family heritage in Australia and symbolic because of the Wollemi Pine which is the oldest and the rarest tree in the world, however, it is not about my family, it is not about me, it is not about this particular forest and it is not about “Aboriginal” people. It is about the way in which balance and justice in the world is dependent upon The Environment and because of that it is Sacred. The Main character and protagonist of the oratorio is the “Blindfolded woman” who is a personification of the forest (all forests) and who is “Lady Justice” The Forest. Lady Justice is blindfolded and holds balance scales, and in some instances she holds the balance of two swords, which when out of balance causes destruction. The balance of the forest ecosystem is vital for the sustainability of life on earth and if out of balance will cause destruction in the form of death, disease, famine, war and degradation of the life support system of the world.

way of the dead (2017)

Way of the dead is a dance macabre inspired by the Mexican festival Day of the Dead on all souls day. It was commissioned by Ken Unsworth for the dance cycle “Restraints” that later became renamed as “Revolver”, released as an album on the label Unsounds. The violin is often associated with the character of Death, the grim reaper and it was the grim reaper that danced to this piece. It was premiered in Ken’s studio on Halloween performed by Anna McMichael with an ensemble featuring Claire Edwards (percussion), Genevieve Lang (harp) and Rowena McNeish (cello) and Kirsty McCahon (bass).

The boxer (2017)

Music box: revolver (2017)

Song of ropes (2017)

Gatekeeper (2017)

Stroming (2017)

Arc-en-ciel (2018)

LUCIDITY: HANDS OF EYES (2018)

LUCIDITY was inspired by the apparition of St Lucie who appears to Dante at the beginning of the Divine Comedy to light the true path when he was lost in a dark forest. Saint Lucie, a saint whose jealous lover gauged her eyes out, she was given the gift of Divine Sight in return by God who took pity on her. Her iconic imagery is powerful, depicting a blind woman who holds her eyes on the palm of her hand. With the power of divine-sight, she can navigate through the darkness without being able to see, and lead those who are lost to safety. Her feast day is celebrated in the depths of winter, where young women wear wreaths of candles upon their head. The music is mysterious and mystical, a ritual demonstrating the push and pull between darkness and light.

BLACKBIRD SONG (2018)

Blackbird song is an expansive melody written in response to the early morning cantillation of a Merel. In the earliest twilight hours of the morning, before the sunrise chorus of birds, a tiny unassuming blackbird clad in shiny jet-black feathers, perches upon a high post and sings with all its might an epic melancholic tale of adventure and fantasy with its yellow beak pointed toward the heavens. Without knowing it the bird has captivated the imagination of the listener, who, despite being unable to understand the vocabulary and grammar of its language, is taken along on a journey of the blackbird’s worldly and otherworldly experiences.

SPACE JUNK (2019)

Space-junk is a sonic novella for large ensemble, electronics and 4 androgynous singers. It portrays a dystopian and other-worldly narrative through disconcerting, splintered musical landscapes. The nature of the narrative is inspired by that of a graphic novel, delving into the alienation of four ambiguous characters at odds with each other and their environment. They are in search of stars through a haze of splintered sonic shards shooting through the atmosphere at a million miles per second.

Miserere (2019)

Miserere is a mysterious 51 note melody, written for violinist Joe Puglia for the Space Junk project that was premiered in 2019 by ASKO Schoenberg Ensemble for the Minimal Music Festival in the Muziekgebouw and arranged for Herz Ensemble. It is a reference to Psalm 51 which evokes a deep sense of emotional rapture, repentance and self-reproach. It is a confessional psalm that invokes the cleansing of one’s transgressional  actions in mind, body and spirit and is like a ritual bath for purification. The music reflects this in that it is designed upon four equal phrases, each one inspired by the four cosmic elements: firmament, wind, fire and water, and the four humoristic temperaments: Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric, and Melancholic, which turn in one direction, in the right order, to form a turning wheel, forming an hypnotic mantra for healing through remedy, the rebalancing of the humours to return to perfect equilibrium and become again in peace.

PRELUDE (2019)

Prelude was written with the idea of bird flight and the freedom a bird has to follow the currents of the wind. I wanted to see where the melody would take me. Constructed in a way that each note responds to the one before, note by note, the music takes itself on a journey. Different to Bach, where the preconceived map or underlying harmonic blueprint of the piece is the defining feature, I set the melody free to find its own way.

Magenta Magnetic (2019)

The inspiration for Magenta Magnetic was brought about by an ongoing conversation with Mark McCaughrean from ESTEC. Early in the year I was generously guided on a tour of the ESTEC premises where I was given descriptions of some of the projects conducted at their facility just outside The Hague. Overwhelmed by the immensity of what I was seeing, an anti-gravity chamber, a room of lights as powerful as a sun, a wall of speakers capable of producing sound loud enough to be dangerously destructive, a Mars simulator, a satellite testing room to name some of the projects I saw. The thought of Space is terrifying. It’s limitless, vast and unknown. Its eerie and seductive presence sparks the inspiration for infinite possibilities, countless stories, music and images attempt to connect with the ineffable, setting up a tantalising challenge for scientists and engineers to research, theorise and try to understand. The quest to conquer space is met with the undeniable fact that all that we thought we knew was or at least might be wrong, and then that’s when things became strange. We look up into the sky and suddenly there lies a mysterious and magnificent orb in our line of sight that we hadn’t noticed before, it is neither a sun nor a moon, although it could be both. Perfectly round and white, it is not bright enough to be blinding when we look at it yet too bright to be able to observe the craters of the Moon’s face. We stare at it unflinchingly. Clouds drift by and it remains unchanging, silent, still. Its presence is disconcerting. It is like a physical manifestation of conscience, a silent guardian that has no need to speak, where a simple glance sends a cold shiver of shame through our veins. We ponder what it could mean. Perhaps it is a sign from another realm, a messenger, a herald for the end of time. It was unexpected. We didn’t ask for it. It was simply there, caught in the push and pull of gravity, free falling in orbit, slowly spinning just beyond reach and then, without a word it was gone.

THE CROW 2019

The Crow (September 2019)

Commissioned by Orgelpark

The Crow, performed by Matthijs Koene on pan-pipes and Geerten van de Wetering on organ, is a compilation of chants and incantations paving the way through the song of this peculiar bird, for a journey to the other world. Kate Moore inspired by epic story cycles of Celtic Mythology, The Canterbury Tales, Beowulf and the Prose Edda. Through the character of the crow, a universal archetype, stories of light and dark, birth and death, earth and nature emerge through the powerful medium of music where myth, folk-lore and history are interwoven into a rich tapestry of imaginary landscapes, characters and happenings seen through the eyes of the mysterious and idiosyncratic archetype of the crow. The crow is a messenger from the other world, an ambassador for the unseen. Associated with fate and the pull between the forces of dark and light, the crow has been known to sing a rare song at the moment the soul passes to another realm.

DE REIGER 2019

De Reiger

My inspiration for the new piece comes from the bird, the heron. When I first moved to Amsterdam, to the Jerusalem neighbourhood in Frankendael, I was struck by the way in which these incredible waterbirds, slender in shape, would stand outside the doors of the tiny houses like spirits. I imagined that they were birds from the other world awaiting ghosts from inside the houses, to take them on a short journey like chauffeurs for the souls. The piece is based on the movement of the bird’s wings as it takes flight towards the sunset.

PSALM 3 (2019)

This Psalm is a psalm that evokes the protection of God against the enemy. It is a statement that all people are God’s people and all life is sustained by God, for those who reach out for salvation. No person, neither enemy, national group or country has the power to declare whether another person, nation or country is worthy of the protection of God. In the light of God who is all powerful, all seeing, all protecting and all loving, all people, nations and countries are worthy of salvation.

In setting the psalm, I found the music within the text, where the cantillation of the melody, sprang from the emotionality and deep resonance of the Psalm. Based upon the key of C minor, a dark key associated with suffering, the voices in canon grow from a solo mezzo voice, like branches of a tree riddled with knots. Distant portamenti between the voices, moving at different speeds, allude to the sirens of far-away emergency vehicles.

Psalm 3 is a harrowing and evocative plea from a place of despair where a broken leader prays for protection against his enemies. He knows that justice will be brought upon those named, whose evil ways cloud their higher judgement, because The Lord, creator, and protector of all can see all and will expose it. By calling out to The Lord, he upholds the faith that justice will be done, retribution against his enemies will be achieved and balance will once again be restored. In this, the divine king finds solace and comfort, finding peace within the storm.

ICARUS SONG 2019

Icarus song

A hidden, secret piece written for bassist Kirsty McCahon, for the cycle Restraints commissioned by Ken Unsworth.

The story of Icarus is fascinating and resonates in today’s society as ever, of a young man given the gift of wings from his ingenious father who built them for him as a gift. The young man is warned by his father not to fly too low so that the moisture from the ocean’s waves will not drag the wings into the water and become too heavy to lift, or to fly too high where the heat from the sun’s rays will melt the wax where the wings will disintegrate and fall apart. The young man wears the wings and is delighted with his newfound freedom of flying, daring to reach higher and higher, feeling the wing against his arms and leg as he spins and dives and rises, forgetting the warning of his father, he nears the sun and his wings begin to fall apart. Without the wings of his father, he is left bare to fall from such a height and plummets to his inevitable death.

This song was written for double bass, to play the melody in the highest register of the bass, where the low register represents the sea and the high register represents the sun. The melody, reminiscent of a folk tune melody, flies high, soaring into the extremes of the instrument. Too high. The tension of the instrument is felt. The desire to fall is magnetic.

PIANO CONCERTO “BEATRICE” (2019)

PRELUDE 2019

Prelude was written with the idea of bird flight and the freedom a bird has to follow the currents of the wind. I wanted to see where the melody would take me. Constructed in a way that each note responds to the one before, note by note, the music takes itself on a journey. Different to Bach, where the preconceived map or underlying harmonic blueprint of the piece is the defining feature, I set the melody free to find its own way.

HEIDE MIDZOMER (2020) – BLACKPENCIL

Heide Midzomer

In recent years I have been thinking deeply about the cultural connection to land through ancestral heritage. This is something that I think about as a result of considering my identity as a non-indigenous Australian. An important part of indigenous culture is a connection to ancestry which is inseparable from land. I question which land I myself belong to. This took me on a long walking route through the Celtic and Roman trade routes of The Netherlands, Southern England, Wales and Ireland where I find common cultural connections. Upon visiting the Heide in The Netherlands this summer, the landscape to which my own ancestors are attached, I wondered about the traditions that they upheld and the music that they would have made. Music was connected to festivities, worship and dance. I see remnants of these traditions kept in countryside towns and villages in The Netherlands and southern England and I construct my own imagination of what their music may have sounded like.

02022020 BEETHOVEN (2020)

02022020 Beethoven is an absurdist tongue in cheek comic strip composition about Ghost Beethoven’s 2020 arrangement of the second movement of the second symphony. It is Beethoven Through The Looking Glass in a surreal turned around world of mirror images and spells for expanding and contracting, where all the major triads are turned into minor cadences. Monumental, fierce, mysterious, magic Punk Beethoven, is a surrealist composer who came back to haunt us in the middle of an existential crisis. Beethoven you old joker you! This is a weird tragicomedy of iconic imagery reworked in hyper-colours.

CANTICO DEL SOLE (2021) – TEXT BY SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Canticle of Creatures “Cantico del Sole” – Kate Moore

I came to know the Canticle of Creatures “Cantico del Sole” in December 2017. I had travelled to Assisi with my friend, concert pianist Vivian Choi, on a pilgrimage for Christmas. We had been invited on a personal tour of San Damiano, a sacred place that was rebuilt by Saint Francis himself for Saint Clare. Here we attended Midnight Mass. On this tour we visited the cell where Clare lived, the chapel and the courtyard where her well can be found. We were also guided through the Basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli, the Portiuncula and the garden of thornless roses and through corridors decorated and filled with scenes of the Nativity from every country in the world. We were also guided through the Basilica of Saint Clare where we could visit her tomb. It was a moving and emotional spiritual experience that deeply affected me and changed the course of my life. Once the tour was complete, we were given a copy of the Canticle as a gift by the friars who had guided us. 

The Canticle of Creatures is an anthem to the essential and elemental cosmology of the trinitarian bond between Creator, Creation and Created in love, wholeness and perfect balance. It is an incantation of divine love evoking the holistic restoration and remedy of the body and spirit through the sustenance provided by the Sun and the nourishment provided by Earth, where the experience of corporality and spirituality is connected to the interplay of equal opposite elements, wind and water, fire and earth in balance and harmony guided by the daylight warmth of the sun and cool night-time serenity of the moon and stars. The wind forms the weather, rising in the air, warm and moist in balance with the vital element of water, cool and moist, precious and humble, inhabiting the earth. The rising element of fire is hot and dry and is in balance with the cool dry element of the earth that provides fruit, flowers and herbs. The four elements of nature, interacting with each other in harmony and balance, articulated by the symmetry of the text, portray a beautiful vision where Nature provides all that is essential to nourish and sustain all the creatures.

The way in which the Canticle is structured resonates with the well-known Medieval humoral theory developed by Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna, inspired by Aristotle. Humoral theory was the foundation of medical practise in the medieval world and was standard until the modern era. Within this philosophy, the four elements, air, water, fire, earth form the universe, and simultaneously form the material body. The elements correspond the four humours found within the body, blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile, and animate the four temperaments, sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic. It was believed that disease and illness of the body were due to an imbalance of humours, which were also responsible for mental maladies related to the temperaments such as the feeling of being melancholic. Music was used to balance the temperaments in the same way that medicinal herbs were used to balance the humours to cure disease. Certain modes and scales were said to be of a certain temperament and therefore in order to balance the temperament of a patient, a scale of equal opposite temperament was played for or by the patient to restore balance. This practise was known in the time of Saint Francis and in this light, it is compelling to consider that the Canticle of Creatures was written to heal and restore harmony within the body through the humours and sooth and bring peace to the mind by balancing the temperaments. It is a beautiful vision, illustrated within the text, to consider that the restoration and healing of the body by restoring the balance of the elements is the same as that of Nature and by restoring balance and harmony to Nature, Nature, like the body is also being healed.

In 2021 I was commissioned by the community of Sant Egidio in Amsterdam to write a new work to celebrate the jubilee year of the organ in the Mozes en Aaronkerk on Waterlooplein. The concert and celebration were planned for October and because the date of the concert was close to the feast of Saint Francis I was inspired to set the Canticle of Creatures for this event. I chose to set the Canticle to an ensemble featuring organ, harp, saxophone and voice, based on the instrumentation of a song cycle that I wrote in 2008 called The Open Road, with poems by Walt Whitman. The poems of Whitman in my mind resonate with the Canticle of Creatures of Saint Francis in that Whitman portrays a vision where Nature is all that is essential to sustain the journey and vitality of the body and soul. It was written for Herz Ensemble.

BLUE COBALT (2021) – SOLO GUITAR

Blue Cobalt

The title is inspired by the colour blue cobalt. Striking in intensity, this colour has an electric spirituality, alive with mystery and desire. Historically, used on ceramic and glass ware, this iconic pigment is the signature colour of China and Delftware. Intricate details of life scenes are depicted upon tiles and vases, capturing intimate moments in blue. Vivid blue moments provide the backdrop to the composition. The composer wrote the piece on a honky tonk piano in a vast ceramic workshop with giant windows where light streamed as though from a Vermeer painting, casting shadows across giant ceramic sculptures. The strange shapes and forms of the clay objects became animated with the music, as though dancing, transcending their cumbersome weight of stone, to become living nymphs and sprites in the changing light.

Suite for Solo Cello “Sad Melodies”

Phoenix for cello octet

The Storm

Isabella

Isabella Suite – solo triple harp
Lamento – Ensemble Scordatura
Canzone – Herz Ensemble + solo voice and female vocal ensemble

CELLO CONCERTO “FRIDA’S REIS” (2022)

SPLINTERED RIVERS (2022)

CONCERTO FOR TWO PIANOS “THORNS” (2022)

ROSAE ET LILIA: PORTRAITS OF ST CECILIA (2022)

Rosae et Lilia, Portraits of Saint Cecilia

The song cycle written for a vocal ensemble of 8 singers is a modern mystery play outlining an interpretation of the life of the 3^rd century figure of Saint Cecilia. Through a modern filter, her life is depicted in tableaux form, illustrating scenes from her life from a child, her initiation into adulthood and her martyrdom. As the saint of music, the composer considered the symbolic meaning of these aspects of her life, which have been written about through the ages. Her connection with music and spirituality holds weight in its relationship to modern music and its significance upon a contemporary platform. The composer rewrote aspects of her life in relationship to what it would imply in a modern world. The subjects that are explored revolve around different aspects of the notion of love and how it is revealed in different situations at different moments in the life cycle of a young woman. Aspects of her world in 3^rd century Rome are also incorporated to create a disconcerting and poetic vision of the timelessness of a young woman as she reaches adulthood.

Blue Light Sphere (2023)

Blue Light Sphere

Transcendental blue light atmosphere: 
currents of equal opposites 
expanding and contracting
against each other
colliding and tearing apart
to create a vibrant equilibrium
of ocean currents
push and pull,
heightened sensitivity, 
blue sparks of vitality,
electric light
infiltrating the twilight sky,
hyperawareness,
volume turned up to all the senses,
elation of the soul,
vivid colours, 
unbearable ecstasy,
chest bursting with birdsong,
with love,
breathing lungs,
strings in the air,
music like luminescence
touching the skin,
a grand chorus of presence,
a song, 
a well spring 
from ground to the universe.

CONCERTO FOR VIOLA “DE STIJGENDE ZEESPIEGEL (2023)

Susanna’s Lament – solo triple harp

E is for Elijah (2023) for solo violin

E is for Elijah – Kate Moore

E is for Elijah is inspired by the Jewish folk story Elijah’s violin. It is a beautiful fable wherein a young princess asks of her father for an enchanted violin to play, a violin called Elijah’s violin. The father travels far and wide in search of this violin to no avail. Then one day,  in a cave a mysterious old man appears and tells him where the violin can be found. The father asks how he can repay the old man and the man answers

“There will come a day when you will repay me in full, for your daughter will set free the imprisoned melodies”

The father asks the name of the old man and he replies that his name is Elijah and then vanishes into the shadows.

The father finds the violin and the owner of the violin tells the father that his daughter who has been cursed has been turned to stone. The father remembers the prophecy of Elijah that the violin will set free the daughter trapped in stone. He visits the daughter and sets her free by burning three strands of the hair from the bow. She tells the story of how she became entrapped in stone. She had seen her reflection in a mirror and the reflection jumped out of the mirror, turning her to stone and running free into the world in her place. The father saw what had happened and told the daughter that she must smash the mirror so that her reflection would no longer be free to run wild in the world in her place. Blindfolded, so that she may never see her reflection again, she smashes the mirror and is freed forever.

The father then takes Elijah’s violin to his own daughter, who lifts the bow the the violin and without effort timeless melodies spring forth without any effort, becoming freed from the violin like a genie from a lamp. She thanks her father with a hug.

The tales tells a story of the way in which vanity can entrap the soul, and kindness, humility and gratitude can set the soul free, allowing music to fly without effort.

CHESTNUT POET (2023)

CRAB CANON (2024)

Inspired by the celestial constellation of the Crab, the new composition by composer Kate Moore, is based on the underlying structure of a crab canon, a palindromic canon between two voices that are perfectly symmetrical, ornamented and varied upon an underlying thread. The crab canon in effect, is a cantus firmus between the stringed instruments upon which double bass performs and elegaic lament supported by the celestial sonorities of the harp. That piece is about deep space, light and dark and the interconnectedness of moving bodies as they are dialogue with each other as they simultaneously move forwards and backwards, sideways and upside down.

A BEAUTIFUL PATH: OSSENLIED (2024)

A Beautiful Path

“I want to sing the landscape to life – it is already alive but it is bursting with stories and magic that want to be found and listened to and heard. I want to tap into the wild energy. I love it so much!” – Kate Moore

A Beautiful Path

This artistic research is about the creative process at the intersection between nature and culture. Outside, where the atelier has no walls, ‘plein air composing’ captures the authentic colours and changing light in the fields and forests directly as the composer is immersed in it. The route itself is a living score, one that depicts music as opposed to a composition that depicts a landscape. Set in motion, the rhythm of steps through an orchestration of evolving ecosystems is a fluctuating sensory and emotive experience as the surroundings change in mood and temperature similar to the experience of listening to music in a concert as it unfolds. In doing so the composer is translating natural ecosystems into the language of music.

Dit artistieke onderzoek gaat over het creatieve proces op het snijpunt van natuur en cultuur. Buiten – waar het atelier geen muren heeft – legt ‘plein air componeren’ de authentieke kleuren en het veranderende licht in de velden en bossen vast, terwijl de componist erin is ondergedompeld. De route zelf is een levende partituur die muziek verbeeldt in tegenstelling tot een compositie die een landschap beschrijft. In beweging is het ritme van stappen door een orkestratie van veranderende ecosystemen een zintuiglijke en emotionele ervaring terwijl de omgeving verandert in sfeer en temperatuur; vergelijkbaar met de ervaring van het luisteren naar muziek in een concert terwijl het zich ontvouwt. Op deze manier vertaalt de componist natuurlijke ecosystemen naar de taal van muziek.

Ossenlied (Part I):

A performance written and created by Kate Moore as part of her research project A Beautiful Path, is an epic poem inspired by ancient bards who tell stories of the land through events, encounters and chance meetings of mythical characters, historical figures and otherworldly beings, where fact and fiction are blurred into a mystical reality of memory associated with place that remains timeless through centuries of changes. Poetry is connected to the landscape in which it was created as if a lost key to a forgotten world waiting to be found. People come and go, each leaving their marker along the way, their ruins forgotten, but the stories remain alive through stories passed from one to the next by oral tradition. The land is alive, and through poetry and music, these memories are once again sung to life. Taking these old stories and ancient trackways as a starting point, Moore creates her own epic story as she walks through the land upon a route that she herself composed following trackways laid down by the footsteps of countless pilgrims, traders, drovers, Romans and Celtic tribes. She imagines their stories remembered by their tracks as she follows in their footsteps.

Over Ossenlied (Part I ) in het Nederlands

Ossenlied is geschreven en gecreëerd door Kate Moore als onderdeel van haar onderzoeksproject A Beautiful Path. Het is een episch gedicht geïnspireerd door oude barden die verhalen vertellen over het land door middel van gebeurtenissen, ontmoetingen en toevallige ontmoetingen van mythische personages, historische figuren en bovennatuurlijke wezens, waarbij feit en fictie vervagen tot een mystieke werkelijkheid van herinneringen die verbonden zijn met plaatsen die door de eeuwen heen tijdloos blijven ondanks veranderingen. Poëzie is verbonden met het landschap waarin het is gecreëerd, als een verloren sleutel tot een vergeten wereld die wacht om gevonden te worden. Mensen komen en gaan, een ieder laat zijn sporen achter, ruïnes worden vergeten, maar de verhalen blijven levend door verhalen die mondeling worden doorgegeven. Het land leeft, en door poëzie en muziek worden deze herinneringen weer tot leven gezongen. Met deze oude verhalen en antieke paden als uitgangspunt, creëert Moore haar eigen epische verhaal terwijl ze door het land wandelt langs een route die ze zelf heeft samengesteld, volgend op de paden gelegd door de voetstappen van talloze pelgrims, handelaren, herders, Romeinen en Keltische stammen. Ze stelt zich hun verhalen voor die worden herinnerd door hun sporen terwijl ze in hun voetstappen treedt.

Het is een programma van 40’

Georgia Burashko – zang

Meiyi Lee- percussion

Kate Moore – words and ancient instruments

Ossenlied (Part I):

A performance written and created by Kate Moore as part of her research project A Beautiful Path, is an epic poem inspired by ancient bards who tell stories of the land through events, encounters and chance meetings of mythical characters, historical figures and otherworldly beings, where fact and fiction are blurred into a mystical reality of memory associated with place that remains timeless through centuries of changes. Poetry is connected to the landscape in which it was created as if a lost key to a forgotten world waiting to be found. People come and go, each leaving their marker along the way, their ruins forgotten, but the stories remain alive through stories passed from one to the next by oral tradition. The land is alive, and through poetry and music, these memories are once again sung to life. Taking these old stories and ancient trackways as a starting point, Moore creates her own epic story as she walks through the land upon a route that she herself composed following trackways laid down by the footsteps of countless pilgrims, traders, drovers, Romans and Celtic tribes. She imagines their stories remembered by their tracks as she follows in their footsteps.

Bay of Bisons

Bay of Bisons came about during the walking project A Beautiful Path. This project is about plein air composing and the creative process. The overarching work Ossenlied/ Song of the Ox is the stage on which the creative process itself becomes a performance. In other words, composing this work was like a performance by taking the act of composing out from behind the private doors of the composition studio, into the public eye outside. The piece was composed on site, in the landscape itself, as the composer undertook walking the long distance route, The Ox Way, that she herself composed. Carrying a viella, a medieval tenor fiddle, on her back, she used the walking route as her outdoors composition studio wherein the melodies emerged from her daily improvisations in the landscape. Her quest was to compose music directly in dialog with the natural environment through which she was walking.

Bay of Bisons was written for the masterful cellist Abel Selacoe. The piece is inspired by long distance walking through the unique landscape of The Ox Way, stretching from the east of The Netherlands to the west of Ireland in a direct east west direction beginning is Oss and ending at Skellig Michael. It is inspired by the cultural history of this route, in particular Roman and pre Roman past. Bay of Bisons whispers the echoes of Celtic ancestors as if the ground itself sings songs of bygone times and lost stories. 

The title Bay of Bisons is derived from a specific place in the Dutch landscape, a nature monument in De Ooij Polder Gelderland. The Bisonbaai is a nature monument that is being rewilded, home to wild horses and bison. This place is the location of the heritage of the composer’s and in response to her earlier work Sacred Environment, the composer explores questions related to that of cultural identity in connection with the landscape.

…

Bay of Bisons – eco-chant for cello, voice and ensemble performed by Abel Selacaoe

Bay of Bisons, an eco-chant for cello, voice and ensemble, was written outside along a long-distance walking route devised by the composer to act as an outdoor composition studio, taking the creative process, normally hidden behind private doors, into the realm of many diverse environments through which the composer walked following historical paths and rivers, in the direction of the sun from east to west. The act of plein-air composing is a channel through which the land speaks, the well-spring from where inspiration flows, a living score that acts as a sounding board for nature. Transporting the composition process out from behind the screens, away from the piano, writing desk and laptop, the composer set forth with hiking boots and a medieval tenor viella on her back, to walk across country to the west most point of Ireland, improvising and composing music on her way. The melodies came to her in specific locations, like oracles or messages, mysteriously emerging from improvisations in sacred places such as beneath the old walls of a ruined castle, or whilst sitting on the roots of a strange looking tree, a burnt-out farmhouse, or a hostel room next to the change ringing bells of a medieval church. The locations influenced the nuance of the music. These melodies were carried within her memory throughout the journey, eventually becoming committed to paper at the end of the journey. The sound-world of the melodies seem archaic and folk-like in character, beginning life as improvisations at the beginning of the journey, becoming fixed compositions by the end of the journey through the process of distillation as memory held onto those that spoke most eloquently, letting others dissipate into the ether of forgetfulness. The melodies are like oracles divined from the ground itself, shaped by the weather, distilled in the mist of grey winter twilight early in the morning in the rain. They are programmed with memories from the journey itself recalling the sensory experience of each place, the temperature, the smell, the colours, the emotions of the feeling of being in a place, always changing, always evolving.

The title Bay of Bisons refers to a specific place in the Netherlands, the Bisonbaai, a nature monument, in De Ooij Polder near Nijmegen next to the river Waal. It is home to wild horses and bison and a favourite place for swimmers and walkers. A rotund and fecund watering hole, around which one can follow a track and encounter these wild bovines and the horse families, as well as swans and other water birds, the Bisonbaai is guarded by a historical way house, Oortjes Hekken, now a hotel. The name of the building refers to the toll gate through which ox herders had to pass on their route along the river. The place is significant, not only for the fact that it lies upon the walking route devised by the composer, and is a significant protected environmental region, it is the location of the composer’s family heritage who for generations worked and lived on this land before emigrating to Australia. Moore’s walking route and out-door atelier is called The Ox Way, and is considered by the composer to be a composition in its own right.

Song of the Sun and The Open Road – Herz Ensemble

Program note
A program featuring the song cycle The Open Road, a composition set to the words of Walt Whitman
from the poem Song of The Open Road, and Cantico del Sole (Song of the Sun), set upon the
original Umbiran text written by Francis of Assisi exactly 800 years ago. Although centuries and
cultures apart, the two luminaries are bound through the love and appreciation for nature and sense
of universal intercontectedness, egality, inclusivity and compassion. They are in communion in the
way in which they reject materialism. Revealed through the chosen two texts, their paths are
uncannily parallel. Whereas Francis of Assisi preaches humility, poverty and brotherhood, Whitman
seeks transcendence, both seek “love more precious than money” as they set foot upon the open
road, stepping away from the traditions and customs of their societies, to wander freely in the open
air, where nature itself becomes the vivid companion to both as they embark upon their journey
which is both physical and spiritual, where everything is in motion, nothing is static, everything is
alive. It is the journey of the soul.

Herz Ensemble is a collective band set up by composer Kate Moore to perform and record her own
music. Consisting of vocalists and instrumentalists, the core group is a mixed ensemble of violin,
viola, cello, saxophone, clarinet, didgeridoo, percussion, piano, harp, electric guitar, organ and
counter tenor. Their repertoire includes The Dam, that was awarded the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize in
2017, The dance cycle Revolver for violin, cello, bass, harp and percussion and the program Song of
the Sun and The Open Road, for counter tenor, saxophone, harp and percussion. Herz Ensemble is
an initiative of Stichting Magnolias for Ears.

Garden of Thornless Roses

(part 3 The Ox Way)

Gaudeamus 2025 

Performed by Herz Medieval featuring baritone voice, reorder, harp, percussion and viella

The Ox Way, The Oxford Parallel, Song of the Ox, is a composition where the walking track is the score and walking the track is the performance. The Oxford Parallel is the line of latitude that runs through the heart of Oxford through the hospital complex where the composer was born, running east to west from The Netherlands where it crosses the Vorstengraf in Gemeente Oss and goes all the way to Skellig Michael on the west coast of Ireland in a perfectly straight line. Being fascinated by this phenomenon, especially because it links her ancestral heritage in The Netherlands and Ireland, the composer set out to design a long-distance walking route that follows this line. The track is not exactly straight like the line of latitude but follows it as closely as possible along ancient tracks and rivers where physical journey is simultaneously an inner journey where the exterior and interior worlds meet. Upon walking the track, the composer set about writing a song cycle that captures the experience that is an expression for the dialogue between walker and environment. The song cycle features a series of songs and instrumental pieces written in the open air whilst walking, exploring the notion of the physical vulnerability and transcendence of both walker and environment. In 2024 the composer walked the route in sections, naming the experience A Beautiful Path, inviting the photographer Isabelle Vigier to join her on fragments of the journey to make a photographic documentary under the title Desire Lines that was exhibited at the Movement Exposed Gallery during Gaudeamus Festival 2024. 

Garden of Thornless Roses forms the next chapter of this ongoing series of enchanted pieces inspired by and written along this long-distance track. Emerging from the experience of being immersed in the environment, where the body of the walker and the land are at one, connected through the energies and cycles of nature and the way in which places resonate in the memory, the walker is the sounding board for the land and the narrative stems from tension between the changing elements, day and night, light and dark, the changing weather, the boundary between physicality of the body and spirituality of the soul. Garden of thornless Roses is an exploration of this boundary through the language and metaphor of the sea where the violent crashing of the waves on the coast, barrier between land and sea represents the crossing point from the physical to spiritual realm. The song depicts the moments of transition, land to sea, day to night, the firmament above and the deep sea below, the outer and inner worlds.