Te Po-teki
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Play the first 1'40" of Te Po-Teki, as performed live violinist by Mark Menzies.
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Composer: David Heuser Instrumentation: Violin Year Composed: 1992 Duration: 7 minutes Pages (score): pages Cost: Purchase: $7.00
Premiere: Mark Menzies, violin, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, November
19, 1992
Program Notes:
Te Po-teki was written for the violinist Mark Menzies in the Summer of
1992. It is about seven minutes long. Mark is from New Zealand and I wanted to somehow tie
that into the piece. The title comes from a Maori creation chant which begins:
The piece opens with a rising, accelerating line which is followed by short, angry,
repeated double stops. After this figure is heard twice, soft, sul ponticello double stops introduce
a new, contrasting harmonic/melodic sound. Nearly all the piece is built from these two ideas. In
the first part of the piece, the two are exchanged and intertwined without too much alteration,
although a more melodic line eventually emerges as well.
The next section of the piece takes a half-step descending idea out of that melodic line
(Db-C in this case) and begins to move away from opening material. After a strong return to the
soft double stops again, the Db-C motive begins to grow into new intervals and pitches - and for
the first time the tempo increases, with notes practically exploding up the violin. A short
pizzicato passage breaks the intensity, but the explosion is completed with a double-stop, pedal-A section which threatens to spin out of control as it shifts radically up and down the instrument.
This is cut off by the short, repeated double stops of the opening, and, as they fade out,
we are back at the beginning: the two opening ideas trading off with each other, only now they
are both serene. The piece ends with a quiet shadow of the opening rising line, now seeming to
continue upwards to infinity.
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