Debut piece for choral society concert

In rehearsal this week for their concert on Labour Day were the Gisborne Choral Society, under the baton of musical director Gavin Maclean and accompanied by Coralie Hunter. Picture supplied

A karakia, set to an opera orchestral piece, will have its debut at the Gisborne Choral Society’s Labour Day concert on Monday.

Musical director Gavin Maclean hopes the karakia, Kia tau te rangimārie, will become a regular part of the choir’s repertoire.

“I have always loved the popular orchestral Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana by Mascagni, and thought it’s the sort of thing that someone would have rearranged for choral singing,” he said.

He searched online to no avail, although he later found that the composer himself had made a solo song of it, with the words of Ave Maria.

“Then the question of lyrics arose. Anything I could write, if sufficiently grand and heartfelt, would just sound like me sounding off on hobby horses yet again,” Mr Maclean said.

“After many months, I heard this karakia at the end of a meeting, and wondered if it would fit.”

The rest was easy, he said.

The prayer for peace, derived from nature, to rest upon us and bind us together, was perfect.

“The choral society has sung opera in Italian, often and with gusto, and with the similar but gentler sounds of te reo Māori, it made sense to try giving them the heavy Italian opera treatment.

“That felt pretty cheeky, so I asked various Māori musicians what they thought of such an uninformed Pākehā enterprise, and received a resounding OK.

“The setting for choir simply uses notes from the vocal score, with its piano accompaniment, and borrows Verdi’s tricks of using solid chunks of unison as well as harmony, as in the Chorus of Hebrew Slaves, and ending on a wide spread from high to low, as in a soprano-bass duet from The Force of Destiny.”

It worked for the singers, Mr Maclean said. ‘Time to try with an audience.”

It was a good time for the choir to have a waiata karakia up its sleeve, “and, as always it seems, a very good time to hope for peace”.

The karakia will be accompanied on the piano by Coralie Hunter, who will also accompany the feature work of the concert, Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna. All other pieces will be unaccompanied — “an especially beautiful sound”,  Mr Maclean said.

The words of the karakia:

Kia tau te rangimārie

O te Rangi e tū iho nei

O Papatūanuku e takoto nei

O te Taiao e awhi nei

Ki runga i a tātou

Tihei Mauriora

May the peace

Of  the sky above

Of the earth below

And of the all-embracing universe

Rest upon us all

Behold, it is life!

■  Back to the Future, Gisborne Choral Society concert, Monday October 23,

St Andrew’s Church, Cobden Street, 2pm Koha entry.