From Forgotten Forests (Preview)

PROMETHEAN EDITIONS 

GARETH FARR 

From Forgotten Forests 

Harp

Gareth Farr 

From Forgotten Forests 

Harp 

PROMETHEAN EDITIONS 

WELLINGTON

From Forgotten Forests (PE017), for Harp by Gareth Farr (1992) 

© Promethean Editions 1992 

First edition © 2017 Promethean Editions Limited 

Series Editor: Ross Hendy 

Editor: Ben Woods 

ISBN: 978-1-877218-17-0 (print) 

ISBN: 978-1-77660-017-5 (ebook) 

ISMN: 979-0-67452-241-0 

Promethean Editions Limited 

PO Box 10-143 

Wellington 

NEW ZEALAND 

http://www.promethean-editions.com 

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by 

any means without permission in writing from the Publisher. 

PE017 – ii

Gareth Farr (1968) 

Gareth Farr was born in Wellington, New Zealand. He began his studies in composition and 

percussion performance at the University of Auckland. The experience of hearing a visiting 

gamelan orchestra prompted his return to Wellington to attend Victoria University, where the 

characteristic rhythms and textures of the Indonesian gamelan rapidly became hallmarks of 

his own composition. Farr continued with postgraduate study in composition and percussion 

at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, where his teachers included Samuel Adler 

and Christopher Rouse. 

The inclusion of his works in four events at the 1996 New Zealand International Festival of 

the Arts inaugurated his career as a dedicated freelance composer. Since then, Farr’s music 

has been heard at, or especially commissioned for, high-profile events including the 50th 

anniversary of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (From the Depths Sound the Great Sea 

Gongs), the opening of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa), and the 

2000 Olympic Games in Sydney (Hikoi, a concerto for percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the 

NZSO). In 2003, a commission by the Auckland Festival resulted in Stone and Ice, composed 

for the combined forces of the NZSO and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. In 2006 

Farr was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for his services to music and 

entertainment. In the same year, the Royal New Zealand Ballet toured the country with their 

brand new work The Wedding, featuring a score by Gareth Farr. At ninety minutes, it was 

among the ballet company’s most ambitious projects, and combined Farr’s talents with those 

of prominent New Zealand novelist and librettist Witi Ihimaera. 

Farr’s music was integral to Maui – One Man Against the Gods, a stage show four years in the 

making. First premiered in 2003, it featured aerial theatre, Maori kapa haka, contemporary 

dance and song, with Farr’s stirring music, and toured a number of centres in New Zealand. 

In more recent years, Farr has developed a fruitful collaboration with director and librettist 

Paul Jenden, producing four comedy musicals. In 2007 Farr was appointed as Composer- 

PE017 – iii

in-Residence for the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. The residency culminated in 2008 

with the premiere of Ex Stasis, a symphonic song cycle for four soloists. In 2008, Farr also 

celebrated the world premiere of his work Terra Incognita, for bass solo, choir and orchestra, 

performed by Paul Whelan and the Orpheus Choir with the New Zealand Symphony 

Orchestra. Farr’s artistic excellence was acknowledged when he received the Arts Foundation 

of New Zealand’s Arts Laureate Award 2010, which aims to celebrate significant artistic 

achievement as well as nurture future creative endeavours. 

In March of 2014 Farr’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra received its world premiere from 

soloist Tony Lee and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pietari Inkenen. 

Its UK premiere followed one year later, with Lee backed by the BBC Philharmonic, with 

conductor Tecwyn Evans. The BBC Philharmonic included Farr’s work alongside Douglas 

Lilburn’s Symphony No.2 as a programme to mark the 100th anniversary of the ANZAC 

troops’ battle at Gallipoli during World War I. The concerto received critical acclaim, 

described by the Dominion Post’s John Button as containing “marvellously free piano 

writing surrounded by orchestral sounds that conjure up memories of Prokofiev ballets, 

Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortileges and even the Bartok First Piano Concerto…the ear was tickled 

bar after bar. I have no doubt that this marvellously inventive piano concerto is bound to 

develop an international life all its own.” 

Farr’s music is particularly influenced by his extensive study of percussion, both Western 

and non-Western. Rhythmic elements of his compositions can be linked to the complex and 

exciting rhythms of Rarotongan log drum ensembles, Balinese gamelan and other percussion 

music of the Pacific Rim. 

Latest information about the composer may be found at www.garethfarr.com. 

PE017 – iv

From Forgotten Forests (1992) 

The opening phrases of From Forgotten Forests establish the liminal space that the work 

inhabits, at the threshold between consonance and dissonance. Beginning with the pitches 

A–E–DÍ–CÏ, its initial scalar material is gradually introduced to reveal several semitone 

intervals. Octave displacement, harmonics and the absence of meter add to the the work’s 

sense of mystery and spaciousness, but eventually a slight acceleration is perceived and the 

piece locks into a hypnotic pattern in Gh consisting of a repeated figure whose constituent 

pitches undergo a gradual change, the now quickened tempo periodically slackening and 

tightening. Winding down, we arrive at a recapitulation of the A–E–DÍ–CÏ opening motif, now 

transposed down by a fifth. 

The composer writes: 

When I joined the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in 1989 as a percussionist, it was also 

Carolyn Mills’ first day as principal harp. I was already a fan of the harp, and we became 

friends very quickly. After writing a couple of pieces for her, she commissioned me to 

write From Forgotten Forests—which was really my first chance to write a piece that would 

become part of the harp repertoire. 

This work had two rather eyebrow-raising early showings—the premiere was at Wellington 

Zoo and one of the subsequent performances was on a cruise liner in Antarctica. 

In my experimentations to bring out sonorities that I hadn’t heard from the harp before, 

I started imagining a walk in an ancient forest inhabited by extinct birds, their unfamiliar 

and long-forgotten calls filling the air. 

Since Farr sets the scene as a walk in an ancient forest inhabited by extinct birds, perhaps 

the more tempting musical response to the idea of extinction would have been a work that 

indulges in sentimentality, despondency or the evocation of some splendorous avian paradise 

bubbling with exuberant calls. Instead, Farr’s imagination seems to have been captured by 

the alien quality that inhabits the ancient – where the passage of time in reaching the present 

PE017 – v

has been so vast, encompassing countless incremental changes, as to render it unfamiliar, 

impenetrable, indecipherable. 

From Forgotten Forests was commissioned by, and dedicated to, Carolyn Mills with financial 

support from Creative New Zealand, the Arts Council of New Zealand, Toi Aotearoa. It received 

its premiere performance by Carolyn Mills at Wellington Zoo, Wellington, New Zealand in 

December 1992. 

Performance notes 

Harmonics are notated at the played position and sound an octave higher. 

PE017 – vi

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PE017 – 6 

PE017 – 6

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