Potatau, Scenes in Maoriland

[steltz]

This page refers:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Scenes_in_Maorila ... atau,_Abe)

The inside cover says "Abe was a born musician who composed a great many primitive melodies." Therefore, the suite itself was not composed per se by him, but Mr. Hume took his melodies and put them together as a medley, much like the countless paraphrases on opera tunes.

Should this be under Hume's name rather?

[Davydov]

Hmm, a bit of tricky one. Since the score credits Potatu as the composer and Hume as the 'adapted and arranger', and as we don't know the extent of Hume's interventions I'd be tempted to leave it a it is.

[steltz]

OK, it has the "for piano" etc. arrangements header. Should it be tagged for voice alone?

[Davydov]

The original could have been instrumental, but we just don't know. I'd either leave it untagged, or 'open'.

Maybe we should introduce an 'unknown' instrumentation category in cases like this?

[steltz]

An "unknown original instrumentation" tag might be a great idea -- there are quite a few pieces here that have very little likelihood of being sorted out, and we tend to leave them completely untagged because once they are tagged, they kind of disappear off of any list that could be checked from time to time. At least if they stay on the untagged list, they are on a list that can be checked. The unknown original instrumentation tag would itself bring up a list that could be checked from time to time to see if information has surfaced. Like. Any other opinions?

[jsm1310]

I see no reason to believe that Abe Potatau existed. Neither the first Maori king (Potatau, d.1860) nor his son Tawhiao (d.1894) had a son named Abe, or anything that could be so anglicized. The Potatau iwi are Waikato based and I do not see any particular connections to Rotorua or Arawa. It is possible that Ord Hume when he was in NZ in 1903 met somebody who claimed the royal connection.
The music was published 21 years after the visit.
There is nothing Maori-sounding in any of the music. To me it seems more like a westernized view of ‘primitive’ music.
The band version was published London 1924, the piano version in 1925; this latter has expanded the band versions three movements into four. I have a set of the band version which I am happy to share once I've got it readied.