Farr's penchant for percussion and drama come to the fore in Pagan Prayer (1992) for soprano, four trombones and percussion quartet. This dramatic work sets to music two poems by Charles Baudelaire, La Rebelle (The Rebel) and La Prière d'un Païen (Pagan Prayer). Dealing in primal, pounding rhythms and blasts of brass, the soprano soloist also joins the percussive party by beating on metal plates.
John Elmsly, Canzona, 1997
A furious angel came from the sky like an eagle: indeed she did in this devilishly exuberant score of Gareth Farr's, recently published by Promethean Editions. I loved reading Pagan Prayer (for percussion quartet, soprano, two trombones and two bass trombones), having enjoyed listening to a recording of a Wellington performance some time back. This is raw Farr, energetic, voluptuous, living out the Baudelaire text which so vividly reflects aspects of the dream world and personality of this inventive and original composer.
Four percussionists weave a propelling rhythmic framework which swings away hypnotically mainly at extremes of the dynamic range-large blocks are marked fff-and underneath four trombones spin a harmonic web which creates something akin to Escher's staircase illusion.
Oh poor soprano, you might feel, sandwiched in such a sonic mass, but one of the joys of this piece is the way the texts fights its way through: the subtle way in which the simplest of melodic ascents is opened out repetitively to allow these pieces of nineteenth-century decadence a new life, and one which so belongs that I could never again read the poems without hearing this ecstatic incantation.
Gareth Farr is an indisputably colourful figure in New Zealand music. And whether scored for percussion duet or the resources of two large orchestras, Farr's music reflects his personality – bold, brash, or delicate and sensuous, but inevitably, immediately, engaging. 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. In addition to his music for the concert chamber, Farr has written music for dance, theatre and television.
