Some commonly asked questions... 1. What is the favourite composition from your own music? My favourite work of my own is probably “The Moon is Silently Singing”. This piece (I think) works really well and always makes a good impression in performances. I've never been tempted to revise it or change it. Other choral pieces I like of mine are "Whisper You All the Way Home" (a set of three lullabies), "Dance Song to the Creator" (a lively work for three choirs with piano duet and percussion accompaniment), "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" (for SSA and guitar - this was originally written as part of a cycle of pieces using Shakespeare's texts), and "Whisper to me" (for choir and string orchestra - another lullaby text). 2. What other type of music do you like listening to - who specifically? I find these days I get very little time to listen to music for pleasure. It depends on my mood at the time. I enjoy Bach and other Baroque music, the symphonies of Sibelius, music by Vaughan Williams, various choral pieces and so on depending on how I feel. Also the composers mentioned below. I'm not a great fan of jazz, and don't listen to a lot of rock music these days. What music do I NOT like - that's an easy one: rap and most hip-hop! 3. What is your favourite piece by another composer? My favourite work by another composer tends to change from time to time. I very much like the music of JS Bach, especially the orchestral music. My other favourite composers come from the 20th century: Charles Ives (American composer of early in the century), Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams have all influenced my style. More recently I have become very interested in the music of Michael Torke, Robert Moran, and Aaron Jay Kernis (American composers). I like the music of Scottish composer James MacMillan - often quite challenging and dissonant music, but very intense and dramatic. Recently I've been discovering the music of Esa-Pekka Salonen, a Finnish composer who is also a highly regarded conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. 4. Why do you write mainly choral music? Because I enjoy doing it. I like setting words to music. I enjoy singing in choirs and currently sing with Auckland Choral Society. I was a foundation member of the National Youth Choir. I used to conduct choirs at school (Epsom Girls Grammar School) and have been a tutor for the NZ Secondary Students Choir. Currently (since 2008) I've conducted St Mary's Schola at St Mary's College in Auckland. I've been invited to Japan twice and to Hawaii to be an adjudicator at choir competitions, and in 2009 travel to Argentina to adjudicate at a choir contest. There are lots of choirs around, and choirs seem to be more interested in performing contemporary music than instrumental groups. I enjoy writing for amateur performers. Most communities have a choir so there's lots of scope for selling music too! Most of the pieces I've had performed overseas are choir works, and the only music that I've had published and recorded overseas is choir music. 5. Do you prefer choral music to writing instrumental music? Given a choice I would prefer to write for choirs - I enjoy setting words to music. 6. Why are so many of your choral pieces sacred music? Actually it's not a significantly larger proportion of my choral music that's sacred. Music with a text can be divided into two broad types: sacred and secular (non-sacred). I enjoy writing both types. Sacred pieces are often useful to choirs if they want to sing in a church service, and a number of my sacred pieces have been written for church choirs or for school choirs with a significant involvement with church services (such as many of the private schools). Usually it's just a matter of what text I find that I particularly like. I enjoy looking for interesting texts to do with Christmas, although many choirs in New Zealand have stopped singing by the Christmas holiday break. 7. What is your own musical background? I began learning the piano when I was six years old. I went through all the grade examinations for piano and theory for Trinity College. I started working on the ATCL diploma when I came to Auckland to university, but I soon realised I didn't have the time to do enough practice for it. So I switched over to a purely theoretical diploma: the AMusTCL diploma. In 1985 I made a submission for the top Trinity College diploma: FTCL and was granted that (in composition of course!). I never thought I had the talent, or the desire, to be a solo piano performer. I hold Master of Music and Bachelor of Arts degrees from Auckland University. My main area of study in Music was in composition and I also took related papers in orchestration, analysis, contemporary music, electronic music and so on. 8. Can composers make a living just composing music? It's really really hard to make a good living as a composer. You need to have a lot of music being regularly performed. From performances you get paid "royalties" - money for the right to use your music. However this is never a lot of money! Another way of making money from composing is through "commissions". This means people asking you to write something, and signing a contract with you to pay you a fee when it's finished. New Zealand's arts council Creative New Zealand often helps pay for commissions. You can find Creative NZ at:  www.creativenz.govt.nz Most composers tend to have another job - either full-time or part-time. I taught at Epsom Girls Grammar School from 1981 to 2001,although I had two years on leave in 1999 and 2000. During 1999 I was with the Auckland Philharmonia as their Composer-in-Residence. That meant I was paid to be able to concentrate on writing music for a year. In return I wrote them a major orchestral piece ("Leukos") and also some smaller pieces for their lunchtime chamber music concert series. A third way of making money from music is to have music published (which means that people will buy it and perform it). I've had works published by several overseas publishers. There's not really a music publishing industry in New Zealand. 9. Where do the ideas for your compositions come from? If I'm writing music which involves voices (choir music or solo songs) then the text gives me strong ideas. The music I write has to reflect the mood and style of the words, and also the words give me rhythmic ideas. When you set words, the natural accent of the music must match the natural accent of the words. Purely instrumental music will sometimes come from a visual or literary idea, or from a musical idea. Musical ideas might be a short rhythm, or a melodic fragment, or a series of chords (harmonies). Sometimes I might be trying to write using a particular compositional technique. 10. Your piece "Didn't it rain" is widely performed and studied. What is its background? "Didn't it rain" was written for a small vocal group of 5 singers. Organised by noted choral conductor John Rosser, they performed under the name Quintessence, and gave occasional concerts for several years in the early 1980s. The piece was written for them. It was not formally commissioned, but just written for a group of friends who enjoyed singing together. I wanted to write a piece that was enjoyable to sing, and immediately accessible for an audience. It uses several musical ideas that featured in my choral music at that time (1982): lively rhythms with irregular time signatures (5/8, 7/8 etc), simple chords moving in parallel movement, strongly tonal music but with occasional 'side-steps' onto unexpected chords, and a preference for 5-part (SSATB) choral textures. The text is a traditional American one, re-telling the biblical story of Noah and the flood. The text is:             Now didn't it rain, chillun,             God's gonna 'stroy this world with water,             Now didn't it rain, my Lord,             Now didn't it rain, rain, rain. Well, it rained forty days and it rained forty nights, There wasn't no land nowhere in sight, God sent a raven to carry the news, He histe his wings and away he flew. Well, it rained forty days and forty nights without stopping, Noah was glad when the rain stopped a-dropping. God sent Noah a rainbow sign, Says, 'No more water, but fire next time.' They knocked at the window and they knocked at the door, They cried, 'O Noah, please take me on board.' Noah cried, 'You're full of sin, The Lord's got the key and you can't get in.'                                              (traditional American)     NEWS ARCHIVE THESE ITEMS HAVE PREVIOUSLY APPEARED ON THE FIRST PAGE OF THE WEBSITE AND ARE ARCHIVED HERE FOR REFERENCE. "Young soloists shine in enjoyable eclectic mixture" So ran the headline in the NZ Herald of 31 July 2006 reviewing the concert by Auckland Choral of Saturday 29 July 2006. Conducted by David Hamilton, the concert featured Constant Lambert's "The Rio Grande" and Haydn's "Nelson Mass" along with 3 New Zealand pieces: Jenny McLeod's "Hymn for the Lady", Graham Parsons' "Sing a New Song to the Lord", and Hamilton's own "Night Visions". Reviewer William Dart commented: "The best of the locals was David Hamilton's "Night Visions", five settings in which tunefulness was the order of the evening. Soprano Morag Atchison relished her shivery descants during the skeleton's final dance. Hamilton's astute writing revealed Auckland Choral at its most confident, thrillingly so in "The Middle of the Night"." Five premieres in one week! The middle of June 2006 saw a concentration of first performance of David Hamilton choral works. First was the premiere of "A Winter Twilight" on Sunday 18 June. This was commissioned by Auckland Youth Choir, and features a number of 'contemporary' vocal techniques in an atmospheric impression of a winter's landscape. The Auckland regional competitions of The Big Sing on 20 and 21 June saw three new works for male voice choirs. These were "Ballad - O What is that Sound?" presented by Mainly Men of Rangitoto College; "Every Day'll Be Sunday" presented by Rosmini  Boys' Choir (Rosmini College); and "The True History of Resurrection Jack" presented by the Dilworth Foundation Singers. Finally on Friday 23 June the highly acclaimed Key Cygnetures from Westlake Girls High School (conductor Elise Bradley) premiered a new Christmas cycle "A Child Comes Forth". Another international competition win (2006). And a local one! In February 2006 it was announced that David Hamilton's setting of Tennyson's poem "Ask Me No More" had taken the Ned Rorem Award for Song Composition in the USA. The setting is for soprano and piano. This award is another of the series promoted by NUVOVOX. This award follows on from the win in the choral composition section of the NUVOVOX awards in 2005 with "Deus, Deus meus" (a setting of the text "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?"). These award are organised as part of the Diana Barnhart American Song Competitions and Conference which supports the creation of new vocal and choral music (see www.nuvovox.com)  "Dreamwaltz" won the competition organised by the New Zealand Flute Society. This five minute piece for solo flute was used as a test piece at the society's convention in June 2006.