The first three movements are prefaced with some poems by Thomas Bracken related to Māori, but they were not initially intended for this piece: Hill added them after the success of his cantata Hinemoa.
There is a copyist's contrabass part of the first three movements at the Mitchell Library, dated 1898, which gives the terminus ante quem for them.
Allan Stiles proposes two reasons why this composition remained unfinished: the one being Hill's growing interest in theatrical music, the other being the unlikely prospect of a complete performance.
His edition of the complete work was premiered on 15 July 2007 by the Wellington Chamber Orchestra under Professor Donald Maurice.
It was then included in Hill's unperformed opera Don Quixote (as overture) and later used in his film music for Smithy (Pacific Flight).
To back this hypothesis he lists similarity of music paper types, key, orchestration, and handwriting.
The F major cadenza it ends with, according to Stiles, is "incomplete", and he deduces from it a link to the timpani roll on F beginning the reconstructed finale.
Then comes the trio (in E-flat major), a transition with a reprise of part of the fanfare and a full orchestral return of the A section (with reversed order of melodic material).