The beginnings and development of a New Zealand music: The life ...

This list alone, without the host of other minor works and incidental
music that Lilburn composed during this period, clearly illustrates
that he had already produced a significant corpus of works.
What is
more, he had had most of them played by reputable New Zealand and/or
overseas artists.
However, many of these works were shelved
immediately after the first performance(s), and were not given a second
hearing for well over a decade.
94
Allegro had to wait IS years, Aotearoa
14 years for its first New Zealand. performance, Festival Overture IS
years, Song of the Antipodes 20 years, Symphony No.1 17 years, and
46
String Quartet in E minor 23 years.
D.F.T. in his review of the Four Preludes for Piano had raised a
very salient point:
Zealand.
"There is a further difficulty that Mr Lilburn
is a New Zealander. He lives in Christchurch
and has chosen the profession of writing serious
music; this makes him conspicuous and us selfconscious.
We would so gladly have him succeed.
will we too readily believe that he is doing so?
I try to wipe my mind free of eagerness and bias,
to leave it blank to receive the impression of
the music itself. I must not know what I think
till I hear what I play."47
Certainly Lilburn had proven himself against his peers in New
If success in competitions is valid criteria, his winning of
the Percy Grainger Prize, the Centennial music prizes and the Philip
Neill Memorial Prize is proof of this. He had proven himself also
against overseas competition at the Royal College of Music, in winning
the Cobbett and Ernest Farrar Prizes, and gaining the FoliScholarship.
His music was being performed overseas;
the Boyd Neel Orchestra had
Diversions in its repertoire: Aotearoa Overture had been performed as
48
far afield as Prague; artists such as Peter Cooper, Colin Horsley,
and Lili Kraus had performed his piano music in London;
and an
international publisher - Hinrichsen had shown interest in his music
w~t
. h· a v~ew to pu bl·
~s
h·
~ng.He
49 h
aga~ne
d . d -a nat~ona
. I
reputat~on
. as a
composer, and had the beginnings of a minor international reputation.
Perhaps more importantly than having a 'reputation', he had
46 Ashley Heenan, On conducting Douglas. Douglas Lilburn op.cit. p.93.
47 D.F.T., New music: Douglas Lilburn, "Four Preludes for Piano".
New Zealand Listener vol.13 no.318, 27 July 1945: 13.
48 New Zealand Listener vol.17 no.421, 21 July 1947:4.
49 String Trio, as mentioned above, was published in 1953.