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

56
Music School,
was with trying to establish a sound in his music that the
New Zealand listener could identify as being born of the New Zealand
environment.
That he was successful in this, is suggested by the fact
that many reviewers, in referring to Lilburn's works from his
'Christchurch' period (and up to the composition of Symphony No.2),
speak in terms of analogy to the New Zealand landscape.
The frequency
of this suggests that, for some at least, Lilburn's music held a special
attraction; not so much because Lilburn was a New Zealander, but because
he wrote music that spoke of New Zealand concerns.
This question of New Zealandness in Lilburn's music will be
examined in detail in a later chapter. S7 Suffice it to be realised here,
that it was this intangible quality that attracted many people to his
music in the 1940s.
Those that felt the quality of New Zealandness in
Lilburn's music could not pinpoint it. They could refer to it only in
general t'erms of the light, the shape and the texture. They intuitively
felt the quality was there.
By 1950, then, Lilburn had established an individual 'New Zealand'
voice in his works that a growing number of people were coming to
recognize and enjoy.
However, compliments and congratulations do not pay
bills, and Lilburn's respectably-sized corpus of compositions had been
assembled only through financial sacrifice. As Lilburn later described:
"Conditions for a New Zealand composer in
those days were bleak financially, and isolated
artistically.
Commissions were few and poorly-paid.
Opportunities of publication and recording
were virtually nil. Performances were not
easy to gain, and the standard of them was
, too often less than professional, confusing
even well-intentioned listeners.
Moreover, to get a performance at all, any
composer had to spend laborious hours
copying performance materials by hand, for
lack of modern duplicating facilities."58
As early as 1940, one reviewer had the foresight to note:
" ••• if Professor Shelley is really passionat~ly
concerned-about the cultural development of
97
56 Cambridge Music School address.
57 See Part III Chapter 1.
58 Douglas Lilburn, text of talk broadcast NZBC, May 1973 to
commemorate 100th programme of Music Hoi Unpublished typescript
p.3.