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

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colleagues for the opportunity to have new works performed, but also
with both the music of centuries past and the fashionable sounds of
commercially-oriented popular music.
It is inevitable in a country with a small and scattered
population that opportunities for the development of a minority interest
are minimal. In an area of high density population, people interested
in a particular pursuit can readily congregate to pool resources and
co-ordinate activity. If only 0.1% of a given population is interested
in an activity, then in London, for example, 8,000 supporters could be
found, whereas in Christchurch, New Zealand, for example, only 350
supporters could be found. Composers, however, not only need supporters
in the form of audiences, but also musicians to 'lift the music off the
page'. The problem facing a composer working in a community with a
small population is thus compounded.
In beginning the research for this study, it was intended that
the scope of enquiry exhaustively cover the period in New Zealand
composition from 1940 to 1970. From a cursory reading of all the
readily accessible, published literature on New Zealand composition,
there was little doubt that the subject could be covered comprehensively.
This, as was quickly discovered, was not the case. For every
word already published on the subject, a thousand words of elaboration
were required. A research project undertaken in 1979 on behalf of the
Composers Association of New Zealand resulted in a Bibliography of
New Zealand Composition 2 that contained over 1600 works by 65 composers
written between 1940 and 1980. This, as was realised, was only the tip
of the iceberg. For every published and recorded New Zealand composition,
there must surely be hundreds unpublished and unrecorded.
Obviously, limitations on the scope of the research had to be
quickly found. This resulted in the decision to include only composers
who had been active inside New Zealand during this period, to examine
only those composers who had made an impact on a national level as
opposed to a local level, and to concentrate on works that were
representative of trends, rather than trying to cover all compositions.
Composers not born in New Zealand, composers who were born after 1950,
and composers who had not worked consistently (in terms of output) were
excluded. The electronic medium which made its strongest impact on
2 Philip Norman, compiler. Bibliography of New Zealand Compositions
vol. 1 (1940-1980) Christchurch, Nota Bene Music, 1980. 146 pp.