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

performance standards. He noted two illustrations of this: at the
Guildhall he heard a student playing a Bartok solo sonata from memory,
and at Manchester University he heard a young John Ogden playing the
W e b ern V " f 44
ar~atlons rom memory."
Lilburn returned to New Zealand in February of 1956 to resume
teaching at Victoria University College in his recently promoted
. f' 45
capac~ty 0 Sen~or Lecturer.
"So I came home chastened, and set out to acquire
my tradition by great labour, as T.S. Eliot enjoins
us to do. Bleakly, it was either sink or swim, I
wasn't yet willing to sink, and swim meant swim
hard against a current of time.
In musical terms I had to bring myself up-to-date
with serial techniques. So, 5 notes up in the air,
then 6, and then all 12, and I began to feel pleased
with myself at meeting an exciting new challenge.
At least I thought it was new, that perhaps I was on
the verge of catching up, of really becoming a
contemporary composer."46
Shortly after arriving back in New Zealand, Lilburn was
commissioned by the New Zealand Broadcasting Service to write a work
celebrating the National Orchestra's tenth year of existence. He was
asked by the orchestra's conductor, James Robertson, to make full use of
the orchestra's resources. Beyond that, Lilburn was free to write what
he wished. 47 What resulted was A Birthday Offering, a one-movement
diversionary composition in which Lilburn made use, for the first time,
of the serial techniques he had discovered overseas.
A Birthday Offering was premiered by the orchestra under Robertson
at a Youth Concert in the Wellington Town Hall on 14 October 1956. 48
Reviewers were unanimous in their praise for the orchestration of the
work but remained generally uncommitted as regards other aspects.
'Figaro' in The Evening Post noted that A Birthday Offering was
" vivid, individualistic, imaginative, resourceful ••• " and that
Lilburn's use of the orchestra resulted in " ••• a shimmering carpet of
sound ." 49
44 ibid.
45 Lilburn had been promoted to Senior Lecturer at the beginning of
1955, prior to his overseas leave.
46 Douglas Lilburn, Christchurch Society for Contemporary Music address,
pp. 15- 16.
47 Douglas Lilburn in conversation with author March 1983.
48 Programme to the concert.
49 'Figaro', Concert with a birthday air. The Evening Post 15 October
1956.
110