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

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exploited by Pierre Boulez. The last two
pages of the score are memorable,faintly
astringent music, poised and controlled.
The aura of Vaughan Williams modality has
gone, and his melodic lines are now individual
and characteristic, more extended and better
balanced than those of the Sonata. The score
has not a spare note - an ascetism that is
really productive, not merely the impoverishment
resulting from an unwillingness to add that is
the mark of a less skilled composer."16
A request for Lilburn to write incidental mUS1C of a vastly
different style to The Axe came early in 1961.
A team led by.Jon
Hamilton of Christchurch had, the preceding year, taken a set of
turbocraft designed and built in New Zealand by the Hamilton Jet Boat
firm to the Cplorado River in the United States of America.
adventures of this team were documented on film, and used to form a
documentary-advertisement about the Hamilton boats entitled Grand Canyon
Uprun.
Lilburn provided the background music for the film, scoring it
for wind quintet. 17 The preview for this film was given on Thursday 23
May 1961 (5pm-7pm) at 20 Lunns Road, Middleton, at a function organised
by the Board of Directors and Management of CWF Hamilton Marine Ltd. 18
From I January 1962, following the implementation of suggestions
19
made in the Hughes Parry Report, the University Colleges that made up
the University of New Zealand were each given their charters as
autonomous universities. 20 Lilburn was asked to commemorate this
change of status for Victoria University College by composing a
Processional Fanfare (scored for three trumpets and organ) for the final
congregation of the University of New Zealand.
The
The Processional Fanfare
was performed again the following year at the inaugural graduation
ceremony of the Victoria University of Wellington. 21
In 1960, Lilburn had sold his Tinakori Road house and shifted to
22 Ascot Terrace, where he has resided to date. This house became a
16 S.R., New Zealand arts. Zealandia 15 November 1962.
17 Jon Hamilton had married a niece of Lilburn's - Joyce Lilburn,·
daughter of Lilburn's brother Richard. Joyce travelled up the
Colorado River with the expedition.
18 Printed invitation to the preview, copy at Alexander Turnbull Library.
19 Report of the Committee on New Zealand Universities, December 1959
Wellington, Government Printer.
20 This occurred under a separate act for each university, e.g., The
University of Canterbury Act 1961, and the Victoria University of
Wellington Act 1961.
21 4 May 1962.