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

Undeterred, Lilburn approached Gilbert Stringer, Director of the New
Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, with the idea of establishing an
electronic workshop as an annex of NZBC Productions, and:
" ••• through his advisors got his backing for
indeterminate loan of an Ampex 350 tape
recorder and for choice of whatever junk was
on the floor of the NZBC surplus stores shed.
Wallace Ryrie and I loaded a truck with this
loot, including the metal shell of the
original 2YC mixer panel which, refurbished,
became the 6-channel mixer-console of the
EMS/VUW."36
By II August 1964, Lilburn was able to write to Peter Crowe and report
that:
II I sailed into the NZBC and the Arts Council
- asking for assistance, and must say they've
both been very obliging - about ~2,000 worth of
this and that, and VU is providing a room and
a technician and some research funds. NZBCis
lending a professional Ampex (mono) and has
donated a lot of equipment, a dozen amps and
preamps of various kinds, four speakers,
turntable, racks, 6-channel mixer, bits and
pieces. Arts Council donated £900 with which I
think of getting a Philips professional stereo
(c.£700) for recording, and two tape decks
(stereo) to give six channels for mixing.
Filters (a good BBC circuit) ring modulators, bellgates
etc. can be built here. I am to use the
corridor and stairs for reverb., and later get a
line on to Broadcasting House to use their
German plat£s !'37
130
Meanwhile, Lilburn had received two commissions for works calling
for sound images of electronic derivation. The first of these was for
incidental music for the radio play The Pitcher and the Well. This had
been partly realised at Toronto, and was finished in the NZBC studios in
1964.
The second, and more important composition, was The Return - an
electronic sound image of the poem by Alastair Campbell with narration
by Tim Eliott. This was realis€d in the NZBC studios with the techQical
help of willi Gailer. Here at last, in 1965, was the first New Zealand
electronic work, realised inside New Zealand by a New Zealand composer,
using New Zealand assembled equipment, and setting a New Zealand text.
36 ibid.
37 Douglas Lilburn, ••• Letters of Lilburn to Peter Crowe, op.cit.
p.71.