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

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1
OVERVIEW
"A Romantic in corsets I once called you
Laughing admiring to your face.
(In those days to be labelled Romantic
Was a disgrace.)"
- Denis Glover
"Letter to Lilburn"
As was established in Part I Chapter 1, the musical foundations
of New Zealand were firmly based on the brass band, choral, and domestic
piano traditions. The brass bands and choirs were fostered and
encouraged for reasons of their possessing extra-musical functions, in
the sense that performances by bands and choirs were given primarily to
fulfill social (and official) needs for music. The domestic piano was
the preserve mainly of the female, the skills of which were privately
taught, and demonstrated in predominately private hearings. The spirit
of the domestic piano kept alive the desire for chamber music for
music's sake.
Church music had also found a firm place in New Zealand's musical
history. With the transplanting to New Zealand of the British Cathedral
tradition of music in the nineteenth-century, development of the skills
of organ playing and treble voice choir singing were fostered and
encouraged.
It was within this tradition and a political climate ripe for
national expression, that Lilburn was born and educated as a musician.
To someone who was to all intents and purposes a second genera~ion New
Zealander, interested in twentieth-century sounds, the music of the
brass band, the choir and the church must have seemed outmoded. The
young Lilburn wanted to speak through his compositions both as a
professional musician, and as a twentieth-century New Zealander.
An examination of Lilburn's output) reveals that Lilburn virtually
See Appendix C for year-by-year listing of Lilburn's compositional
output.