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

9
articles on New Zealand composition, are writings such as John
M. Thomson's entry in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,8
William Southgate's "Current Developments in New Zealand Music" in
CANZ Newsletter,9 and the unpublished typescripts to Gordon Burt's
"Composers in CANZ - A Survey of New Zealand Composers", a series of
ten programmes broadcast on Radio New Zealand from 13 June 1975.
Whilst
of varying lengths, these writings offer the same surface overview and
backgrounding of the topic of New Zealand composition as found in the
articles in international journals mentioned above.
Robin Mac:onie's "Music in New Zealand", a series of talks broadcast
from 2YC July~August
a general disc·ussion of New Zealand music.
1970, attempts to delve below the surface of
Six talks comprise this
series: I) Our Traditions of Music, 2) The Amateur Composer,
3) Music in Education, 4) The Music Critic, 5) The Search for Identity,
and 6) Music and Media.
Whilst often amusing and at all times
provocative, the validity of many of the observations made in these talks
is questionable. Maconie opens up a number of pertinent lines of enquiry
that unhappily end in conclusions that are at best sweeping
generalisations
and at worst, illogical.
Consider one typical passage from these talks, in which Maconie
refers to Aotearoa Overture after playing an excerpt from the work:
"This isn't a full-sounding orchestra. I
suspect the string writing's under-powered
and under-written. Contrast the confident
style of woodwind. No doubt this is because
at the time Aotearoa was written, New Zealand
had no permanent symphony orchestra. I
suspect that Lilburn may have misjudged the
strength of his strings because he'd been
relying on· artificially boosted recorded
orchestra sound. On the other hand, woodwind
and brass are wind instruments and familiarity
with vocal technique may well be the reason why
Lilburn's writing for these instruments has
greater assurance."IO
This is an interesting hypothesis, but not based on fact, for Lilburn
wrote the overture in 1940 -
in his third consecutive year of study in
8 London, Macmillan 1980, vol.13 pp.189-92.
9 September 1977:25-7.
10 Robin Maconie,
Talk 5, p.7.
Music in New Zealand.
Unpublished typescript,