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

180.
reason.
The first movement of Landfall in Unknown Seas also makes use of·
dance-like melodi~s, but it is the dance rhythms of an olde-worlde
courtly dance, rather than the rhythms of a folk-dance. With its
stately opening melody, clear diatonic harmonies and symmetrical eightplus-eight-bar
form, the first sixteen bars of Landfall in Unknown Seas
are clearly suggestive of seventeenth-century life at court in Europe.
The contrasting material announced at bar 17 with its more rollicking
rhythms (particularly the semiquaver upbeats of bars 17 to 23 and the
syncopation on the second beat of each bar of bars 24-6) is suggestive
of more folk-like nautical songs. The movement is based on material
from these two ideas (see Ex.27) suggesting a marriage between court and
sea of the Du~ch monarchy and Abel Tasman.
Ex.27: Landfall in Unknown Seas movement I, violin I bars 1-27.
t I oJ J 1 ''f I J.
The
r-Ji or ~ rhythmic grouping of two semiquavers and a
quaver is a common motif employed in Lilburn's melodic writing,
particularly in the lighter themes. The third movement of Diversions
takes as its principal material a theme constructed almost entirely out
of this motif (see Ex.28).