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

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12. Song of the Antipodes (see Ex.IO)
'-.... _---
13. Suite for Orchestra movement IV (see Ex.26)
The reason for Lilburn managing to achieve interesting contours
within a limited compass range and with a limited choice of intervals,
is that most of .his melodies seem to either begin or end at either
the highest or lowest pitch. Out of the above fifty examples, no less
than forty begin or end at the extremes of the compass range. Ten of
these forty both begin and end at the extremes of the compass range.
Table 5:
Incidence of beginning or ending melodies on extremes of
compass range. 2
Begins on highest note
Ends on highest note
Begins on lowest note
Ends on lowest note ..
Begins and ends on lowest note
Begins and ends on highest note
Begins on lowest note, ends on higqest
Begins on highest note, ends on lowest
note
note
3
I
\0
16*
3
1+
0
6
However, the aural effect of this use of pitch extremes to announce
2. *This figure is perhaps artificially high due to the arbitrariness of
the endings of some of the examples~ The two 'springboard' melodies
(Ex.32 and 33), for example, were left in mid-statement on their
lowest notes. However, had the Allegro·theme (Ex.32) been continued .
to its logical conclusion it would have been shown to end on its
highest note.
+ This theme was the two-note theme (Ex.46) of Symphony No.2 movement
III. Its contour, needless to point out, is horizontal and flat in
the extreme, and whichever way the two notes were ordered it had to
begin and end on an extreme. However, by the same token, the threenote
"Maori-chant" motif of Suite for Orchestra movement II (Ex.30) is
scored to begin and remain on its highest note for most of its
duration before dipping down to make use of its lower two notes.
These, and other minor discrepancies, however, do not affect the
validity of the generalisation that Lilburn seems to favour beginning
or ending his melodies on extremes of the compass range.