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

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second movement is in A major, again, not a close relative of the
presiding tonic. Lilburn brings this most distantly related key back to
the tonic through beginning the third movement in B minor and ending
it on a bitonal chord of G major and B major.
The B major element of
this chord allows the movement to end with a reference to the tonal
centre on which it began.
The G major element, the stronger element of
the two, becomes the dominant of the C major key of the fourth movement.
The five movements of Diversions show a very symmetrical use of
key signatures:
back to three sharps.
three sharps, two sharps, no sharps, ·twosharps and
sequence of keys for each movement of
minor to subdominant and back to tonic.
In tonal terms, this gives a tightly-knit
tonic to super tonic to tonic
The final point to note is that both symphonies show cognisance
of the traditional ordering of the 'weight' of each mo~·ement.
~ follows the conventional ordering of a three-movement work.
Following the intense, but animated Al1eg4onont4oppo of the first
movement comes a slow-pulsed, lyrical Andante eon moto. The third
Symphony
movement shows a return to an Al1eg4o, but of much lighter nature than
in the opening movement.
The relative 'weightings' of the movements in Symphony No.2 are
complicated by the fact that the final two movements are paired.
Together, these two movements provide the widest range of material
covered in the symphony and contribute the most substantially to its
length. However, the first movement of this symphony (a medium-slow,
intense, but lyrical prelude) is still arguably the most concentrated of
the four movements.
It is contrasted in movement II by an admirably
flippant, light-hearted scherzo marked Ateeg40 v~vaee.
If the second
movement is all light, then the first of the final pair of movements is
all darkness and gloom.
It is a grave and troubled Poeo lento, the
brooding emotions of which are not resolved until the following movement.
This fourth movement is an Aileg40 that captures the brightness of the
second movement, yet is tempered both through being foreshadowed by the
troubled third movement and through owing something in spirit to the
seriousness of movement I. It is a moderating movement that strikes a
happy medium between the extremes of mood presented in the preceding
movements.
These contrasts between movements, coupled with the stylistic
homogeneity in evidence within each work, show Lilburn conforming in his~
first two symphonies to the highest ideal of conventional structuring:
that of diversity within unity.