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

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development sections are marked by increases in both the rate of chord
change and the rate of modulation.
In summary, it can be said that Lilburn's harmonic language has
its roots in an almost exclusively diatonic, triadic based, and modally
orientated vocabulary; and that over the course of the 1940s it
evolved and expanded to become characterised by a triadic, chromatic
expression. Because of the recurring use of pedal points throughout
this first period of composition, long passages of his music remain
firmly anchored to a particular note (usually the tonic, sometimes the
dominant,of the scale or mode employed).
Lilburn favours high, lean, bright voicings, and moderately paced
harmonic rhythms. Cadentially, he avoids the use of V-I progressions,
favouring inst~ad the plagal or ii-I cadence, particularly in his earlier
modal works. He seems to equate points of climax with points of
consonance, that is to say, where climaxes occur, they occur on triads,
not on discords. There is a clear distinction between his bass-lines and
his upper harmony: his bass-lines move freely underneath, and often in
contrary motion to, his upper lines, which often show evidence of
parallelism. Lilburn frequently overlaps changes of chord between the
upper lines, the bass-line, and the melody. This often happens at
cadence points, producing moments of bitonal tension before the cadential
progression finally resolves.