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

movement has begun, the music remains resolutely with the chosen time
signature, and only very occasionally deviates from the chosen tempo in
anything more than a minor tinkering with the pace.
297
From the sample of works forming the basis for discussion in this
chapter (Festival Overture, Aotearoa Overture, Allegro, Landfall in
Unknown Seas, Song of the Antipodes, Diversions, Symphony No.1, S~hony
No.2 and Suite for Orchestra) only Allegro provides the exception to the
inviolate rule of one time signature per" movement.
bars of ~ are interpolated into the otherwise 4 metre. "
In this work, four
Of the twenty-six time signatures used in these works, the majority
4 ' six appear as 2, and two
2
used on six occasions, and 4'
show a grouping of four crotchets to the bar (eight of these appear as
C)
3.. .
appear as • Th e 4 t1me s1gnature 1S
696
4' 4' and 8 are used only once each. There
is no use of ~symmetric
time-signatures.
Metronome markings vary considerably;
from the slow-pulsed
j =c.58 of the second movement of Diversions to the brisk J =c.J52 of
the second movement of Symphony No.2.
seems to be that of alleg~o.
The most common tempo marking
Festival Overture, Aotearoa Overture, and
of course Allegro all make use of this tempo marking, along with the
second and fourth movements of Landfall in Unknown Seas, the first and
third movements of Symphony No.1 and the first movement of Suite for
Orchestra, to name but a few more examples.
However, Lilburn does not
use this term, nor any of the other Italian terms relating to pace, with
any degree of consistency. Metronome markings are often at odds with
the Italian tempo markings.
One can safely assume that these Italian
terms are used to indicate the relative feeling of speed, rather than
the actual pace or tempo.
Once begun, works like Allegro, all four movements of Landfall in
Unknown Seas, all five movements of Suite fo~
Orchestra, movements II
and III of Symphony No.2, and movements I, III and V of Diversions show
no change of pace whatever from the initial t"empo marking.
Aotearoa
Overture also shows this rigidity of tempo, although the twenty-four
bars of the introduction to this work are taken at exactly half the
speed of the main body of the work.
show changes of pace for the middle sections.
Movements II and IV of Diversions
In the remainder of the
sample of works, only a few minor changes to the chosen tempo occur.
These usually co~prise transitory adjustments, such as through use of
aUaJtgando, tenu:to and ~li:aJr.dand.o markings •..
The one notable exception to the one movement-one tempo
principle occurs in Song of the Antipodes.
Tempo changes in this work