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

28
oratorio (courtesy of Great Britain, I the home of the oratorio') was a firm
favourite, especially Elijah, Messiah, The Last Judgement, The Creation,
and Naaman.
The most popular choral composers were nearly all British
(either by birth or association), and included Handel, Mendelssohn (Elijah
was first performed in England at the Birmingham Festival of 1846), Costa,
Macfarren, Sullivan, Stainer, Spohr and Haydn.
The music presented by the brass bands and choirs in the
nineteenth century formed the nucleus of a repertoire that was to
characterise choral and band music in New Zealand for well over a century.
In the brass bands and choirs, a strong tradition of amateurism
in music was fostered.
Society members paid (and indeed they do today
through sUbscription and sometimes uniform costs) to sing or play.
spirit of amateurism, with its quantative emphasis on participation and
involvement, formed the backbone of music 1n New Zealand from earliest
times.
The strength of this forestalled the growth of professionalism.
It was not only the brass band and choral music that the
nineteenth-century emigrants had brought with them from Britain. The
This
British Cathedral tradition had been transplanted to New Zealand in 1879
with the appointment of the English musician Harry Wells as first
conductor and choirmaster of the Cathedral Choir School in Christchurch. 5
The British music examination system had been introduced to New Zealand
in 1886 with the appointment of Robert Parker as the New Zealand
. 6
representative for Trinity College, London. A university system had
been established for music in 1875 at the affiliated colleges of the
7
University of New Zealand. Again it was the British model that
prevailed;
assessment.
the examination papers were all sent to England for
Such wholesale, across-the-board transplantings of British
traditions, systems and interests gave rise to the idea that the closer
the imitation of the British model, the more successful a New Zealand
product was.
For various geographical and social reasons this belief
5. A.H. McLintock, ed. An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand Wellington,
Government Printer 1966, vol.2 p.605.
6 John Jennings, The Music Teaching Profession in New Zealand: a jubilee
history of the Music Teachers' Registration Board of New Zealand
Wellington, The Music Teachers' Registration Board of New Zealand,
1978:2.
7 ibid.