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

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(ballads, popular songs, drawing room miniatures) conceived for a
special occasion (liturgical settings, celebration odes and fanfares,
brass band competition pieces), or written for amateur resources deficient in
certain areas of instrumentation or vocal type (music for schools, small
brass bands, choral societies). It was music that reflected the musical
environment of New Zealand; music with an emphasis on the functional,
social and entertainment aspects of colonial life. It was music that
spoke of a British heritage.
There was, however, one notable exception to this, the Australianborn
Alfred Hill. In the 1890s and 1900s, Hill had resided in New
Zealand, based in Wellington. Through compositions such as his cantata
Hinemoa (1896), his opera Tapu (1904) and his popular songs Waiata Poi
and Waiata Maori, to name but two, Hill had cast Maori melodies and
themes into late-Romantic musical moulds. In doing so, he was one of the
few composers living in colonial New Zealand to show an awareness of the
immediate environs. Certainly he was the most successful. 12
It was during Douglas Lilburn's childhood, in the second and
third decades of the twentieth century, that patterns in the development
of music in New Zealand began to alter drastically. This was through the
advent of three products of the new technological age: the gramophone,
film and radio.
All three of these provided strong counter-attractions to music
presented live in concert halls, and dwindling attendances at concerts
resulted. The advent of the gramophone, film and radio in New Zealand,
though, was a mixed blessing for musicians.
The gramophone helped counter, to a certain degree, the musical
isolation of New Zealand from the rest of the world. To hear a top
London orchestra, for example, one no longer either had to travel to
London or wait for the orchestra to tour New Zealand. Audiences could
become well-acquainted with works or performers .at their own leisure in
their own homes. The gramophone helped facilitate the· study of music.
The arrival of the silent movie era heralded new opportunities
for the orchestral musician. Many of the large cinemas in New Zealand
engaged orchestras (of varying sizes) for the purpose of providing
12 See THOMSON, John Mansfield. A Distant Music: The Life and~Times
of Alfred Hill 1870-1960 Auckland, Oxford University Press, 1980.