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

40
Since all things fade
Into a senile night
When youth has made
Its fleeting rapturous light -
Though Death his fill
Has had of irony -
I love you still
For Beauty's memory." DGL 23
Thus, up to the end of 1933 and the completion of his schooling,
Lilburn had achieved little in a public way to indicate he would make a
career of music and composition. His only active participation in music
had been in learning to play the piano - beginning first with
explorations of the keyboard in .theDrysdale homestead and growing into
the fruitful, if furtive, period of study with Kate Cartwright in Oamaru.
His reporting on "concerts and entertainments" in The Waitakian suggests,
though, that he was developing a keen musical appreciation.
That he successfully sat five university units whilst still at
school suggests he was an intelligent, industrious pupil, one who was
obviously well-suited to further and full-time study at a university
college. His early interest in reading, his involvement in publicspeaking
and debating, his winning of an essay-writing prize and his
regular reporting in The Waitakian indicate that he was also literate and
articulate. Under the prevailing climate of Waitaki Boys' High School,
these two qualities would presumably have been fostered and encouraged.
The picture of Lilburn the schoolboy that begins to emerge is
one of a relatively solitary figure. Being by three-and-a-half years
.the youngest child in a line of seven and spending the early years of
childhood on a large farming station, during which time his parents were
absent for several years, meant that Lilburn had to counter solitude by
developing private interests and pursuits. At first, these included
wide reading, later these became focused on music, specifically the piano.
At Waitaki Boys' High-School, under the schoolboy ethic, Lilburn
would not have been a universally popular figure. He had no interest in
sports, he was academically successful and he was not by nature
gregarious. As well as this (and possibly even related to this), Lilburn's
interest in that private and seemingly 'unmanly' pursuit of studying the
piano was increasing.
In retrospect, it is possible to trace the roots of many of
23 ibid. vol.IS no. I, May 1933:144.