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

61
cannot be over-rated:
for the first time since the .Exhibition Orchestra
of 1906-7, audiences, in the main centres, had had the opportunity to
hear a professional orchestra comprising local instrumentalists.
One other accomplishment of the Centennial Music Committee worth
mentioning is its successful recommendation, 1n 1939, that the Government
should adopt the hymn God Defend New Zealand as the Dominion's National
33
Song. Written some sixty-four years earlier by Thomas Bracken, with
the music composed by John Joseph Woods, the official adoption of this
song at the time of the Celebrations is perhaps symbolic for New Zealand
music, marking the beginnings of acceptance of indigenous composition.
Shortly after his return to New Zealand, Lilburn had gone to work
for his sister Louisa on her husband's farm in Taihape.
He was in need
of money, no music job appeared to be forthcoming, and he.felt an
obligation to help his sister while her husband 34 was enlisted overseas
in the armed services.
"That was an extraordinary experience. Sheep
farming. Well, I arrived there in the pouring
rain. I was dropped off at the gate and had to
climb a hill lugging my suitcase •••• I was
delegated to do the milking. I lived in a tin
whare just across from the house. At six o'clock
the alarm clock would go off and wake the girl
who would pick up a piece of scrub and heave it
at the roof of my whare. This was my signal.
I'd get up and get dressed quickly and go round
behind the Macrocarpa hedge and find these two
old milk cows and stir them into life with a shoo.
You know it took a great deal of tact and
persuasion. I mean you had to wake them up and
sort of get them up on their rheumatic knees and
wait while they stretched their tails and did their
job and then they were ready to move off into the
bail. You couldn't hurry any of this, and.it
was very instructive. I used to catch my horse
and ride round. I had about 800 ewes you know,
expectant mothers to keep an eye on, and this used
to take till about two o'clock in the afternoon,
and get home to have a bit of lunch and then do
odd jobs and cut firewood. I used to have to do awful
things like kill a sheep for household use, or kill
a sheep for dog tucker. I simply did this because .
it had to be done. But when I killed the last one
before I came away I vowed I would never cut another
animals throat. Those unanswerable questions. On
33 Meeting of National Centennial Council. A summary of Progress.
New Zealand Centennial News no.S, 20 January 1939:4.
34 W.L. Britton.