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

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some aural tests, and in general left to find
our own way out of difficulties. He suggested
and gently guided in that characteristically
austere way he has always had; he showed us
standards and left us to choose. We heard our
music played and some of us conducted for the
first time. It was all enough to send me back
to New Plymouth aglow for twelve months till
the next music school."11
An interesting piece of music resulted from the 1948 composers'
group at the Cambridge Summer Music School entitled Variations on a
Theme of Douglas Lilburn. Lilburn, as tutor, had written a theme for
his students to compose variations upon.
These variations were written
by David Farquhar, Ronald Dellow, Edwin Carr, Dorothea Franchi, Ronald
12
Tremain, and Larry Pruden respectively. The first performance of this
work was at the Cambridge Music School that year with Dorothea Franchi
as pianist. Unfortunately Larry Pruden was delayed in the writing of
his variation, and had barely started composing it by the morning of the
concert.
Drastic measures were deemed necessary, and Pruden was locked
in the composers' room by his colleagues.
Realising by this stage that
his contribution to Variations was being viewed with scepticism, Pruden
started writing, as a riposte, a 'jazzed-up' variation, flavoured with
elements of boogie-woogie.
At the concert, by prior arrangement, he
rushed in after the final bars of Tremain's variation, pushed the
pianist aside, and with great panache presented his piece, Molto con brio,
finishing it with an extemporised ending.
In all, Lilburn was to attend the Cambridge Summer Music Schools
13
as composition tutor seven times: 1946, 47, 48, 49, 51,52 and 53 •.
From 1946 Lilburn began to write a series of extended piano
pieces. Up to this time, his writing for the piano had been confined
in the main to small 'drawing-room' works in a clear and accessible
style that the average domestic pianist could master without difficulty.
Sonatina was the first of these larger-scale works, written early
in 1946 and dedicated to Owen Jensen (no doubt as a result of their
acquaintance through the Cambridge Music School). It was Jensen who
11 Larry Pruden, Douglas and Cambridge, op.cit. p.42.
12 Variations on a Theme of Douglas Lilburn was later performed in
Auckland on 24 April 1948 at a concert presented by the Auckland
Lyric Harmonists Choir. It was first published (minus Carr's
and Pruden's variation) in Canzona vol.l no.3, 1980.
13 For further details about the history of the Cambridge Summer Music
Schools see Appendix A4.