Suite for Strings

Douglas Lilburn
Suite for Strings
PROMETHEAN EDITIONS

Douglas Lilburn
Suite for Strings
Study Score
PROMETHEAN EDITIONS
WELLINGTON

Suite for Strings (PEL29S) by Douglas Lilburn (1941)
Suite for Strings (1941)
Composed by Douglas Lilburn
© Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust
Under exclusive licence to Songbroker Limited
Text © 2025 by the named author(s).
Published by Promethean Editions Limited
First edition © 2025 Promethean Editions Limited
Publisher: Ross Hendy
Series Editor: Robert Hoskins
Music Editors: Ross Hendy, Moss Lee, Thomas Liggett
Associate Editor: Rod Biss
ISBN 978-1-877564-40-6 (print)
ISBN 978-1-77660-549-1 (ebook)
ISMN 979-0-67452-323-3
Promethean Editions Limited
PO Box 10-143
Wellington
NEW ZEALAND
https://www.prometheaneditions.com
Promethean Editions would like to thank the Lilburn Trust
for a donation made toward the publication of this volume.
This edition is for John Cousins on his eightieth birthday.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by
any means without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Douglas Lilburn
Suite for Strings
INTRODUCTION
Douglas Lilburn Biography ........................................ iv
Editor’s introduction ..................................................... v
Editorial notes .............................................................. viii
Publisher’s note ............................................................. ix
MUSIC
Suite for Strings (1941)..................................................1
APPENDIX
Douglas Lilburn in Central Otago ....................... 30
PEL29S – iii

INTRODUCTION
Douglas Lilburn occupies a pre-eminent position in New Zealand music, with a legacy
extending well beyond his compositional output. As a composer, teacher and mentor he
presided in innumerable ways over the artistic growth of New Zealand from 1940 onwards.
From the early works redolent of the influence of Sibelius and Vaughan Williams, to the
electro-acoustic pieces of his later years, his works have been instrumental in establishing
a genuinely vernacular voice in New Zealand classical music.
Our collection of Lilburn’s publications draws on the expertise of Dr Robert Hoskins, formerly
an Associate Professor at the New Zealand School of Music, and Rod Biss, who as
Production Director of Faber Music and then Price Milburn Music, was instrumental in
publishing Lilburn’s music in the 1970s. The editors, previous collaborators on the Douglas
Lilburn Complete Piano Edition, have carefully considered and clarified Lilburn’s manuscripts
and early publications in preparing these volumes as both scholarly and practical
editions for performance which are presented with the exacting and elegant house style of
Promethean Editions.
BIOGRAPHY
Douglas Lilburn (1915–2001) grew up on ‘Drysdale’, a hill-country farm bordering the mountainous
region at the centre of New Zealand’s North Island. He often described his boyhood
home as ‘paradise’ and his first major orchestral work, Drysdale Overture (1937), written
while a student under the aegis of Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music in
London, conjures up the hills, bush and stream as primal sites of imaginative wonder. In
this same period Lilburn wrote his Festival Overture (1939) and Overture: Aotearoa (1940),
together with a choral work, Prodigal Country (1939), which expresses feelings of exile and
his response to rumours of war. Although these works were written in his student years,
their content, style and general confidence reveal Lilburn as an achieved artist.
Returning to Christchurch, Lilburn banded together with an innovative group of painters,
poets and publishers who were to prove influential. Settings of Allen Curnow and Denis
Glover, for instance, resulted in two iconic works: Landfall in Unknown Seas (1942), a voyage
of spiritual discovery for narrator and string orchestra, and the song cycle Sings Harry
(1953/1954), the musings of a middle-aged bachelor who, returning to the mountains where
he grew up, begins to reassess and evaluate the course his life has taken. Two more works,
an orchestral tone poem A Song of Islands (1946) and the Chaconne (1946) for piano, find
their parallel in the regional paintings of Rita Angus.
In 1947 Lilburn joined the staff at Victoria University College in Wellington and completed
several works that received high critical acclaim, including two symphonies, two piano
sonatas, and the Alistair Campbell song cycle Elegy (1951) — a vision of the titanic indifference
of nature. Lilburn composed Symphony No.3 (1961), along with Sonatina No.2 (1962)
and Nine Short Pieces for Piano (1965–66), in response to a stimulating period of sabbatical
leave. Masterpieces of concentrated form, these works explore the boundaries of his instru-
PEL29S – iv

mental writing. From this point until his retirement, Lilburn chose to take on the new territory
of electro-acoustic composition.
Lilburn’s final years were spent quietly at home in Thorndon, Wellington, tending to his garden
and, until the onset of arthritis, playing his beloved August Förster piano. He received
the Order of New Zealand in 1988.
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
Suite for Strings, completed on 1 March 1941 and consisting of five movements, was the first
of several pieces for string orchestra that Douglas Lilburn composed following studies with
Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music in London. Previously unpublished, this
early yet supremely confident work reveals an understanding of the English flair for string
ensemble writing by such composers as Elgar, Holst, Britten and Bridge, tempered with his
own determination to forge a New Zealand symphonic style. 1
Lilburn had come home to New Zealand in August 1940 to work for a year on the Taihape
property of his sister and brother-in-law, Louisa and Bill Britton, while the latter was serving
overseas. 2 ‘I used to catch my horse and ride round. I had about 800 ewes you know,
expectant mothers to keep an eye on.’ 3 If Lilburn’s daily life was full of agricultural tasks—
lambing and feeding, milking, chopping firewood and butchering dog tucker—then his
imaginative life is expressed in the Suite for Strings, which responds to the landscape: its
steep valleys and fast-flowing streams. As he later told a friend, ‘I used to sing my heart out
at the top of my lungs as I rode around the heights of Taihape Hills … probably got a reputation
in the district for being a loony. Only years later did I learn from St Augustine: “He
who sings his jubilus sings not words but the joy that is inexpressible in words.”’ 4 Lilburn
once described himself as a ‘displaced farmer opting to be a musician’ and in his mid-fifties
spoke with pleasure of ‘clearing briar and broom and matagouri’ on the land surrounding
his cottage retreat in Central Otago. 5 His journals of that time are filled with memories of the
country and observations of hawks, quails, rabbits, mice, wild flowers, wild bees, lupins,
lichens and ferns, ‘of river, mountains, larks singing’. He explained how nature shaped his
composing by saying ‘landscape and sky gives me back the mirror of itself.’ 6
Lilburn left the farm to take up a trial conductorship of the National Broadcasting Service
(NBS) String Orchestra in Wellington. The invitation to rehearse the country’s best string
players and to develop an understanding of the distinctive character of the repertoire was
1 Rod Biss recalls that ‘as a teacher, Lilburn wanted his students to think like string players, to hear the bowing and
phrasing of what they wrote’ (personal communication, 4 May 2018).
2 Lilburn was not called up because of weak eyesight.
3 Jack Body, ‘Fragments of a Stolen Conversation’, in Valerie Harris and Philip Norman (eds), Douglas Lilburn: A
Festschrift for Douglas Lilburn on his retirement from the Victoria University of Wellington, January 31, 1980, 2nd edn
(Wellington: Composers’ Association of New Zealand, 1980), pp.19–20.
4 Douglas Lilburn to Norrie Rogers, 6 July 1985, MS-Papers-7623-286, Alexander Turnbull Library. The quotation is
from St Augustine’s Confessions. In the same letter, Lilburn recommends Gerald Brenan’s Thoughts in a Dry Season
(1978) and recalls ‘his wonderful description of shepherds singing across huge valleys’ in South from Granada (1957).
Lilburn associates the uplifted hymning of ‘Jubilus’ to bird-flight (see appendix), heard, for example, in hawk-height
moments of the violin sonata, string quartet, and Prelude of the second symphony.
5 'Otago Notes’, Vol.2, 15 May 1971, p.4, MS-Papers-7623-036, Alexander Turnbull Library.
6 ‘Otago Notes’, Vol.3, 19 October 1971, p.24. Lilburn’s journal entry parallels Beethoven’s letter of May 1810: ‘For
surely woods, trees, and rocks give back the echo which man desires to hear.’
PEL29S – v

an unexpected one. When he returned from London he had been, in his words, ‘astonished
and delighted’ to meet in Wellington Maurice Clare, ‘an English violinist hardly older than
myself’, who had trained the string section of the Centennial Orchestra and been its leader.
When this group broke up after what Lilburn called ‘the Centennial junketings’, the NBS
retained a dozen string players led by Vincent Aspey and conducted by Clare. 7 ‘To my ears,
fresh from London concerts, their standard was excellent.’ When Clare, whom Lilburn had
found on further acquaintance to be ‘a congenial and highly intelligent musician’, moved
to a small farm in Canterbury with his wife and young children, he nominated Lilburn as ‘a
potential successor’. As a result he had ‘three exhilarating months’, from May to July 1941,
as guest conductor of the NBS String Orchestra. ‘But whatever my musical qualifications I
entirely lacked political acumen’—in other words, he refused to perform music he considered
below par. ‘My appointment was terminated, the Taihape farm was under control of a
good neighbour, and so I headed for Christchurch, a civilised outpost in those days.’ 8
The NBS String Orchestra schedule included a monthly hour-length Sunday afternoon
concert, a weekly hour-length concert on Tuesday nights, and a half-hour programme
of ‘Dinner Music’ on Thursday evenings. The concert programmes, itemised in the New
Zealand Listener, invariably opened with a selection from the baroque and classical repertoire
(Lilburn conducted four of Handel’s 12 string concertos, Op.6, works that no doubt
influenced his own string writing — as they had Elgar’s), followed by a bracket of songs
performed by a guest artist. In one concert this was contralto Molly Atkinson, who had
given the New Zealand premiere of Vaughan Williams’ Five Tudor Portraits. The programme
would close with music chiefly from the stable of nationalist composers, usually Russian
or Scandinavian, along with modern British works: Lilburn conducted Warlock’s Capriol
Suite and the Suite for Strings by Frank Bridge. Frederick Page’s Air for Strings was the only
New Zealand work played during Lilburn’s tenure. His conducting style was memorably
described by Owen Jensen as ‘like his music, an honest to goodness job of work. No swagger,
no extravagant use of fruitless exertion, a neat, effective beat.’ 9
Lilburn hoped to include Suite for Strings in the orchestra’s repertoire and the first movement
reached the rehearsal stage, as confirmed by the holograph score in which the opening
movement appears as a new clean copy written on different manuscript paper to the
rest of the score, but it was possibly not performed because, as Lilburn later explained, the
players were unenthusiastic. 10 However, an unnamed reviewer of an all-Lilburn concert in
Christchurch on 23 September 1943 lamented that Lilburn’s ‘Serenade’ for strings had not
received a repeated performance. Could this be a reference to the suite or at least the opening
movement? There is no work entitled ‘Serenade’ in the Lilburn canon and all his other
known string pieces were performed on that occasion. Whatever the answer, the work has
been neglected before the appearance of this edition. 11
It is difficult to understand why the Suite for Strings failed to ignite interest, given Lilburn’s
7 A precursor of the National Orchestra of New Zealand established in 1946.
8 Robert Hoskins (ed.), Douglas Lilburn: Memories of Early Years and Other Writings (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2014),
pp.126–28.
9 Music Ho II, 11 (October 1943), p.14.
10 Lilburn to John P. Scott in papers given to Philip Norman; see Philip Norman, Douglas Lilburn: His Life and Music
(Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2006), p.99.
11 Music Ho II, 11 (October 1943), p.14.
PEL29S – vi

profile as a prize-winning young composer of three orchestral overtures and an extended
choral work. 12 Reading handwritten parts, unfamiliarity with idiom, and limitations of technique
may have caused difficulties for those particular players but the music is written in a
comfortably approachable medium; it is an ideal piece for smaller and school orchestras. It
combines the directness of Lilburn’s early major orchestral work, Overture: Aotearoa, with
a lift of the strings that anticipates the oceanic cresting of Landfall in Unknown Seas. Indeed,
this work is the first signpost towards Allegro for Strings, Landfall in Unknown Seas and
Diversions, music for string orchestra that would seal his future as a New Zealand composer.
The energy of the outer and central movements of the Suite for Strings feels like an unpremeditated
rush of inspiration and there is an unrestrained sincerity in the inner movements—the
first an incarnation of Celtic folksong that taps into Lilburn’s Scottish ancestry,
and the second played with the first violins muted throughout. Above all, the mood of Suite
for Strings seems to match the zest of the composer shepherding on the high hills and his
enchantment with the natural scene.
Robert Hoskins
12 Drysdale Overture (1937), Festival Overture (1939), Overture: Aotearoa (1940) and Prodigal Country (1939). Overture:
Aotearoa was premiered in a concert to mark of the New Zealand centenary in London in 1940 and the three other
works were prize winners in the New Zealand National Centennial Music Celebrations Competitions that same year.
PEL29S – vii

EDITORIAL NOTES
The copy-text for this edition, the only extant source, is Lilburn’s ink holograph score,
fMS-Papers-2483-098, Alexander Turnbull Library. Lilburn’s bow markings have been preserved,
but additional pencilled bow markings made by Maurice Clare have not. We have,
however, included Clare’s notational suggestion for Violin 1 to shadow Violin II in mm.3–10
of the finale and this is reproduced in cue-sized notes (here, as elsewhere, players will make
their own editorial decisions as they bring this score to life). We have remained faithful to
Lilburn’s notation style.
Movement I
11 Vn II, Va, Vc, D.B: stress marks added to match Vn I
15 Vc: accents added to match Va m.12
17–20 ‘poco a poco cresc’ pencilled above the instruments is probably intended to catch
the conductor’s eye
53 Vn II: slur added to opening quavers
102 D.B: accent added to match other parts
Movement II
5 Vc: stress mark added to match Va
Movement III
42 Vn I: slur added up from B-flat quaver
109 D.B: staccato deleted from last note
Movement IV
2–5 Va: ‘Solo’ pencilled above the stave indicates another of Maurice Clare’s
suggestions
Movement V
2 Vc slurring to match Va mm 1/3
36 A pencilled remark by Maurice Clare above the stave observes the passage
‘becomes very rapidly to heel’
52 Vn II: accent added to match Vn I
53 Vn II, Va: stress marks added to match Vn I
109 Vn II slurring to match Vn I mm 108/110
135–138 Vn I: ‘Solo’ pencilled above the stave indicates another of Maurice Clare’s
suggestions
PEL29S – viii

PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The Publisher gratefully acknowledges the assistance from Dr Michael Brown and Keith
McEwing of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Rod Biss, Dr Robert Hoskins, Dr Philip
Norman, Anna Rogers, and the Lilburn Trust for its generous donation towards the publication
of this edition.
PEL29S – ix

The first page of the composer’s manuscript of Suite for Strings.
(Reproduced by permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Douglas PEL29S Gordon – x Lilburn Papers fMS-Papers-2483-098)

SUITE FOR STRINGS 1941
Douglas Lilburn
Molto moderato
= 72
Violin I
poco cresc.
Violin II
Q poco
cresc.
"
Viola
poco cresc.
Q
Violoncello
Double Bass
7
cresc. dim.
cresc.
dim.
"
cresc.
dim.
cresc. cresc.
Q
dim.
cresc. dim.
13
div. unis.
<
"
Q
poco
Q marcato
Suite for Strings © Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust
This edition © 2025 Promethean Editions Limited
PEL29S – 1
poco marcato
ISMN 9790674523233

18
"
Q Q
23
"
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
29
"
Allegro
dim.
dim.
dim.
dim.
pizz.
Q
dim.
PEL29S – 2

35
"
arco
42
"
dim.
dim.
dim.
dim.
dim.
51
"
PEL29S – 3

60
"
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
68
"
73
"
PEL29S – 4

79
"
dim.
dim.
dim.
dim.
87
"
95
"
PEL29S – 5

102
"
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
108
"
più
più
dim.
dim.
115
"
dim.
dim.
dim. pizz.
pizz.
arco
PEL29S – 6

122
"
pizz.
[div.]
pizz.
128
"
134
"
arco
[div.]
arco
[div.]
arco
PEL29S – 7

141
"
[unis.]
[unis.]
cresc.
[unis.]
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
149
"
155
"
PEL29S – 8

161
"
167
"
173
"
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
PEL29S – 9

179
"
184
"
dim.
dim.
dim.
pizz.
dim.
dim.
pizz.
[arco]
190
=
"
PEL29S – 10

196
"
[div.]
arco
<
divisi.
203
"
[unis.]
[div.]
[unis.]
209
"
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
PEL29S – 11

Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Violoncello
Double Bass
"
Andante quasi poco adagio = 44
dolce e simplice
II
5
"
9
"
div. < =
Q
= < = < < =
meno
meno
= =
<
< = < =
meno
meno
meno
unis.
< =
< < = <
<
=
< = < =
dim.
=
= = <
dim.
= = <
dim.
= = <
dim.
dim.
PEL29S – 12

14
"
ritenuto
< <
=
=
=
Q
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Violoncello
Double Bass
"
Vivace = 152
III
cresc.
Q
Q Q
cresc.
Q Q cresc.
Q Q cresc.
cresc.
5
"
cresc.
cresc.
Q Q
cresc.
Q Q
cresc.
Q Q
cresc.
PEL29S – 13

9
"
Q pizz.
arco
Q
pizz.
arco
Q Q
pizz.
arco
Q
Q
Q
13
"
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
Q
17
"
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
Q
cresc.
Q
cresc.
PEL29S – 14

22
"
Q
Q
Q
Q Q Q
27
"
Q pizz.
arco
Q Q
pizz.
Q Q arco
Q Q
pizz.
arco
Q Q
Q
32
"
dim.
dim.
Q dim.
dim.
Q
dim.
PEL29S – 15

41
"
47
"
sul G
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q
57
"
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
(sul G)
PEL29S – 16

64
"
dim.
dim.
dim.
dim.
dim.
70
"
sempre
sempre
sempre
sempre
sempre
76
"
Q
PEL29S – 17

81
"
86
"
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
91
"
Q
Q
pizz.
pizz.
PEL29S – 18
arco

95
"
arco
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
99
"
104
"
cresc.
molto
cresc.
molto
cresc.
molto
cresc.
molto
cresc.
molto
PEL29S – 19

108
"
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q
Q
112
"
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Q cresc.
cresc.
Violoncello
Double Bass
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
"
Lento con doloroso = 40
div.
Q
Q
Q
Q
pizz.
con sord.
dim.
pizz.
pizz. solo*
arco
[tutti]
espressivo
pizz.
pizz.
*This solo is Maurice Clare’s suggestion.
IV
PEL29S – 20
Q

7
"
t
unis.
dim.
t
più cresc.
arco
più cresc.
dim.
più cresc.
arco
più cresc.
arco
14
dim. più cresc.
più cresc.
"
dim.
dim.
più cresc.
dim.
più cresc.
dim.
più cresc.
21
"
div.
dim.
pizz.
dim.
pizz.
dim.
pizz.
dim.
dim.
PEL29S – 21
dim.

Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Violoncello
Double Bass
"
Allegro = 152
V
senza sord.
Q
*
Q Q
sempre
6
Q
"
13
"
* The cue-sized notes are Maurice Clare’s suggestion.
PEL29S – 22

20
"
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
Q
Q
26
"
31
"
PEL29S – 23

36
"
Q
dim.
dim.
dim.
dim.
pizz.
42
"
più cresc.
più cresc.
più cresc.
più cresc.
48
"
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
PEL29S – 24

54
"
sub.
sub.
sub.
Q
sub.
61
"
67
"
Q
Q
dolce
Q
arco
PEL29S – 25

74
"
poco a poco cresc.
poco a poco cresc.
poco a poco cresc.
poco a poco cresc.
poco a poco cresc.
81
"
86
"
Q
dim.
Q
dim.
dim.
dim.
PEL29S – 26
dim.

91
"
96
"
più cresc.
più cresc.
più cresc.
più cresc.
più cresc.
102
"
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
cresc.
PEL29S – 27

108
ritenuto
"
pizz.
Q Q Q
arco
114
"
a tempo
120
"
PEL29S – 28

126
"
134
"
a tempo
ritenuto
dim.
Q
PEL29S – 29

DOUGLAS LILBURN IN CENTRAL OTAGO
Lines from his journals
sing loud
sing high
sing happy
sing clear
my farmer self
chopping wood
clearing briar, broom, and matagouri
the white-mouthed calf moves across the green paddock
a solitary quail runs to secure thickets on the hillside
I’m left wondering why only one hawk hovers at sundown
the night sky against the milky way – plethora of stars
fantastic disk of a galaxy
a molecule in the universe
Beethoven’s solitude
Schubert’s poignancy
interior silence, fundamental attention, timeless listening
the translucent Clutha
shingle cliffs brilliant with tall blue lupins –
river, mountains, larks singing
this rich wide landscape and sky
gives me back its mirror of itself
I spontaneously think a folk-like fragment
into a long melodic jubilus or bird-flight
sing loud
sing high
sing happy
sing clear
PEL29S – 30

Lilburn’s Otago journals were written in a willow-shaded crib that he purchased from an
adjoining farm. Located in Queensberry, between Queenstown and Wanaka, it served
as a retreat from Wellington and university life while drawing the composer back to his
rural roots. Here he planted apricot trees (mature now with delicious summer fruit) and
wrote reflectively on his experiences. Lilburn possibly saw himself in the tradition of the
contemplative observer – Thoreau ‘fishing in the sky’ at Walden Pond and Beethoven
stargazing in a hayfield at Heiligenstadt (Beethoven’s solitude is movingly expressed in his
Heiligenstadt Testament). These freely adapted texts are taken from MS-Papers-7623-032
and MS-Papers-7623-036 and reproduced with kind permission of the Alexander Turnbull
Library Endowment Trust.
Robert Hoskins
PEL29S – 31

THE DOUGLAS LILBURN COLLECTION
A NEW ZEALAND CHRISTMAS • Piano • PEL10
A SONG OF ISLANDS • Orchestra • PEL23
BACKBLOCK MEDICAL SERVICE • Chamber Orchestra • PEL30
DIVERSIONS FOR STRING ORCHESTRA • String Orchestra • PEL26
DRYSDALE OVERTURE • Orchestra • PEL21
LANDFALL IN UNKNOWN SEAS • Narrator and String Orchestra • PEL27
PIANO PRELUDES • Piano • PEL13
PIANO SONATAS • Piano • PEL11
PIANO SONATINAS • Piano • PEL12
PIECES FOR PIANO • Piano • PEL09
PRODIGAL COUNTRY • Baritone, Chorus and Orchestra • PEL22
SINFONIA FOR STRINGS • String Orchestra • PEL28
SINGS HARRY, HOLIDAY PIECE, THE MAGPIES • Voice and Piano • PEL25
SUITE FOR STRINGS • String Orchestra • PEL29
SYMPHONY NO.1 • Orchestra • PEL24
THE COMPLETE PIANO MUSIC EDITION • Piano • PEL01–PEL08
ISMN 979-0-67452-323-3
www.prometheaneditions.com
Printed in Australia • PEL29S
Douglas Lilburn Suite for Strings PEL29S