# Douglas Lilburn



## Mirror Image

Douglas Lilburn has for decades been considered to be New Zealand's premier composer. He studied at the University of Canterbury and at the Royal College of Music with Vaughan Williams. He taught for many years at the Victoria University at Wellington. In addition to a large body of instrumental works, he has also composed in the field of electronic music, an important work here being The Return, a sound image setting of a poem by Alistair Campbell.

His Aotearoa Overture is one of his most popular works. The word means "Land of the Long White Cloud" and was what New Zealanders called their country before the Dutch arrived and renamed it. A brief work of elegantly overlaid sustained chords, restrained and touching.

The Third Symphony of 1961 is a remarkable work for its refined style and intelligent working of limited materials; in one movement made up of five interrelated sections, Lilburn's post-Romanticism winds through many groups of variations and ends quite unexpectedly in a sort of broken coda. If his style might be compared to anyone's it might be Arthur Bliss with a touch of Havergal Brian.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

I'm sure Andante knows this composer quite well since Lilburn is a New Zealander. I just discovered this man's music and am flabbergasted I waited so long to check him out.


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## Tapkaara

I've heard his music is much like Sibelius's...


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## Mirror Image

Tapkaara said:


> I've heard his music is much like Sibelius's...


It might be a little Sibelius-like, but I'm sure there's many more influences.


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## Weston

Tapkaara said:


> I've heard his music is much like Sibelius's...


I thought I heard a bit of Bruckner influence in his symphonies.


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## Mirror Image

Weston said:


> I thought I heard a bit of Bruckner influence in his symphonies.


I suppose there's a little Bruckner influence in his music. Not much though.


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## altiste

New Zealand is my country of origin, so having lived there for forty years I've naturally been in contact with the music of Douglas Lilburn. I can instantly think of at least four works by him that I've played. Actually, I studied composition at Victoria University of Wellington but this was as DL was retiring; I remember a lecture in the electronic studio although he was not one of my primary composition teachers.

I seem to have very little recorded Lilburn music, but have a copy of Philip Norman's extensive biography on Douglas Lilburn called "His Life and Music" that I'd recommend as it gives a good overview of artistic life in general in NZ. 

As with any composer with such a large catalogue spanning a considerable period the influences are diverse and certain works stand out as being stronger than others. The Violin Sonata, that I played, from memory employed modes of limited transposition (a Messiaen influence) and leaves the impression of it being one of his stronger works. I also played his String Trio but count neither that nor his String Quartet as his most memorable work. In this domain at least he was considerably overtaken by another NZer; Anthony Watson who wrote three great string quartets.

Of the symphonies the first two can probably be grouped together with their expansive construction as distinct from the third with its much more taut language.


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## Guest

All Music Guide said:


> In addition to a large body of instrumental works, he has also composed in the field of electronic music....


Hahaha, now there's funny! Lilburn essentially stopped writing instrumental music after the third symphony, doing electroacoustic music for the rest of his career, which lasted about another twenty years.

Here's what he had to say about this switch: "For the first time I began to enter into my own total heritage of sound..." (From the liner notes to the three CD/one DVD set of Lilburn's electroacoustic music, quoting his words at the Auckland Festival in 1966.)

A lot of composers wrote electroacoustic pieces early on, then went back to instrumental, like Ligeti and Berio and Lachenmann. Some write both, like Nelson and Eotvos and Mulvey. Many write only electroacoustic, like Gobeil and Ferreyra and Groult. But so far as I know, only Lilburn wrote instrumental music up to a certain point and then just switched to electroacoustic.

Lilburn founded New Zealand's first electronic music studio, at Victoria University in Wellington, where several generations of composers have worked, including the incomparable Denis Smalley. (This was in 1966, making it earlier than in many other countries, including England and Australia.)


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## altiste

some guy said:


> A lot of composers wrote electroacoustic pieces early on, then went back to instrumental, like Ligeti and Berio and Lachenmann. Some write both, like Nelson and Eotvos and Mulvey. Many write only electroacoustic, like Gobeil and Ferreyra and Groult. But so far as I know, only Lilburn wrote instrumental music up to a certain point and then just switched to electroacoustic.


Perhaps it was the southern hemisphere effect; things work in reverse, even water goes down the plug-hole anticlockwise.


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## Weston

altiste said:


> Perhaps it was the southern hemisphere effect; things work in reverse, even water goes down the plug-hole anticlockwise.


I read somewhere that is actually a myth. It could go either way in either hemispere depending on how it gets started -- but since I don't remember where I heard it, I can't verify it.

I do wonder though if the differing seasons and so forth have any effect on compositional choices.


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## Guest

Haha! Shoulda thought of that. (I've seen that Simpson's episode, after all.)


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## Mirror Image

some guy said:


> Haha! Shoulda thought of that. (I've seen that Simpson's episode, after all.)


That figures.


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## Guest

His early music is beautiful and is played quite a bit on our local classical radio station it has VW running through it, the electronic stuff is not played very often so I have not heard a lot of it, what I did hear was not to my liking.


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## Mirror Image

Andante said:


> His early music is beautiful and is played quite a bit on our local classical radio station it has VW running through it, the electronic stuff is not played very often so I have not heard a lot of it, what I did hear was not to my liking.


Yeah, why he chose to write for electronic instruments is beyond me, but his early work, yes, is quite beautiful.


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## Guest

His Drysdale overture and the 4 canzona are great pieces, again VW runs through them


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## Mirror Image

Andante said:


> His Drysdale overture and the 4 canzona are great pieces, again VW runs through them


Of course, that RVW influence is prevalent through his music since he did study with him. You can't escape a dominate force like VW. That lyricism will linger in your head for days.


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## Guest

Mirror Image said:


> Yeah, why he chose to write for electronic instruments is beyond me....


Well, see if this helps. Here's Douglas on his visit to the Toronto electronic studio back in the fifties, "A first day with Director Myron Schaeffer in the studio left my ears and imagination dazzled with new sounds."

And here's a direct answer to your puzzlement: "What is it that attracts composers and students and listeners to this new medium? - perhaps a working context that allows imagination to make use of all the sounds that are part of our human listening experience. The working disciplines are quite as stringent as those required by older music, and the product can be used for a wide range of human occasions. And surely, by utilising all sounds that make our audial experience, the medium is most valid for exploring our creative imagination potential. here and now."


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## Weston

some guy said:


> Well, see if this helps. Here's Douglas on his visit to the Toronto electronic studio back in the fifties, "A first day with Director Myron Schaeffer in the studio left my ears and imagination dazzled with new sounds."
> 
> And here's a direct answer to your puzzlement: "What is it that attracts composers and students and listeners to this new medium? - perhaps a working context that allows imagination to make use of all the sounds that are part of our human listening experience. The working disciplines are quite as stringent as those required by older music, and the product can be used for a wide range of human occasions. And surely, by utilising all sounds that make our audial experience, the medium is most valid for exploring our creative imagination potential. here and now."


I'm raising a glass to Lilburn. That's the most eloquent defense of electronic music I've heard. It even tops Wayne Shorter's "Your nervous system is electronic." I wonder where I can find some examples of his.


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## Guest

some guy said:


> Well, see if this helps. Here's Douglas on his visit to the Toronto electronic studio back in the fifties, "A first day with Director Myron Schaeffer in the studio left my ears and imagination dazzled with new sounds."


Well it proves that even composers like Doug were not infallible  they make mistakes and get it wrong at times.


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## Guest

Weston, there's a three CD/one DVD set on Atoll records. ACD 404.


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## altiste

*Three Sea Changes*

I've just dug out a CD of NZ piano music and had a listen to _Three Sea Changes_ by Douglas Lilburn performed by Margaret Neilson. Definitely heart-felt music. The first piece is rather folksy but a bit too obvious in it's tonality for my taste, however the 2nd and 3rd seem to free up in style and are much more interesting.

Actually this thread is making me reminisce a little about the personal contact that I had with Douglas Lilburn. In 1987 my work Diffractions for Piano and Orchestra was performed by the NZSO as part of a weekend festival called Sonic Circus. After the performance DL told me that he didn't like the way the piano line sometimes ascended and went "ping" at the end of the phrase. The conductor, who was clearly partisan to this work, had observed us speaking together then later asked me what had been said. I told the conductor about the "ping" comment and his response was "Don't change a single note!"


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## Earthling

I've been getting into some Lilburn lately-- starting with the obvious (*Aotearoa *is certainly stirring, and the *Drysdale Overture* is quite good-- definitely some RVW in that, for obvious reasons).

But last week I downloaded a few of his piano works, and I am really taken with them: a 25 minute *Chaconne*-- this on an album including Copland's Piano Sonata-- and I was struck by the Coplandesque influence in many of the chord voicing. The Copland influence ends there, but it seems to come out more in some of these piano works (though there's that wide space in his *Birthday Offering *for orchestra too). There are two *Piano Sonatas *(1949 & 1956) that are wonderful too, but I'm really hooked on the Chaconne!


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## MusicSybarite

Just listened to _A Song of Islands_. Absolutely wonderful! This work will surely appeal to fans of VW, Moeran and Sibelius mostly. Highly recommended.


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