Berichte/Features

February / March 2010

Portrait Douglas Lilburn - curated by Kirsten Reese

Works presented in this program (all by Douglas Lilburn):

01. Sings Harry, from: Five Toronto Pieces / 1963 / Part of Poem by Denis Glover / 5:04
02. Spectrum Study, from: Five Toronto Pieces / 1963 / 4:52
03. The Return / 1965 / Poem by Alistair Campbell / 17:03
04. Welcome Stranger / 1974/ 26:25
05. Toronto Tailfeather / 1969 / 1:08
06. Sounds and Distances / 1975 / 9:55
07. Summer Voices / 1969/ 6:32
08. Carousel / 1976 / 10:42
09. Winterset / 1976 / 9:49
10. Of Time and Nostalgia / 1977 / 10:48
11. Soundscape with Lake and River / 1979 / 11:01

Douglas Lilburn
was born in Wanganui, New Zealand, in 1915. He attended Waitaki Boys’ High School from 1930 to 1933, before moving to Christchurch to study at Canterbury University College (1934-6). In 1937 he began studying at the Royal College of Music, London. He was tutored in composition by Ralph Vaughan Williams and remained at the College until 1939.
He returned to New Zealand in 1940 and was guest conductor in Wellington for three months with the NBS String Orchestra. He shifted to Christchurch in 1941 and worked as a freelance composer and teacher until 1947. Between 1946 and 1949 and again in 1951, Lilburn was Composer-in-Residence at the Cambridge Summer Music Schools.
Douglas Lilburn, described as “the elder statesman of New Zealand music” and the “grandfather of New Zealand music,” died peacefully at his home in Wellington on 6 June 2001.

More Information to some of the works:

01. Sings Harry, from: Five Toronto Pieces / 1963 / Part of Poem by Denis Glover / 5:04
Probably the first New Zealand electronic music composition.

03. The Return / 1965 / Poem by Alistair Campbell / 17:03
There are five categories of sound material in the work and in his studio diaries Lilburn enumerates these: Mist – white noise, BBC filters. Sea – field recordings overdubbed and mixed with half speed playback and low white noise. Headlands – white noise and BBC filters with piano sounds added to give intensity to the loud peaks. Maori Voice – speed changes produced by wrapping cellophane around Ampex tape recorder drive! Birds – bellbirds and tuis three octaves lower with noisy squawks spliced out.

04. Welcome Stranger / 1974/ 26:25
This work was commissioned by The Royal Ballet as an artistic collaboration between Lilburn and the young choreographer Deidre Tarrant. The subject matter, the isolation of the individual in society and their subjection to forces over which they have no control, was the composer’s idea and something he felt strongly about.

06. Sounds and Distances / 1975 / 9:55
Lilburn’s first four channel piece, which appears here in the composer’s stereo version.

07. Summer Voices / 1969/ 6:32
„In 1968 I was facinated to study a recording by children of an East Coast school of the chant ‚Po Po“, an old lullaby telling how the kumara was brought to NZ, with a wealth of historical material woven into the story. (...) I found that rhythms of the chant could be printed onto electronic sounds, suggesting ghostly voices whispering through dry grass and a chorus of cicadas, and other impressions of half-heard sounds in the summer air.“ (D.L.)

08. Carousel / 1976 / 10:42
After the exploration of four channel works Lilburn returned to stereo compositions. Between 1976 and 1979 he created five related compositions built from the interconnection of two or three voltage controlled synthesizers. The creative process involved months of experimentation leading to tape recording and editing of generated sequences. There was a ‚hit and miss’ aspect to this unstable technology – tiny changes in temperature could produce completely different results.

09. Winterset / 1976 / 9:49
„The title carries nostalic memoreis of a superb and searing American film produced in the harsh thirties.“ (D.L.)

10. Of Time and Nostalgia / 1977 / 10:48
„The work tries to express this conundrum: we, and those we know, seem to exist simultaneously in many different strata of time, from our present to varying degrees of our past. The experience often makes for tension and conflict, and tehse in turn may result in nostalgia.“ (D.L.)

11. Soundscape with Lake and River / 1979 / 11:01
„The work owes something to the spacoiusness, the slowly changing horizons, the moods and colours of Lake Taupo.“ (D.L.)
The last composition Lilburn created in the electronic medium.

Hören Sie auf diesem Sendeplatz Reportagen von Festivals, Symposien, Kongressen und Ausstellungen rund um die vielfältige Szene der elektroakustischen Kunst.