Mark Morris’s Guide to Twentieth Century Composers

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NEW ZEALAND

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New Zealand's best known composer, Douglas Lilburn (1915-2001) studied in England with Vaughan Williams, and he was initially influenced by his teacher's style. Shades of that touch the best-known of his earlier works, the fine and rather brazen Aotearoa Overture (1940 - the title is Maori for `Land of the Long White Cloud', or New Zealand itself), although far more unmistakable are the echoes of Sibelius, in a tone painting describing the antipodean counterpart to the Finnish composer's sunlit Finnish scenes. The influence of Vaughan Williams is more apparent in the Symphony No.2 (1951), while the Symphony No.3 (1960-1961) has much leaner textures of an almost chamber scale. However, Lilburn subsequently adopted many of the developments of 20th-century music, including neo-classicism and serialism, and in 1965 founded the first electronic studio in New Zealand, at Victoria University in Wellington. His electronic pieces mix created and natural sounds.

 

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