Forgetting wot I've writ!

The joy of old age. I wrote a post a few days ago comparing Lilburn and Delius, only to discover yesterday that I'd already done this back at the beginning of 2008.
At least the two posts were quite different, and I wasn't just repeating myself in total. It's fine to write about an idea twice; it's when you start saying exactly the same thing about the idea more than once that it's a bit of a worry.
My wife and I are heading off to a little town called Otematata tomorrow for a few days, and then we go on to Cromwell where we'll meet up with my daughter and grandson. (And possibly my younger son, who's working up there on a cherry orchard at the moment.) It's our annual holiday, but there's the threat of an interruption to it: I'm on the 'urgent' list to have some work done on my prostate (see much more information about this on workreport.net) and so there's a possibility that we might get called back to Dunedin. Hopefully not. It would be good to have a holiday without the interruption, especially for my wife, as this is the first couple of weeks she's had off in ages.
So blogging probably won't get done while we're away (still less if I wind up in hospital!).

The rather stormy picture of Cromwell's iconic fruit was taken by gak.

Reconsidering Lilburn

Apropos (oh, how I do love that word!) of a couple of posts back, the Elegy by Lilburn is available on SOUNZ for purchase. There's an LP version, and a cassette. Two different recordings: one is called Canzona: music for strings and voices, and the other is called, NZ Flora Series, Vol 2. Both have a mixed bag of other stuff on them, but the Lilburn in each case seems to be the same performance by Patricia Lawrey and Anthea Moller (mezzo-sopranos) and the Schola Musica.
I briefly debated buying the cassette (for NZ$19) - the LP isn't available for purchase or hire - but thought, Do I really want to buy something that I already don't have good vibes about? Nope, not at the moment.

Anyone who reads this blog frequently - as I do - will think I've got a snitch against Lilburn. I'll just state my case again, in case I haven't stated it clearly previously.
I think Lilburn, like some pioneer NZ painters, has got an overrated reputation. Being a pioneer, in the sense that he was probably the first NZ composer to make a name for himself as a [serious] composer rather than as a teacher or other academic, he has a place in NZ musical history. Regrettably, his music isn't on a par with his place in history; there are a few pieces worthy of attention, but somehow his status as a pioneer has managed to hoist up his compositions beyond their value. I wait for the day when we've got over the big deal of his pioneering effort, and have started to assess him against other NZ composers - of whom there are now a sufficient number to place him on the scale of worth.
I'm not saying we should throw out everything he wrote, but only that much of his work, while characteristic of him particularly, isn't terribly inspired - or inspiring. He seems to rely on movement without melody, movement without much harmonic interest, so that the ear constantly hears a limited range. He reminds me of Delius, one of the all-time great wafflers in composition. Let's keep Delius for the particular voice that he gave to the world, but let's not lay at his feet any great claims to him being startlingly original, or even inspirational to listen to. Delius is the great delineator of vagueness, and on that basis he has a certain standing. Lilburn seems to me to have taken a path of limitation: using as little material as possible, but not necessarily doing anything very exciting with it.

Lilburn and Delius

Landfall in Unknown Seas, by Douglas Lilburn, has just been played on the radio yet again – this time with Sir Edmund Hillary doing the reciting of the poem (and not very well either, it must be admitted).
In spite of its ‘popularity’ this is an unexciting piece of music. The format doesn’t help much, with a person reading the poetry of Allen Curnow interspersed with string ‘interpretations’ of what’s just been read. Somehow it never takes off. The poetry is fine enough, but Lilburn’s music never rises to the occasion. In fact, it tends to flatten things out. As always, Lilburn fails to come up with anything except his usual chordal movement stuff, and after a while that gets tedious. It reminds me of Delius’ music, whose wandering compositions wax and wane in popularity. They never seem to have any purpose; they’re reflective, which is fine in music, but that’s all. Delius seems to have no other mood.
Lilburn has occasional moments in his compositions, moments when he finally seems to break out of the mode of the mind and into emotion. But he seems to hold back far more often than he lets loose, and in a composer that’s not a good trait, I don’t feel. Without some sense of passion, even if it’s only below the surface, music becomes a mere mood, and in Lilburn’s case it’s not a very interesting mood.