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.

The 'grandfather of NZ music' strikes again

1st day of my holidays, and I woke at something like 4.30 am. Eventually went back to sleep, but some visitors got up early, and so most of us were around by seven. Finally lack of sleep caught up with me and I went back to bed, only to be woken by some music on the radio.
It turned out to be the end of Douglas Lilburn's: Elegy in Memoriam Noel Newson. From where I was in bed listening, it sounded as though the words came from Shakespeare - I caught 'nothing shall afright thee' or some such, but the rest of it was so badly articulated that I couldn't get the detail at all.
More than that though was the almost perverse way in which the string accompaniment seemed to be at odds with the singer(s). The latter were chauntering along in a banal enough way - the melody line, typically of Lilburn, having virtually no melody - but the strings kept fluffling around doing some chordal stuff that seldom integrated with the singers. And at the end, they played a few desultory bars and pretty well gave up. Lilburn the great pioneer New Zealand composer shoots music in the foot again!
I can't find much out about this piece of music (the few references on Google all seem to go to broken links). To be fair, I'll see if I can track it down at the library and give it another shot. But what I heard this morning (even coming out of a deep sleep) was enough to make me think that I'm not going to be impressed.
Later: I've just found a small amount on the SOUNZ site. The last piece, as I thought, was to words by Shakespeare: Fear no more the heat o' the sun. Herrick, Blake and Herbert are the other three lyricists.