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Douglas Gordon Lilburn ONZ FRCM (2 November 1915 – 6 June 2001) was a New Zealand composer.

Biography

Early life

Lilburn was born on 2 November 1915 in Mrs Tripe's Nursing Home in Wanganui. The seventh and youngest child of Robert and Rosamond Lilburn, who were aged 49 and 42 at the time, he was named Douglas—fashionable for the time—and given the middle name Gordon after Charles George Gordon. Lilburn spent his early childhood growing up on Drysdale Station, which spanned 8000 acres as of the time of his birth. The station was mostly self-contained, with almost all food grown on the property and electricity supplied from a generator Robert Lilburn had built at the nearby waterfall. Family legend has it that Lilburn was always his mother's favourite son. On 5 November 1920, Lilburn began formal schooling at Pukeroa School, a one-room government school with only one teacher. As he had already learnt how to read through contact with his father's extensive library, Lilburn had no trouble with the lessons. While the extent of Lilburn's musical exposure at the time was his eldest sister Louisa's piano playing, it was nevertheless a stable, comfortable childhood on an expansive sheep station, which Lilburn described as "a richly varied and potent human and natural context to shape a young imagination".

In 1923, Robert Lilburn retired from farming and took his wife and eldest daughter on an eighteen-month world tour. He made arrangements to divide the land amongst his older sons and send the rest of Douglas's siblings to boarding school; Jack, the eldest, was responsible for Drysdale—and thus for Douglas. Toward the end of 1924 Robert Lilburn decided to retire to Wanganui; Douglas, by now the only child at home, was enrolled in the New Zealand Friends' School. This Quaker school placed a high value on practical education, and was the source of the "most enlightened and imaginative teaching I had ever had". It was here that Lilburn began formal piano lessons. Unlike at Drysdale, in Wanganui Lilburn was forbidden by Rosamond to play with the local children as they were "not nice". She also began a period of instructing Lilburn in Biblical doctrine, deeply frightening him in the process; toward the end of his life Lilburn still had strong recollections of crying himself to sleep "in fear of sin, guilt, damnation and hellfire". An optician visiting the school diagnosed Lilburn with myopia and astigmatism; this diagnosis was only partially correct and the glasses prescribed hindered Lilburn's short-range vision, making it difficult for him to read or play the piano. He was to be nearly 40 when an accurate prescription was finally made. Despite this setback, Lilburn gained his proficiency certificate a year early; however, because he was not socially adept, his parents decided to enrol him at a preparatory school instead of entering into high school. At St. Georges' School, Douglas did very well academically, winning the 1928 prizes for Form III English and Maths; he also entered the choir and continued piano lessons.

Although all his older siblings had been sent to Wanganui College, it was decided that Douglas should go south to Waitaki Boys' High School, in Oamaru. While they reasoned that his bronchial problems would improve in a dry climate, Douglas was sure that his parents were simply tired of having dependent children, his father now being 63 and well into retirement. Being bespectacled, unathletic and younger than his peers, Lilburn was unprepared for the harsh conditions at Waitaki. The incompetence of Waitaki's piano teachers dissuaded Lilburn from continuing lessons, but the installation of an organ in 1931 gave him the drive to resume lessons. He became sufficiently skilled to be the pianist to the school orchestra in his final year of school. Rector Frank Milner, who regarded Lilburn as "gifted with fine literary taste and discriminating appreciation", had a great influence on Lilburn's later oratory and philosophy, especially through encouraging him into debating, public speaking and reporting for the school newspaper. During his time at Waitaki, Lilburn wrote his first composition, Sonata in C minor Opus 1. In a later interview Lilburn recalls a performance of Mozart's Coronation Concerto and Chopin's Ballad in G minor as being possibly "the moment I decided I was going to be a musician".

Canterbury University

Robert Lilburn offered to pay for his son's tertiary study on the condition that he chose a "sensible" subject; Douglas chose journalism and began study at Canterbury University in early 1934. While in Christchurch, Lilburn attended as many concerts as he could, but there are no records of him participating in any orchestras or performing groups of the time.

Lilburn had enrolled in the one-year Certificate of Journalism, which only required him to take two courses; to fill the rest of his timetable he chose papers in philosophy and music. While he scored poorly in his journalism papers, something he attributed to monotonous teaching, he did markedly better in music. In his second year, Lilburn took a number of music papers, predominantly focussed on various aspects of composition, as well as a history paper and a philosophy paper.

Bibliography

• Norman, Philip (2006). Douglas Lilburn : his life and music. Christchurch, N.Z.: Canterbury Univ. Press. ISBN 1-877257-17-6.
• Thomson, John Mansfield (1991). The Oxford history of New Zealand music. Auckland [u.a.]: Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN 0-19-558176-8.
• Lilburn, Douglas (1985). A search for a language. Wellington, N.Z.: Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust. ISBN 0-908702-04-3.