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• War and Peace and Jack Winter's Dream - Incidental Music by Ashley Heenan 

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• Ashley Heenan: Orchestral Music  Year: 1996 

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• Pruden: March-Lambton Quay; facsimile  Year: 1988 

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• Carr and Pruden: Orchestral Works  Year: 1987 

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Curnow requested this work from Lilburn in 1952 for a poetry reading at Auckland University College. The event took place on the evening of 9 August that year, and involved a substantial amount of poetry (twenty-two poems in total) read by the poets involved. (Actually the works of eight poets were represented: Baxter read “Canto at Twenty-seven” by Louis Johnson).

Lilburn’s music was premiered by Antonia Braidwood (violin) and Donald Bowick (piano). One movement was supposed to precede each reading, providing the audience with the composer’s musical impressions of the work and personality of each poet. In the event, however, the order was reversed, which led to some confusion for the audience and some displeasure for the composer. Typical of New Zealand composition of the time, there was no fee to be had for the work. Lilburn even had to pay his way to Auckland for the rehearsals. On his return to Wellington, Lilburn shelved and forgot about the work. It was not until a chance meeting at his doctor’s surgery in 1988/89 that he was reminded of its existence by Lady Dorothea Turner, who had reviewed the first performance. At that point Lilburn contacted the violinist Dean Major to ask if he would be interested in performing it. After some negotiation the composer also determined that he would write a narration to go along with the music in lieu of the twenty-two poems, and (most surprisingly) volunteered to read this himself.

Salutes to Seven Poets was recorded by Concert FM on 5 September 1989, by Major (violin), with Rae de Lisle (piano). As if to make up for thirty-eight years of neglect of the work, this recording received a Mobil Award in 1990.

(Note by Nancy November).

• Lilburn: Salutes to Seven Poets; computer-set 

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• Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 9 - Douglas Lilburn: Salutes to Poets  Year: 2006 

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• Douglas Lilburn: Violin and Piano Works  Year: 2011 

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“The three poems here set have always seemed to me to share some ambient and most poignant awareness of our experience on these islands, whether of small remote sounds in summer, the desolation of a crippled gull, or the brilliance of summer harvesting, or whatever might make us feel at home” -Douglas Lilburn

Lilburn found an underlying experiential similarity in these poems by Ruth Dallas (Nos. 1 and 2) and Basil Dowling (No. 3), which he drew the fore in his settings. The keyboard introduction of “Clear Sky” captures the play of expansiveness (in the broad registral reach) and homeliness (the repeated motifs) that characterises the set as a whole. In “The Picnic” the spacious quality of the keyboard, evoking the circling swallows in their easy flight, is tinged by a haunting iambic limp. Lilburn’s word painting here is poignant and ironic: vocal melismas depict the crumpled, curled foot of the one-footed gull, and our (short) memories of his sorry sight. “Summer Afternoon” sums up the ambivalent mood of the set. The declamatory voice (also found in “The Picnic”) gradually becomes more lyrical, and a sense of progress is conveyed through the rising vocal line (as in “Clear Sky”). Yet there is a lingering sadness. The keyboard’s recurrent fluttering seventh and off-beat falling fourth recalls the desolation and troubling limp of “The Picnic”.
(Note by Nancy November).

• Lilburn: Three Songs for voice and piano; computer-set 

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• Lilburn: Three Songs for voice and piano; facsimile 

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• Capture this moment - Gina Sanders 

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• Tracey Chadwell's Songbook  Year: 1995 

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• Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 9 - Douglas Lilburn: Salutes to Poets  Year: 2006 

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Lilburn composed these songs in 1958 for the baritone Donald Munro and his wife the violist Jean McCartney, who gave the first broadcast performance.

The influence of serialism on the composer’s style at this point in his career makes for a challenging vocal line, especially in the first two songs. Nonetheless, Lilburn’s work capitalizes on the affinities between voice and viola, and exploits technical capabilities of the viola to evoke moods rather than painting the words. In the penultimate verse of “Warning of Winter”, for example, the viola’s wavering line, thickened with chords, heralds the darkness of winter that “descends the flowered pathway”. Such subtle evocation of the text is also found in “Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness”. Here the viola’s wide leaps to high trills are to be executed with the bow placed over the fingerboard; this evokes the troubling paradoxes of spring, the “Birds that are silent now/And buds of barren springing”. Between these bleak poles, the viola and voice pairing are used with bold irony in “Song of Allegiance”. This march is a poet’s humble yet robust reflection on his own position in comparison to the poetic geniuses of the past. Again Lilburn enlists the viola to speak with and as the poet: wide intervals, tense chords, and motivic stutters convey a poetic voice that is “cracked and harsh”.

• Lilburn: Three Songs; computer-set 

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• Lilburn: Three Songs for baritone and viola; facsimile  Year: 1972 

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• Chamber Works Vol 1 (NZ Composers Edition) 

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• Viola Aotearoa  Year: 2000 

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• Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music Vol. 9 - Douglas Lilburn: Salutes to Poets  Year: 2006 

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