New Zealand built steam locomotive, K 900. Photo: National Library of New Zealand
What do composers Dame Gillian Whitehead and Douglas Lilburn, and the ceramic artist Barry Brickell have in common?
Trains, of course!
Brickell, who died in 2016, is as famous for the Driving Creek bush railway that links his pottery with the outside world as he is for his ceramic art.
Douglas Lilburn once gave a lecture on the search for a distinctive New Zealand music, inspired by a view of Mt Ruapehu in the moonlight as seen from the back of the overnight express between Wellington and Auckland.
Dame Gillian Whitehead 2019 Photo: © 2019 National Library Imaging Services, Department of Internal Affairs
And Dame Gillian? Well, it turns out she's descended from model railway royalty.
Speaking to RNZ Concert host Bryan Crump, the Otago based composer revealed model trains were a big part of her childhood. Her grandfather, Frank Roberts, was one of the country's pioneer model engineers, and the collection of model locomotives he built is now kept in New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa.
Not only was Frank Roberts one of the first to build models of New Zealand trains, he also built a miniature railway in the backyard of his home in Epsom, Auckland, a big attraction for his grandchildren including Dame Gillian.
Photo: Model 'R' class steam locomotive., 1930, New Zealand, by Frank Roberts. New Zealand Rail Railway Model Collection. Gift of New Zealand Rail, 1993. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Te Papa (T000635)
"At the weekends, he would set up the railway... there were various bits you could put in place like bridges, or a station or something, so I would help him set up... and I loved it, I just found it absolutely fascinating."
As many an adult who's never completely grown up knows, once the seeds of rail mania are planted in the soul, they're bound to bloom.
In the case of Dame Gillian, the germination period lasted the best part of seven decades, and the catalyst for its final sprouting was the New Zealand master of the viol, an instrument that was around long before steam locomotives were even dreamt of.
Robert Oliver directs a New Zealand ensemble of the fretted string instruments, the Palliser Viols.
He's also the brother-in-law of Barry Brickell. When the ceramic and bush tramway genius died, Oliver wanted to put on a musical tribute.
Robert Oliver, master of the viol. Photo: Bruce Foster
The result was "Viols on Rails" which the Palliser Viols planned to take to venues along the North Island Main Trunk railway line. Oliver asked Dame Gillian to write a piece for the project.
For inspiration, she turned to another New Zealand composing colossus.
"I thought, but how do I tie viols and the main trunk line? And then of course I thought of Douglas Lilburn ... He did a talk called "A Search for Tradition" in 1946."
The talk, in which Lilburn discusses the search for a uniquely New Zealand style of music, was inspired by a trip he took on an overnight train between Wellington and Auckland.
Dame Gillian Whitehead, DMus, DNZM, MNZM (Ngāi te Rangi) at the lectern for the Lilburn Lecture, 2019: ‘Breath of the Birds: The Revival of Taonga Puoro’. Credit: Mark Beatty, National Library Imaging Services Photo:
Dame Gillian asks Crump if she can read a bit of Lilburn's address:
We stopped at National Park and in the moonlight I could see an uncanny picture of Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu. I was so excited by this that I hung out of the door of the carriage as we came out of National Park down to Raurimu, at the foot of The Spiral. There was something very strange about the experience of speeding through the night with the vivid smells of the bush country all around me. At that moment, the world of Mozart seemed about as remote as the moon and in no way related to my experience.
The result was Dame Gillian's "Douglas Lilburn, travelling on the Limited, regards the mountains in the moonlight".
But the Palliser Viols' tour of towns along the main trunk railway never happened. Covid got there first.
However, Dame Gillian's piece, along with another of her works, "Puhake ki te Rangi" (for viols and taonga pūoro) has found a new home on the soundtrack of the film about Barry Brickell Spontaneous Combustiion directed by Bruce Foster. It's showing in this year's Doc Edge Festival.
Dame Gillian is pretty happy with the results, and how her music works with the images of Brickell's Driving Creek Railway, his kiln and his art.
But Crump wants to know how much of an influence Douglas Lilburn's call for a uniquely New Zealand sound has had on her approach to writing music.
"It was something that came later, I think ... I went and studied overseas writing in the tradition of the time ... I was away from here the first time for nine years and when I came back, I fell in love with the place."
While she may not consciously seek to create a 'New Zealand' sound, she believes the sound of a composer's environment inevitably gets into their music.
She had this epiphany when she visited Mozart's hometown Salzburg and realised, as she took in the sounds around her, he could not have come from any other place.
Dame Gillian now lives on the Otago Peninsula.
She's out of earshot of the railway line that runs along the other, northern side of Dunedin Harbour, but there are plenty of other human and natural sounds around to inspire her.
Barry Brickell's Driving Creek railway. Photo: Bruce Foster
