Just off a bustling Wellington city thoroughfare, is a quaint little lane called Ascot Street. Number 22 is a tar-black weatherboard modernist house, with stark white framing.
Listen to The Magpie House 7:15pm each Wednesday on RNZ Concert from 1 February 2023, or here right now:
Lilburn's house at 22 Ascott Terrace Thorndon Wellington Photo: SOUNZ
Out the back there’s an overgrown jungle of a garden, where NZ’s ‘father of classical music composition’ Douglas Lilburn liked to spend time growing vegetables and listening to the Tūī.
Over four episodes host Kirsten Johnstone weaves together the stories that surround the house and its inhabitants into a Forest-Gump-like saga of war and music, cold-war espionage and persecution, the search for identity and a place to call home in this new podcast series produced for SOUNZ Centre For New Zealand Music by Popsock Media and SOUNZ.
EPISODE 1: Landfall In Unknown Seas
1940 marks a period of great change in the cultural landscape of New Zealand. It has been 100 years since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and pākehā artists including composer Douglas Lilburn are keen to develop a character in their work that reflects the nation they’ve grown up in - the landscape, the people and the history.
Meanwhile New Zealand has been pulled into World War two, and there is an influx of European refugees, including composers and performers, architects, artists and supporters of the arts, all bringing their own ideas of what home and nationhood should look and sound like.
In Landfall in Unknown Seas we meet the house at Ascot Street, Douglas Lilburn and some of the European war refugees who brought their culture, architecture, and music to Aotearoa. Composer Douglas Lilburn moves to London, where he studys with Ralph Vaughan Williams. But World War Two is declared.
Hear Landfall In Unknown Seas on RNZ National after 5pm - Part One Monday 10 Jan, Part Two Tuesday 11 Jan 2022, or here, now:
EPISODE 2: The Vegetable Club
In 1951 A modernist, magpie-coloured house was built at 22 Ascot Street, designed by refugee architect Frederich Schwarzkopf., for a young diplomat and his family, Richard Collins.
In Post-war NZ there’s a stark division between left and right. Those seen to be communist sympathisers are treated with suspicion by the conservative government of the time, and they certainly don’t want them anywhere near official state secrets.
Collins and his left-leaning friends, form - literally - a vegetable co-op, which soon comes to the attention of the Special Branch of the NZ Police (forerunner of the NZSIS).
Hear The Vegetable Club on RNZ National after 5pm - Part One Wednesday 12 Jan, Part Two Thursday 13 Jan 2022, or here, now:
EPISODE 3: Lilburn of the Valley
Composer Douglas Lilburn moves into The Magpie House on Christmas day 1959. It’s just over teacup-throwing distance away from his old friend Rita Angus, and he can walk to University through the Botanic Gardens, and Broadcasting House is just down the hill. Best of all, 22 Ascot Terrace provides privacy, a peaceful patch of garden, and a generous living room to entertain guests, at times invited and at other times unexpected.
His musical output around this time is causing divided opinions. A sabbatical to the U.S. and Europe makes him question his whole approach to composition. “ "bleakly it was either sink or swim. [In] musical terms, I had to bring myself up to date with serial techniques, five notes up in the air," One group of musicians refuses to play a piece. A critic describes another piece as “really rather rum” and an audience member feels so strongly that he writes to the editor “ ‘Mr Lilburn seems to me to have nothing to say and does so at the top of his voice”.
Eventually he discovers the machines that would fascinate and terrify him for the rest of his career. While his earlier years were spent invoking landscapes through his compositions, now he was literally able to collaborate with the landscape.
Hear Lilburn Of The Valley on RNZ National after 5pm - Part One Monday 17 Jan, Part Two Tuesday 18 Jan 2022, or here, now:
EPISODE 4: The Resonance Chamber
In the 1970s, Lilburn wrestles with synthesizers and other machines, and comes out victorious, composing some masterpieces of the electroacoustic medium. But then he quits. He never writes another piece.
Or does he? Lilburn’s collection in the Turnbull Library contains over 1000 files, including some rare late-life scribblings on manuscript.
In the last episode of The Magpie House we speak to some of the people who knew Lilburn best in those last 30 years, including an archivist, and a pianist. We hear about his dying wishes for The Magpie House, and its revival as a composer’s residence.
Hear The Resonance Chamber on RNZ National after 5pm - Part One Wednesday 19 Jan, Part Two Thursday 20 Jan 2022, or here, now:
The Magpie House was produced produced for SOUNZ Centre For New Zealand Music by Popsock Media and SOUNZ. Thank you for sharing with RNZ, friends!
