Women composers in New Zealand in the 19th and 20th centuries — An ancient culture and a “young country”?

Abstract

Conventional wisdom has it that the composition of music in New Zealand began in earnest with Douglas Lilbum (b. 1915) - that before him were a few minor figures but that he was the first to grapple with the task of developing a distinctive New Zealand musical voice. This view, however, which is coupled with the notion of New Zealand as a young country, with but a fledgling culture of its own, is increasingly challenged by the Maori people, and by the acknowledgement by European New Zealanders, or Pakeha, of the history and rights of those people, the tangata whenua, or people of the land. In 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed by William Hobson, representing the British Crown, and over 500 Maori chiefs, establishing the basis of potential and peaceful partnership between the two races. In 1990, sesquicentennial celebrations of this Treaty have brought to a head the necessity for a confrontation of what such a partnership really means. The often uncomfortable results of this examination of aspects of both New Zealand's colonial history and its contemporary social attitudes may eventually allow for the flowering of both cultures in more than a semblance of equality. Meanwhile it is clear that a general account of the music of women composers in New Zealand cannot subscribe to the view that real New Zealand composition begin with Lilburn's Aotearoa Overture in 1940, and that no women of significance were active in the field until the late 1940's and 50's. The recently published first volume of The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, for instance, which deals with the period 1769-1869, lists two Maori women composers in that early period, although Pakeha composers, male and female, are conspicuously absent. Significantly, in the Categories Index at the back of the Dictionary, the Maori composers are listed not in the music section, but as poets. This points to a profound difference between Maori and Pakeha approaches to composition. In almost all Maori music, both classical or traditional and contemporary, the words are of the utmost importance, and are almost always written first. Maori waiata, which is usually translated as song, is really sung poetry, and the composer revered principally for the power and beauty of her words. In fact, until quite recently, there seemed to be little separation between the words and the melodic line which carried them. Charles Royal, Maori musician and researcher, explains further: Waiata is purpose-built music. It was never sung in isolation, but was written and performed