''Landfall in Unknown Seas'' is a work for narrator and

string orchestra A string orchestra is an orchestra consisting solely of a string section made up of the bowed strings used in Western Classical music. The instruments of such an orchestra are most often the following: the violin, which is divided into first a ...

written by

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

composer

Douglas Lilburn Douglas Gordon Lilburn (2 November 19156 June 2001) was a New Zealand composer. Early life Lilburn was born in Whanganui and spent his early years on the family sheep farm in the upper Turakina River valley at Drysdale. He attended Waitaki ...

and poet

Allen Curnow Thomas Allen Monro Curnow (17 June 1911 – 23 September 2001) was a New Zealand poet and journalist. Life Curnow was born in Timaru, New Zealand, the son of a fourth generation New Zealander, an Anglican clergyman, and he grew up in a relig ...

in 1942. It was the second in Lilburn's early

trilogy A trilogy is a set of three distinct works that are connected and can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, and video games. Three-part works that are considered components of ...

of works dealing with the theme of New Zealand identity, following the

overture Overture (from French ''ouverture'', "opening") is a music instrumental introduction to a ballet, opera, or oratorio in the 17th century. During the early Romantic era, composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed overtures which ...

Aotearoa ''Aotearoa'' () is the Māori name for New Zealand. The name was originally used by Māori in reference only to the North Island, with the whole country being referred to as ''Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu'' – where ''Te Ika-a-Māui'' means N ...

'' and preceding '' A Song of Islands''.

History and music

The text of the work is taken from a poem by Curnow, and tells the story of New Zealand's discovery by

Abel Tasman Abel Janszoon Tasman (; 160310 October 1659) was a Dutch sea explorer, seafarer and exploration, explorer, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was the first European to reach New ...

. It was originally commissioned by

John Beaglehole John Cawte Beaglehole (13 June 1901 – 10 October 1971) was a New Zealand historian whose greatest scholastic achievement was the editing of James Cook's three journals of exploration, together with the writing of an acclaimed biography of Coo ...

on behalf of the New Zealand government to mark 300 years since Tasman's visit to New Zealand in 1642. The work has three movements, with each movement followed by a reading of one of the three parts of the poem. The first performance, with Curnow reading the poem, was premiered by radio on 13 December 1942, the day of Tasman's arrival in New Zealand. Since then, the work has been widely performed and recorded, and the poem has become one of the best-known of all New Zealand poems. In 1993 a recording was made of a performance by the New Zealand Chamber Orchestra with narration by Sir

Edmund Hillary Sir Edmund Percival Hillary (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineering, mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa people, Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the Timeline of M ...

. The well-known New Zealand literary journal ''

Landfall Landfall is the event of a storm moving over land after being over water. More broadly, and in relation to human travel, it refers to 'the first land that is reached or seen at the end of a journey across the sea or through the air, or the fact ...

'' was named after this work.

References

External links

SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music
Compositions by Douglas Lilburn Compositions with a narrator 1944 compositions {{NewZealand-music-stub