Plaque to commemorate site of composer’s lodgings

It has been a little known fact that Douglas Lilburn, one of New Zealand’s best-known composers once lived on the site of the Christchurch Town Hall.

That is soon to change when a Christchurch City Council-funded plaque, marking the area where he lived, is officially installed on Tuesday, 2 March.

The idea for the plaque came from Christchurch composer Philip Norman, who says he had always thought it was a “fantastic coincidence” that Lilburn had lived and worked in the area that is now part of the Town Hall’s Ferrier Fountain courtyard.

“Lilburn is New Zealand’s premier composer and the Town Hall Auditorium Christchurch’s premier concert venue. It adds historical interest and colour to the site knowing that an internationally recognised composer wrote some of his best-known music there.”

Dr Norman says the room, where Lilburn lodged during the late 1930s and through the 1940s, was in one of several brick terraced houses that were on the town hall site until 1970.

Between 1934 and 1936, Lilburn studied for a Diploma in Music at Canterbury University College; he spent three years at the Royal College of Music in London; and returned to Christchurch to compose until 1950.

He lived the rest of his life in Wellington, where he lectured at Victoria University until his retirement in 1980. Douglas Lilburn, NZOM, died in 2001.