The Magpie House

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 1,000 files, including some rare late-life scribblings on manuscript.

In the final episode of The Magpie House we speak to some of the people who knew Lilburn best during his last 30 years. We hear about his dying wishes for the Magpie House, and about its revival as a composer’s residence.

In 1959, Douglas Lilburn moves into the Magpie House at 22 Ascot Terrace. It’s slightly over ‘teacup throwing’ distance from the cottage of his longtime friend—and onetime lover—Rita Angus, and offers privacy and a generous living room in which to entertain guests. His musical output at the time draws mixed opinions, and eventually his experiments with portable tape recorders lead him to discover the machines that are destined to fascinate and terrify him for the rest of his career.

Douglas Lilburn was a very private man, and in this episode we invade a little of that privacy. With the help of those who knew him well, we peek into the living room where he held court with aspiring young composers, and into the music room where he had a crisis of confidence. We march up the hill to the University for a squiz at the machines he became obsessed with, and we look over his shoulder as he writes letters to his dear, lifelong friends Rita Angus and Douglas McDiarmid.

In 1951 a modernist, black and white house is built at 22 Ascot Terrace in Wellington. Meanwhile, in post-war New Zealand there's a stark division between left and right. It’s hard to fully comprehend the paranoia of the time against Communism and the Soviets.

In this episode we hear the story of an innocent social club—a vegetable co-op—that comes to be spied on by the Special Branch of the New Zealand Police, and of two talented young diplomats, including the owner of The Magpie House Richard Collins, whose careers and reputations would be damaged as a result.

Who was the spy? And what was it like to live under a cloud of suspicion in a city as small as Wellington? Seventy years later, the ‘children of the Vegetable Club’ tell their parents’ stories.

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. Many of them would go on to face difficulties and, for some, persecution, when trying to establish a life in their new homeland.