Harry Luscombe

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 788, 27 August 1954, Page 29

Harry Luscombe

UNEDIN, the city of the pipes and kilt, produces composers of other kinds of music than the pibroch and the reel. It produced Harry Luscombe, for instance, whose compositions for orchestra, Fantasia and Fugue and Middlemore Suite, have been performed by the National Orchestra. Harry Luscombe has a fluent pen for a song, too, and in the Music by New Zealand Composers series his group of Six New Zealand Songs will be heard. They are to be performed by Dorothy Hopkins (soprano) with the C.A.S. String Quartet, James Hopkinson (flute), George Hopkins (clarinet) and the composer himself at the dulcitone. The six songs are New Zealand Magic, The Titoki Tree, Paddling Song of the Aotea, Maori Fairies, Maori Lullaby, and Maori Children. After receiving his early musical education in Dunedin, Harry Luscombe moved to Auckland, where he graduated B.A. and Mus. Bac. from Auckland University College. At present he is Senior Lecturer in Music at the Auckland Teachers’ Training College. Always a musician with the young idea at heart, Harry Luscombe has been pianist and conductor for the Auckland Primary and Secondary Schools’ Festivals since their inception, and he has also been involved in University and other educational group music-making for many years. ro

Several musical prizes have come Harry Luscombe’s way, too, among them the Philip Neill Memorial Prize (Otago University) for composition. He made a substantial musical contribution to the. Centennial Celebrations in 1940 with his large-scale cantata The Burial of King Cormac for Baritone, Chorus and Orchestra; and Centenary Ode for Chorus and Orchestra. (H. C. Luscombe’s Six New Zealand Songs will be broadcast in the Music by New Zealand Composers series on Friday, September 3, from 2YC at 7.18 p.m.)