Martin Lodge (composer)
Martin Victor Lodge was a New Zealand composer and Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Waikato.
Life and career
Lodge was born in Tauranga on 3 December 1954. He studied English and German at the University of Waikato graduating with an MA in English literature. He went on to do an MMus in composition at Victoria University of Wellington under Douglas Lilburn and David Farquhar followed by a PhD in composition from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.After spending 13 years as a freelance composer, while doing a variety of other jobs, he was the Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago in 1990 and 1991. In 1993 he was the Composer in Residence at the Auckland Philharmonia. He took up a position at the Conservatorium of Music at the University of Waikato in 1995 where he founded the music department and was instrumental in creating a performing arts venue, the Dr John Gallagher Concert Chamber. He was responsible for archiving the works of music historian and writer John Mansfield Thomson at the university.
He initiated the study of Māori music for the Bachelor of Music degree and commissioned a set of traditional Māori instruments, taonga pūoro, for the university. He composed several works using taonga pūoro: Toru which was dedicated to Hirini Melbourne, Hau and Oiche ghealai .
Lodge was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2022, and died in Hamilton on 18 December 2024, at the age of 70.
Selected works
Publications
- Lodge, M.. John Mansfield Thomson: Selected Writings. Steele Roberts Ltd.
- Lodge, M., & Ulenberg, P.. . Canzona, 28, 96–97.