Obituary: Martin Lodge

Martin Lodge 1954 - 2024

Aotearoa has lost one of its most loved and admired composers and academics, Martin Lodge, who was Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Waikato.

Raised in Tauranga, educated at Victoria University of Wellington, a man alert to his surroundings, the power of our landscape, the beauty of nature, the sonic world of Aotearoa, and its indigenous instruments. A deeply intelligent, creative and craftsmanlike composer, and fine scholar. A rapier wit, and deliciously ribald humour cut through an aura of seriousness, in a man who was a wide reader, and adored Mahler and Strauss.

He also developed New Zealand Music Studies at the University, collaborating with Dr Hirini Melbourne and Dr William Dart to create a stream where Māori music, popular music and Western classical music were studied together. Martin conceived, commissioned and fundraised for the University’s collection of traditional instruments Te Kohinga Taonga Pūoro, and his academic writing in New Zealand music historiography is well-known.

Eve de Castro Robinson, a longtime member of CANZ and composer, honours Martin with a heartfelt tribute, sharing cherished memories and a poem.

“In the past few years I’ve been fortunate in spending quality time with Martin, and a bunch of other composers. One night, as we all prepped dinner together, a voice rang out from the kitchen, “Put on Led Zep 3!”, and for a short time, this sophisticated creator of fine-hewn counterpoint, writer of astute musicological tracts, urbane art lover, horticulturalist, oenophile and much more...quietly bopped at the sink in a happy haze of prog-rock nostalgia, as Robert Plant’s voice took us all back to halcyon days of time past.”

He has strolled by the Water of Leith,

and navigated the bustling streets of Pōneke.

He has found solace on the Waikato plains

He is sustained by music, by art, by thinking, by reading, by communicating,

but, most of all, by Gail and his beloved whanau.

Moe mai rā, Martin.

[Photo credit: Nicolaas Waander]