Lilburn was born in Whanganui and spent his early years on the family sheep farm in the upper Turakina River valley at Drysdale.

[2] In 1936 his career in music was set when his tone poem Forest won visiting composer Percy Grainger's national composition competition.

[4] The two men remained close: in later years Lilburn sent Vaughan Williams gifts of New Zealand honey, knowing that the older man was fond of it.

[5] Lilburn's early works display the influence of Jean Sibelius; the symphonic poem Forest (1936), in which Lilburn depicts the autumn scenery of Mount Peel in South Canterbury, finds its composer, according to Robert Hoskins, "tracking Sibelius through the shadowy woods, keeping his own distance, but measuring his own hesitancy until he takes his own road.

During these years he was heavily involved in New Zealand arts activity, and became friends with other artists such as Allen Curnow, Denis Glover, Rita Angus, and Alistair Campbell.