blue plaque at the site of the first performance in Dunedin "God Defend New Zealand" was written as a
poem in the 1870s by Irish-born,
Victorian-raised immigrant
Thomas Bracken of
Dunedin. A competition to compose music for the poem was held in 1876 by
The Saturday Advertiser and judged by three prominent
Melbourne musicians, with a prize of ten
guineas. The song was first performed at the Queen's Theatre,
Princes Street in Dunedin, on Christmas Day, 1876. In February 1878, sheet music was published. In 1897, Premier
Richard Seddon presented a copy of words and music to
Queen Victoria. It next played during the
1972 Summer Olympics in
Munich. Following the performance at the Munich games, a campaign began to have the song adopted as the national anthem. "God Save the Queen" was New Zealand's sole national anthem until the 1970s. In 1976 Garth Henry Latta from Dunedin presented a petition to
Parliament asking "God Defend New Zealand" to be made the national anthem. With the consent of Queen
Elizabeth II, the government of
Robert Muldoon gazetted the song as the country's second national anthem on 21 November 1977, on equal standing with "God Save the Queen". An alternative official arrangement for massed singing by
Maxwell Fernie was announced by the
Minister of Internal Affairs,
Allan Highet on 31 May 1979. Woods' original score was written in the key of
A-flat major and was better suited for solo and choral singing; Fernie's arrangement changed the key down a
semitone to
G major. Until the 1990s, only the first verse of the English version was commonly sung. The first public singing of the anthem in both Maori and English was by singers Vicky Lee and Cyndi Joe at the Kiwis-Britain league test in 1992. A public debate emerged after only the first Māori verse was sung by
Hinewehi Mohi at the
1999 Rugby World Cup match between the All Blacks and England, and it then became conventional to sing both the Māori and English first verses one after the other. In bilingual renditions, musical arrangements often emphasise the repeated (usually English) verse by adding extra layers of instrumentation or harmonies, or by modulating to a higher key.
The New Zealand Expo 88 Song In 1987 Alan Slater produced a new arrangement of the song, having been commissioned to do so by the Department of Internal Affairs, which was used for
Expo 88 in
Brisbane. It was titled The New Zealand Expo Song and consisted of the first verse in Māori sung by
Annie Crummer, the second verse in English sung by Peter Morgan, the fourth verse in Māori sung by
Dalvanius Prime and the
Pātea Māori Club, the fifth verse in English sung by Crummer and Morgan, and finally the first verse in English sung by everybody. The singers were backed by the NZ Youth Jazz Orchestra. The third verse was omitted. This version was played, accompanied by a video montage of New Zealand scenes, animals, plants etc, as
TVNZ's transmission opening from the second quarter of 1988 right through to 1995. It was last played at the end of 18 March 1995, as from the following day,
TV One became a 24-hour channel. ==Protocol==