Weinzweig Essays On His Life And Music

John Weinzweig (1913–2006) was the pre-eminent Canadian composer of his generation. Influenced by European modernists such as Stravinsky, Berg, and Webern, he was the first Canadian composer to employ serialism, thereby bringing a spirit of innovation to mid-twentieth-century Canadian music. A forceful advocate for modern Canadian composition, Weinzweig played a key role in the founding of the Canadian League of Composers and the Canadian Music Centre during a buoyant and expansive period for the arts in Canada. He was an influential force as a teacher of composition, first with the Royal Conservatory of Music and later with the University of Toronto’s music faculty. This first comprehensive study of Weinzweig since his death consists of new essays by composers, theorists, and musicologists. It deals with biographical aspects (the social context of early-twentieth-century Toronto, his activism, his teaching, his early scores for CBC Radio dramas), analyzes his compositional processes and his output (his approach to serialism, his instrumental practice, the presence of jazz elements, the vocal works, the divertimenti), and examines various evaluations of his music (his own – in letters, interviews, talks, and writings – plus those of critics and scholars, of listeners, and of performers). The essays are framed by the co-editors’ portrait/assessment of Weinzweig and a brief personal memoir. Much of the content draws on new research in the extensive Weinzweig Fonds at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. Included at the end of the book are a [http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/General/beckwith-cherney-list-of-works-discography.pdf List of Works by John Weinzweig by Kathleen McMorrow and a Discography by David Olds] both available here as pdfs. Supplementing the volume is an audio CD of extracts (some in their first public release), ranging from a 1937 student work to a song cycle of 1994. Read the [http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/General/beckwith-cherney-cd-notes.pdf Notes and Texts for the CD.]

John Weinzweig (1913-2006) was the pre-eminent Canadian composer of his generation. Influenced by European modernists such as Stravinsky, Berg, and Webern, he was the first Canadian composer to employ serialism, thereby bringing a spirit of innovation to mid-twentieth-century Canadian music. A forceful advocate for modern Canadian composition, Weinzweig played a key role in the founding of the Canadian League of Composers and the Canadian Music Centre during a buoyant and expansive period for the arts in Canada. He was an influential force as a teacher of composition, first with the Royal Conservatory of Music and later with the University of Toronto's music faculty. This first comprehensive study of Weinzweig since his death consists of new essays by composers, theorists, and musicologists. It deals with biographical aspects (the social context of early-twentieth-century Toronto, his activism, his teaching, his early scores for CBC Radio dramas), analyzes his compositional processes and his output (his approach to serialism, his instrumental practice, the presence of jazz elements, the vocal works, the divertimenti), and examines various evaluations of his music (his own - in letters, interviews, talks, and writings - plus those of critics and scholars, of listeners, and of performers). The essays are framed by the co-editors' portrait/assessment of Weinzweig and a brief personal memoir. Much of the content draws on new research in the extensive Weinzweig Fonds at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. Included at the end of the book are a [http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/General/beckwith-cherney-list-of-works-discography.pdf List of Works by John Weinzweig by Kathleen McMorrow and a Discography by David Olds] both available here as pdfs. Supplementing the volume is an audio CD of extracts (some in their first public release), ranging from a 1937 student work to a song cycle of 1994. Read the [http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/General/beckwith-cherney-cd-notes.pdf Notes and Texts for the CD.].

This volume is the first to appear in a four-volume series devoted to the work of women composers across Western art music. Each chapter opens with a brief biographical sketch of the composer before presenting an in-depth exploration of a single representative composition, linking analytical observations with questions of meaning and content. Chapters are grouped thematically into three sections, each of which places the analytical methods used in the essays into the context of late twentieth-century ideas and trends.

This book examines the impact of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Société Radio Canada (CBC/SRC) on the development of art music in Canada during the broadcaster’s first fifty years (1936-1986). In so doing, it investigates the achievement of one man: John Peter Lee Roberts. Born in Australia, he arrived in Canada in 1955, and, over the next thirty years, he worked tirelessly as a producer, administrator and adviser at the state broadcaster to bring the music of Canada to the world and the world of music to Canadians. Roberts also played a crucially important role in commissioning, disseminating and promoting new music by Canadian composers.

Mapping Canada’s Music is a selection of writings by the late Canadian music librarian and historian Helmut Kallmann (1922–2012). Most of the essays deal with aspects of Canadian music, but some are also autobiographical, including one written during retirement in which Kallmann recalls growing up in a middle-class Jewish family in 1930s Berlin under the spectre of Nazism. Of the seventeen selected writings by Kallmann, five have never before been published; many of the others are from difficult-to-locate sources. They include critical and research essays, reports, reflections, and memoirs. Each chapter is prefaced with an introduction by the editors. Two initial chapters offer a biography of Kallmann and an assessment of his contributions to Canadian music. The variety, breadth, and scope of these writings confirm Kallmann’s pioneering role in Canadian music research and the importance of his legacy to the cultural life of his adopted country. In the current climate of cuts to archival collections and services, the publication of these essays by and about a pre-eminent collector and historian serves as a timely reminder of the importance of cultural memory.

Music is central to many of R. Murray Schafer’s memories. ‘One of the sounds that I’d almost forgotten until I began to write this chronicle was the tinkling of the piano keys when my mother used to wipe them with a wet cloth,’ he writes. ‘In the early years the high and low keys would be passed over quite quickly while the middle notes got the heavy scrubbing.’ The detail of this small, nearly-forgotten childhood memory is a poignant example of the way sounds can remain present in the imagination even when they are originated in the distant past. Schafer recounts childhood summers spent in Manitoba lassoing gophers (and being paid two cents a head for them) and a music education marked by his cheerful but total resistance to the conventional instruction that was available. His youthful travels in Germany, France, Austria, Italy and Eastern Europe are recreated in a lively, impressionist style with plenty of comic and melancholy stories gleaned from his diaries of the time, including an account of a folk music convention in Communist Romania (which he attended with imaginative but shaky credentials identifying him as a representative of the CBC, The Globe and Mail, the University of Toronto Press and even the Kiwanis Club). The conference proving dull, Schafer eluded the government minders and took an unauthorized trip to see a girl he had met on the train, and despite knowing nothing of the language spent an idyllic few days with her at her parents’ remote village -- while the police questioned every young man with a beard in the area of Bucharest in a fruitless search for the suspected ‘spy.’ On his return to Canada, teaching assignments took him first to Newfoundland, then to Vancouver, where he created the World Soundscape Project. In 1975 Schafer resigned from university teaching and for many years has devoted himself full time to writing and composing. My Life on Earth and Elsewhere continues the story of his domestic and international musical adventures up to the present day.

Film Music in the Sound Era: A Research and Information Guide offers a comprehensive bibliography of scholarship on music in sound film (1927–2017). Thematically organized sections cover historical studies, studies of musicians and filmmakers, genre studies, theory and aesthetics, and other key aspects of film music studies. Broad coverage of works from around the globe, paired with robust indexes and thorough cross-referencing, make this research guide an invaluable tool for all scholars and students investigating the intersection of music and film. This guide is published in two volumes: Volume 1: Histories, Theories, and Genres covers overviews, historical surveys, theory and criticism, studies of film genres, and case studies of individual films. Volume 2: People, Cultures, and Contexts covers individual people, social and cultural studies, studies of musical genre, pedagogy, and the Industry. A complete index is included in each volume.

Canadian composer John Beckwith recounts his early days in Victoria, his studies in Toronto with Alberto Guerrero, his first compositions, and his later studies in Paris with the renowned Nadia Boulanger, of whom he offers a comprehensive personal view. In the memoir’s central chapters Beckwith describes his activities as a writer, university teacher, scholar, and administrator. Then, turning to his creative output, he considers his compositions for instrumental music, his four operas, choral music, and music for voice. A final chapter touches on his personal and family life and his travel adventures. For over sixty years John Beckwith has participated in national musical initiatives in music education, promotion, and publishing. He has worked closely with performing groups such as the Orford Quartet and the Canadian Brass and conductors such as Elmer Iseler and Georg Tintner. A former reviewer for the Toronto Star and a CBC script writer and programmer in the 1950s and ’60s, he later produced many articles and books on musical topics. Acting under Robert Gill and Dora Mavor Moore in student days and married for twenty years to actor/director Pamela Terry, he witnessed first-hand the growth of Toronto theatre. He has collaborated with the writers Jay Macpherson, Margaret Atwood, Dennis Lee, and bpNichol, and teamed repeatedly with James Reaney, a close friend. His life story is a slice of Canadian cultural history.