Pentland, Barbara Lally (1912–2000)

Barbara Pentland was arguably the most rigorously modernist Canadian composer of her generation. During the late 1940s she adopted serial techniques and by the mid-1950s had forged her mature style: spare, elegantly constructed, abstract, yet with a rich timbral palette and surprising lyricism. She made adept use of new techniques throughout her career. She taught at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto (1942–1949); then at the University of British Columbia (1949–1963). She received a Diplôme d’honneur from the Canadian Conference for the Arts (1977); honorary doctorates from the University of Manitoba (1976) and Simon Fraser University (1985); the Order of Canada (1989); and the Order of British Columbia (1993). Situated within the confluence of early women’s rights struggles and Canada’s search for identity at the official end of colonial rule in 1931, Pentland’s musical modernism lent authenticity and authority to her artistic voice: her music sounded neither British nor stereotypically feminine. As one reviewer observed, Pentland’s music had ‘‘that cool remoteness which conjures wide-open spaces and is probably as close to a national sound as anything Canadian composers have achieved.’’

Neglected Canadian Orchestral Music

This article examines neglected orchestral works by six Canadian composers: Rodolphe Mathieu, Colin McPhee, John Weinzweig, Harry Somers, Istvan Anhalt, and R. Murray Schafer. Despite the considerable professional accomplishments and career achievements of these composers, each has at least one orchestral work in his catalogue that failed to make a good impression with the musical public or has never been heard in live performance. The article attempts to find why these compositions did not win a place in the repertoire and also considers how these works illustrate broader issues relating to the Canadian orchestral repertoire.

Walter Kaufmann and the Winnipeg Ballet: A Fruitful Collaboration Soon Forgotten

The early years of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet (RWB), the era of its founding director Gweneth Lloyd (1901–1993), remain a “dark age” because in 1954, all possessions of the company perished in a fire. Earlier attempts at writing the history of this institution, such as Max Wyman’s book The Royal Winnipeg Ballet: The First Forty Years (Toronto, Doubleday, 1978) and Jeff McKay and Patti Ross Milne’s documentary film 40 Years of One Night Stands (2008), suffer from a general neglect of the music used by the company. The RWB mounted several ballets to original music, typically by Canadian composers. Walter Kaufmann (1907–1984), a German-Jewish composer exiled after 1934, living in Canada from 1947, and appointed conductor of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in 1948, received commissions for Visages, an abstract ballet for the company’s tenth anniversary in January 1949, and The Rose and the Ring, a “children’s Xmas ballet” (RWB), first performed in December of the same year. Creation, aesthetics, and reception of these ballets are evaluated on the basis of Kaufmann’s surviving autograph scores at Indiana University in Bloomington and of contemporaneous documents, especially press reviews and, in the case of Visages, a documentary film by the National Film Board of Canada, Ballet Festival (1949). Visages was immediately hailed as a major artistic achievement and remained a staple of the RWB’s repertory until the 1954 fire. The RWB showcased Visages at the Canadian Ballet Festivals in Toronto (1949) and Montréal (1950), drawing praise from renowned critic Anatole Chujoy, and regularly presented it on its tours, including one to Washington, D.C. (1954). Referring to Anna Blewchamp’s reconstruction to Lloyd’s ballet The Wise Virgins, which was also lost in the 1954 fire, chances for a revival of Visages are assessed.

CUMS Remembered

On the occasion of his induction as a lifetime honorary member of the Canadian University Music Society, the Dean of Canadian composers, John Beckwith, offers a personal reflection on the triumphs and vicissitudes across more than thirty years of the Society. From its 1964 founding as a network of music deans and directors under the acronym CAUSM, through its metamorphosis into a learned society in the 1980s, to its present day hybrid form, CUMS is remembered—with affection and whimsy—as an agent in development of the Canadian music establishment.

A “League Against Willan”? The Early Years of the Canadian League of Composers, 1951–1960

The founders of the Canadian League of Composers were young modernists who resented the conservative musical climate in Canada epitomized by the traditional British style of Canada's most famous composer, Healey Willan. In their first decade (1951–60), during which their membership grew from eight to more than forty and they presented dozens of concerts of new Canadian music, they struggled to find a balance between two competing goals: championing the cause of all Canadian composers, regardless of style, and promoting modern and avant-garde styles, which had been virtually ignored by the older Canadian musical establishment. This article probes how those tensions played out in two of the league's early activities: membership decisions and concert programming. Although the league did admit composers and feature works representing a wide variety of stylistic influences, its membership and concerts were nonetheless dominated by younger composers interested in modern styles, especially the group of composers in John Weinzweig's circle in Toronto. The group earned a reputation as young radicals because of their modernistic programming choices and a controversial policy that limited membership to composers younger than sixty. Although its members may not have been entirely successful in their efforts at inclusivity, the league's ground-breaking activities in the 1950s did help to establish a place for composition generally and musical modernism in particular in the postwar Canadian cultural landscape.

Darmstadt 1992 — the Understory

Present at Darmstadt in 1992, this Canadian composer also had several of his works performed, notably by the celebrated violinist Irvine Arditti. He relates his nearly missed encounter with Helmut Lachenmann, and the friendships he made with other Canadian composers and performers. Steenhuisen describes a Darmstadt true to its reputation as arrogant and unhealthily competitive and self-conscious, but also still capable of delivering profoundly inspired, spontaneous, and strong musical moments.