Istvan Anhalt: Pathways and Memory ed. by Robin Elliott, Gordon E. Smith (review)

humanities 535 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 mastery was confirmed in the poems of his final decade, but I enjoy the reach of his ideas, his situation of Dudek in the tradition of >primary romanticism= among them. If he makes inflated evaluative claims B for instance, that old age >has never been treated with the power, human range, and honesty= we find in Dudek B he at least hopes to support them with subsequent comments on the poetry. In the interview, though, and I=m grateful for it, Dudek takes the upper hand. As he recurs to the phenomenological meditations that have been his hallmark, we feel once more the scale and force of idea and delicacy of emotion that drove him, and it helps us find those same pleasures in his poetry B if we choose to. So far, too few have chosen. Ironically, then, the volume serves to confirm Dudek=s present situation. He remains his own best commentator; his friends do not always better his cause; and the poems are far too little read for anyone to be sure of his greatness. (BRIAN TREHEARNE) Robin Elliott and Gordon E. Smith, editors. Istvan Anhalt: Pathways and Memory McGill-Queen=s University Press. xxviii, 475. $75.00 Musicologists must often be careful when drawing direct connections between a composer=s life experiences and musical output for fear of reading too much into the music. A prime cautionary example is Beethoven=s second symphony, composed in 1802, the same year that he lamented his loss of hearing in his emotional Heiligenstadt Testament. An attempt to explain the music in terms of the composer=s state of mind would reveal little, since this exuberant symphony contains no obvious evidence of the composer=s substantial suffering. In the quest for greater musical understanding , one cannot always superimpose the meaning of events in the composer=s life onto the compositions that emerge from it. In Istvan Anhalt: Pathways and Memory, however, the editorial pair of Robin Elliott and Gordon E. Smith assert that this connection can sometimes be made legitimately. Through a collection of sixteen essays by ten authors (including the editors themselves), Elliott and Smith demonstrate that, in order to understand the music of Istvan Anhalt, one must understand his life experiences and concerns. They highlight a number of key elements: Anhalt=s Jewish Hungarian roots and his painful experiences of the Second World War, his subsequent immigration to Canada, and his ongoing process of piecing together his personal history by revisiting and re-evaluating his life threads. A number of themes emerge from these elements to link together his life and works: contemplation of the Divine, the opposition of good and evil, the transformative experience, the relationship between xxxxxxx 536 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 music and language, and the nature of memory. In the process of exploring these themes, the collected essays demonstrate the significance of Anhalt=s work, placing him at the forefront of twentieth-century Canadian musical culture. Elliott and Smith adopt a unique organizational model that challenges established approaches to scholarly publication by creating a hybrid of a traditional life-and-works study and a Festschrift. The essays are arranged according to four main thematic areas: Anhalt=s biography, his musical output, his writings about music, and contributions by the composer himself (this final section provides a valuable counterpoint to the rest of the volume). A variety of perspectives and writing styles inhabit the volume and considerable overlap of content occurs among the essays. Furthermore, the structure of the collection is shaped by a concept that Anhalt has often explored himself: the kabbalistic concept of tikkun (the restoration of the Divine from scattered fragments). Instead of presenting a straightforward picture of the composer=s life and works chronologically, the collection invites the reader to piece together meanings gradually through a more complex journey of discovery. The extensive descriptive footnotes scattered throughout the volume add to this effect by providing additional fragments of historical and biographical data while remaining physically separated from the main narrative. William E. Benjamin=s analysis of Anhalt...