Composers in Toronto and Montreal

Composers in Toronto and Montreal IJohn Beckwith Several recent articles have dealt with Canadian music in general (have we any serious composers ? is their music identifiably Canadian?) or with the pros and cons of new music (the problems of the composer electing to write in an advanced idiom; the composer-audience relationship). In this essay I should like for once to assume that there are composers in Canada and that the musical idioms of our century are more than passing fashions. Discussion of the cultural setting of our music (its social and historical context), while valuable in itself, is left outside the scope of the present report. Instead I propose to examine a few characteristic works in detail, their techniques and stylistic components. The report deals with recent music by eight composers, some well known and others less so, four of whom live in Toronto and four in Montreal. The eight are chosen for interest and variety, and not because they are the only composers of merit in these cities, or even necessarily the best. In assembling these comments I have attempted to avoid professional jargon, but I have assumed in the non-professional reader some little knowledge of notation. Whether or not John Weinzweig was, as legend has it, the first composer in Canada to employ the 12-note serial technique, he is at least its principal pioneer here. His application of it is in most works highly selective, tied in with a deliberate scheme of tonal centres; and the Viennese founding fathers are not among the most immediately recognizable influences on him. Bloch, Bartok, Copland, Prokoviev, Stravinsky are much more obviously reflected in his style than Schoenberg, Berg, or Webern--even though the early Violin Sonata is, I believe, inspired by the Lyric Suite of Berg, and a passage in the first movement of the Violin Concerto, as Weinzweig points out, draws on a scoring 47 48 JOHN BECKWITH technique of Webern's. This is not a matter of great concern, except that it helps to underline a fact which people new to modern music tend to be confused about, namely, that 12-note writing is a technique and not a style. So much should already be clear from the radical differences between the musical personalities of the Vienna trinity-but even more from the differences between those men and a composer like Welnzweig. Welnzweig works slowly. This is In his case a sign of patience and meticulousness rather than of an artistic attitude that sees In each new work a masterpiece which will sum up all the world has said to date not just In music, but In religion and philosophy as well. Weinzweig simply wants every section of every piece, no matter how slight, to have its proper value and its required number of notes, no more no less. An anecdote may illustrate this: although he is no violinist, Weinzweig said he was very well satisfied that the difficult cadenzas (one in each movement ) of his Violin Concerto needed only one or two mlnor changes when the work went Into the hands of a soloist for performance. This was neither sales talk nor boasting. Whatever else one may say of his music, it always gives the impression of an accomplished composer, one who knows what he is about. Tbis does not mean he is an easy composer or always a clear one. His easiest-least resistible-movements are his drily comic ones, which rely mostly on "cells" of rhythm and pitch, developing them somewhat like germ-cultures. In the finale of the Piano Sonata, whose openIng measures appear as Ex. I, a typical rhythmic technique of WeinExample 1 zweig's is revealed. There is no obvious 12-note derivation, but Instead a kind of rhythmic toying with a few notes-three of them only In the first measure, a fourth (the "tonic," as it turns out) in measure 2, a fifth In measure 3, a sixth and seventh In measure 4, an eighth at the start of the next phrase In measure 6. Comparable thematic layouts are found elsewhere in Weinzweig's music-the finale of the Divertimento for Oboe and Strings and the "Round Dance...