Weinzweig: Essays on His Life and Music

12. Critical and Scholarly Views

287 Chapter 12 Critical and Scholarly Views j. drew stephen T he critical and scholarly writings about John Weinzweig’s music encompass materials written over multiple decades and address nearly every aspect of Weinzweig’s career.They range from personal accounts to analytical studies and appear in many different types of publication from books, through dissertations, to journal and magazine articles. It is an impressive body of literature that conveys a thorough sense of Weinzweig’s significance as a composer and demonstrates the reception of his music both within Canada and abroad. Considered chronologically, these writings also reflect the growing maturation of Canadian concert audiences and the gradual acceptance of modern idioms and compositional techniques. The striking modernity of Weinzweig’s music in a largely conservative climate is apparent in the written reactions—not all of them positive—in the 1940s and 1950s. The frequent acknowledgment of Weinzweig’s role as a pioneer in writings of the 1960s and 1970s indicates the extent to which he was able to counter the traditional and conservative status quo. As Canadian audiences and writers became more familiar and comfortable with contemporary trends in the 1970s, Weinzweig’s works were approached with an understanding and appreciation of their modernity and innovation. In order to identify broad tendencies in this large and wide-ranging literature , the writings are divided into four basic categories. There is some overlap among categories, but this approach nevertheless allows for a clearer understanding of the writings generally and of Weinzweig’s music specifically . “Canadian Texts and Surveys” includes texts that provide overviews or evaluations of Canadian music and describe Weinzweig’s musical style in the 288 the legacy context of larger trends in Canadian music. “Large-Scale Studies” includes journal articles focusing solely on Weinzweig, dissertations, and Elaine Keillor ’s monograph. These address Weinzweig’s compositional techniques and approaches in detail and focus on works that achieved national and international significance.“Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, and International Reviews” provides insight into the ways Weinzweig’s music is presented and perceived outside of Canada and considers his music in the context of international trends and developments.“General Articles and Tributes”draws together writings that celebrate Weinzweig and his music. Although not as rigorous in approach as the large-scale studies, many cover aspects of Weinzweig’s career that are overlooked elsewhere and reveal details of his personality. Canadian Texts and Surveys Canadian-music texts and surveys consider individual composers in the context of larger trends in Canadian music. An overview of this literature therefore reveals the ways in which Weinzweig’s music developed alongside composers who shared his aesthetic values and compositional approaches. I consider the standard texts on Canadian music written or edited by Ernest MacMillan,Arnold Walter, George Proctor, Clifford Ford, Timothy McGee, and Elaine Keillor1 alongside shorter texts and articles that similarly address issues of Canadian music and identity. Among these are the collections of essays by R. Murray Schafer and John Beckwith.2 A commonly identified Canadian trait is the evocation of the solitude and vastness associated with Canada’s geography. There is no single Weinzweig composition that exploits this as explicitly as Altitude by Claude Champagne or North Country by Harry Somers. Still, solitude and sparseness are noted frequently in descriptions of Weinzweig’s music. John Beckwith describes the “quirky, off-centre, and spare-textured staccato jabs of John Weinzweig’s music of the 1950s, to which one finds responses by a number of other Toronto composers of that period … and late echoes even in Weinzweig’s own works of the 1970s.”3 R. Murray Schafer identifies one element of Weinzweig’s cosmopolitan style in his fascination with“the northern and western sweep of Canadian geography”and sees this as one of the factors“that has at one time or another influenced [Weinzweig’s] lifeline as a composer.”4 Timothy McGee, in The Music of Canada, notes that Weinzweig “composes with a very spare framework , placing a few well-chosen sounds in silence.”5 McGee finds that Weinzweig was“profoundly influenced by the music of Sibelius,whose concept of sweeping, romantic melody … stayed with him throughout his career.”6 This comparison, however, was refuted by Weinzweig. Recalling his student encounters with the music of Sibelius at the Eastman School of Music, Weinzweig explained that“Sibelius was a bad influence on me. His method of composing with small cells, which he would later on extend and join...