Mapping Canada's Music: Selected Writings of Helmut Kallmann

9. The Canadian League of Composers in the 1950s: The Heroic Years (1984)

9 The Canadian League of Composers in the 1950s: The Heroic Years Before music can be studied or performed it must be created, which means, in the European cultures HK grew up in and knew, it must be composed. This principle underlies much of HK’s musical effort and writing. His first book-length project was a catalogue of composers, and in the formative years of the Canadian League of Composers he acted as voluntary archivist, attended League concerts, and photographed League annual meetings. The symposium Canadian Music of the 1950s, held in October 1983 at the Faculty of Music, University of Western Ontario, featured not only analytical commentary on works by Weinzweig, Papineau-Couture, Somers, and Pentland, and historical-perspective views by George Proctor (UWO, organizer of the event) and Maryvonne Kendergi (Universit é de Montréal), but also HK’s account of the League’s foundation in 1951 and early successes. He speculates about the CLC’s “mathematically” burgeoning membership: although no longer “the one organization of creative people” in music in Canada, it remains the largest; the membership in 2012 is more than double that of 1983. He ends his survey with “subjective reflections” of a sympathetic and musically educated listener. John Weinzweig, founding president of the CLC and a longtime friend, objected to these closing remarks in a letter to HK dated 24 February 1985.1 Published in an issue of Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario devoted to the symposium proceedings, HK’s article was reprinted in slightly abridged form in Célébration, ed. Godfrey Ridout and Talivaldis Kenins (Toronto: Canadian Music Centre, 1984), 99–107. Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario 9 (1984), 37–54; republished by permission of the Don Wright Faculty of Music of The University of Western Ontario Mapping Canada’s Music 88  In this talk I should like to examine the conditions which created the Canadian League of Composers, to review its activities and achievements during its first and most decisive decade, and finally to muse on its aspirations and ambitions from the vantage point of the 1980s. The obvious starting point for a historical account is a precise date, but here we face a curious hurdle. To be sure, Samuel Dolin, Harry Somers and John Weinzweig met at the last-named’s home on 3 February 1951 and agreed to form a professional organization of composers, but the founding meeting took place, so the Minute Book tells us, on “Saturday, February 30, 1951, 2 p.m.” at 101 Belgravia, Toronto, Weinzweig’s address at that time. These handwritten minutes obviously were transferred from loose notepaper when a proper notebook was purchased some days after the meeting and the date recalled from memory. 1951 was not even a leap year and the closest Saturdays would have been February 24 and March 3.2 Take your pick, for none of the seven persons present at the founding of the League (an eighth, Louis Applebaum, was invited but could not attend) has kept a diary. But the names matter more than the precise date: Murray Adaskin, Samuel Dolin, Harry Freedman, Phil Nimmons, Harry Somers, Andrew Twa, and John Weinzweig. Whatever mystery surrounds the date, the reasons for the League’s coming into existence are plain. It was the moment of intersection of three lines of development: composers’ organizations on a world scale, maturing of the arts in Canada, and an organizing fever among Canadian artists. Let me examine these developments in turn. I have not been able to find a ready-made history of composers’ organizations , but their beginning may well antedate the Canadian League of Composers (hereafter referred to as CLC or League) by exactly 100 years. The Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique, founded in France in 1851, represents one of three main types of composers’ groups, the one for the protection of legal interests, such as copyright and various forms of licensing. Such organizations more often are run for than by composers, although Richard Strauss was active in setting up the German one at the turn of the century. Canada formed its Canadian Performing Rights Society in 1925 (CAPAC since 1945) and BMI Canada in 1940 (reorganized as PRO Canada in 1977), hence the CLC had no need to enter the performing rights field directly.3 The Canadian League of Composers in the 1950s 89 History offers several...