Mapping Canada's Music: Selected Writings of Helmut Kallmann

10. The Making of a One-Country Music Encyclopedia: An Essay after an Encyclopedia (1994)

10 The Making of a One-Country Music Encyclopedia: An Essay after an Encyclopedia HK was a born encyclopedist. His propensity for categorization, list making, and careful checking of facts was evident in him already as a child, and came to its fullest blossoming during his work on the two print editions of the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, work which occupied him for nearly a quarter of a century. This article was intended as a guide for other national encyclopedias, and indeed EMC did provide a compelling model for the Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland, a project that itself has been a quarter of a century in the making and is due to appear in 2013.1 HK’s projected third print edition of EMC never came to pass. An online version of EMC-2, hosted on the National Library of Canada website, was mounted in 2001 and limited updates were made. In 2003 EMC was donated to the Historica Foundation, which had already acquired The Canadian Encyclopedia and had helped to digitize the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. The online version of EMC was launched on 15 October 2003 as part of Historica’s The Canadian Encyclopedia website at http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com. A staff of six part-time editors is engaged in an ongoing process of gradual revisions and updates to EMC, but there are no plans for a third print edition. As of 2011, the online version of EMC was attracting ca. 100,000 unique visitors per month.2  After ten years of preparation, the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (hereafter EMC) was published in November 1981; a French edition, Encyclop édie de la musique au Canada, followed sixteen months later. A second Fontes artis musicae 41/1 (January-March 1994), 3–19 Mapping Canada’s Music 104 edition appeared in English in November 1992 and in French the next year, increasing the number of entries from 3,000 to 3,800, the pages (in the English edition) from just over 1,000 to 1,500. Each page had three columns, and a total of ca. 1,650 words. There were about 500 illustrations in the first edition, 585 in the second. These were large volumes indeed, for reasons which I hope to explain and justify. This article will concentrate on the processes and techniques in compiling a one-country encyclopedia and will only incidentally reflect on its portrait of music in Canada. Since EMC may claim to have been the first lexicographical attempt to cover the music of one country in such detail and breadth,3 perhaps other potential one-country lexicographers may benefit from our experiences and avoid one pitfall or another. In describing the main steps in the creation of EMC, oversimplification will be necessary; thus many phases in preparing each of the two editions are telescoped here into one, applying the benefit of hindsight. The Need The beginning of any such project is a meeting of minds in an informal exchange of ideas, opinions, and visions at an historically opportune time. For Canada, that time had come by 1970. For twenty-five years—since the end of the war—the arts had experienced a phenomenal blossoming, both in quantity and in quality. Musical performers won laurels at home and abroad; arts councils sprang up giving support and sponsorship; national organizations, formed by composers, educators, librarians, publishers , recording companies, and many other groups, defined and advanced common interests. To the intensity of musical life was added diversity as immigration from many countries brought colourful traditions and seasoned practitioners of music. Prosperity reigned; self-assurance grew. With exciting developments in all corners of the country, it was hard to keep up documentation and dissemination of information and to find time for reflection and assessment. The national umbrella organization, the Canadian Music Council, compiled Music in Canada (1955), an anthology with chapters about composition, broadcasting, folk music, competition festivals, school music, and other broad areas, written by recognized or instant experts. The council’s excellent Canadian Music Journal (1956–62) continued to supply information and discussion, but for too short a time. The Centenary of Confederation celebrations in 1967 and the coincidental world’s fair “Expo 67” in Montreal roused the world’s curiosity The Making of a One-Country Music Encyclopedia 105 about Canada, as for many years had Canadian choirs and orchestras, and artists the likes of Maureen Forrester, Glenn Gould, Oscar...