In Search of Alberto Guerrero (review)

In the introduction to In Search of Alberto Guerrero, the composer and writer John Beckwith quotes something Guerrero once said: ‘I have no story.’ This self-effacing comment goes to the heart of Beckwith’s clearly written biography of his teacher, and turns this monograph into a kind of cat-and-mouse game between author and subject.

For the benefit of those who may not know much about the Chilean pianist active in Toronto from the 1920s to the 1950s, Beckwith obligingly fleshes out the details of Guerrero’s early life. (For this purpose, Beckwith travelled to Chile, where he examined documents and met with family members.) We learn that Guerrero was born in the town of La Serena, Chile, in 1886, the son of a mining engineer. As a young man, he became a prominent figure in the cultural life of Santiago, as a pianist, composer, and journalist. On a visit to New York, he received an invitation to teach at Toronto’s Hambourg Conservatory of Music. Guerrero arrived in Toronto in August 1918, and made the city his home for the rest of his life. (He died in 1959.)

Beckwith goes on to describe Guerrero’s warm reception by Toronto’s classical-music community – even if, as one of only a handful of Chileans in Canada at the time, waspy Canadians viewed him as an exotic creature. Making effective use of contemporary letters and reviews, testimonials from those who knew Guerrero, and his own recollections, Beckwith brings colour to his portrait. As well, Guerrero’s complicated personal life runs like an undercurrent through the text.

Mostly, however, this book is about Guerrero the musician. Beckwith documents the pianist’s performances with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, as well as recitals and chamber concerts – favouring repertoire from the eighteenth and twentieth centuries at a time when the musical culture of Toronto was dominated by nineteenth-century romanticism. As a teacher, Guerrero worked at the Hambourg Conservatory, the Royal Conservatory, and also the University of Toronto. At these institutions, he taught many who went on to hold prominent positions in classical music. Some of his pupils, including William Aide and Arthur Ozolins, made names for themselves as pianists. And there were others who (in addition to their pianistic skills) pursued other musical métiers: Bruce Mather, Oskar Morawetz, and R. Murray Schafer took up composition, and Stuart Hamilton became a vocal coach and opera producer.

However, among Guerrero’s students, the name Glenn Gould stands out. Indeed, it’s because of Guerrero’s connection with Gould that the Chilean musician has often been mentioned in print in recent decades. Clearly, Beckwith has made it his mission to set a few misconceptions straight – especially the misconceptions spread by Gould himself. Beckwith rejects claims by Canada’s most prominent pianist that he was essentially self-taught, and insists that Guerrero helped to form Gould’s pianistic technique and also his musical tastes.

It’s hard to imagine how anyone anywhere (writing almost four decades after Guerrero’s death) could have done a better job of reconstructing the life of this remarkable musician. Beckwith deserves credit for his efforts to rescue a fragment of Canada’s musical history from oblivion. Yet for all the author’s meticulous research, In Search of Alberto Guerrero raises some frustratingly unanswered questions. Who was Guerrero’s teacher in Chile? Why did he decide to move to Canada – never to return, even for a visit? Beckwith speculates on these points but, conscientiously, does not attempt to pass off his theories as facts.