General Music History Notes

The Dominion of Music: A short introduction to Music in Canada
A short introduction to music in Canada
Robin Elliott

* How the art practices of Europe contributed to the music in Canada

Historical Art Music Traditions
* European colonization began in 1525; mainly French initially
* Music used in religious services and to convert Natives to Christianity
* Jesous Ahatonhia (ca. 1648)is attr. to the Jesuit missionary Father Jean de Brebeuf (1593-1649)
* it is in strophic form
* European brought it to the first nations, who later kept it alive. Although the first pieces is over centuries old, its wasn’t recorded till the 20th century
* Create a bridge between the aboriginal and british as well as convert the natives into Christianity which music was veryimportant
* It wasn’t very successful, none of the music supplanted the other type of music.
Joseph Quesnel (1746-1809)
* B. St-Malo, France 1746; d. Montreal, 1809
* Settled in Quebec in 1780
* Wrote two operas, Colas et Colinette (1789, first given at Montreal in 1790) and Lucas et Cecile (1808)
* Colinette - Revived in the 20th century – all the orchestral part was missing as wellas the first violin. It was reconstructed with only the second violin as well as the vocal part
* Lucas et Cecile – there are no documents that it was performed during his lifetime
* Both works revived in the 20th century
* French –born contemporary of Mozart and Haydn; influenced by the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
* Rousseau is clearly the model for Quesnel – almost exactlysame name of the characters and similar story line. Working with the tradition of Comedy opera, but transplanting it in Canada
* His opera was appealing to a small number of elite people that existed in Montreal in the early 19th century
* Lucas et Cecile: Ariette, No. 2

Beethoven and Quebec
* A Quebec musician visited Beethoven in Vienna in 1825 and requested a souvenir of his visit* Beethoven responded with a canon on the text “Enjoy life” ; it was his only known contact with the New world
Calixa Lavalle
* B. Quebec 1842 d. Bostron 1891
* Moved to USA as a teenager and fought in the Civil War
* Retruned to Canda briefly then moved to Paris to study music
* Wrote operettas, piano music, songs, chamber music, and orchestral music
* His patriotic song ‘OCanada’ was first performed in 1880 and was officially adopted as the National Anthem in 1980
* Listening example: Le papillon, an etude for piano from 1874
* The infrastructure to support musicians was very limited in Canada, his aspirations ran out with the limitations of Canada, which is why he left for the US because the musical scene was much more developed than Canada in the 19th century* Mostly preserved are his short piano pieces and songs because these were the ones that were widespread in Canada because it was common to have pianos at home.
Folk Song Nationalist Movement
* Folksong collections, begun un the 19th century, gained pace in the aftermath of World War I
* Prominent collectors included Marius Barbeau, Helen Creighton, Edith Fowke, Kenneth Peacock
*Collected a wide variety of music from across the country: First Nations, European derived folk traditions, and other immigrant musical repertoires
* Composers reacted strongly to this movement in 1920s
* Listening : A st-Malo for string quartet (1927) by Sir Ernest MacMillan recorded by Hart House SQ (1927)
* He was the leading face of Canadian music enormous amount of work to gainrecognition of Canadian music
Post- 1945 Trends
* The Massey report (1951) offers a blueprint for the development of the arts in Canada
* Rise of music institutions:
* Canadian broadcasting corporation
* Canadian League of composers
* Canadian council of the arts
* Canadian Music centre
* Music division, library of Canada
* Spread of modernists idioms
*...