The War on Score: Ontarian Women's
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The War on Score: Ontarian Women’s Songs during The Great War Karina Stellato March 29, 2019 HMU499 Professor T. Neufeldt In response to Lord Kitchener’s famous 1915 recruitment poster, Muriel E. Bruce, a twenty-two-year-old Torontonian composed what would become the anthem of local recruitment leagues for the duration of the Great War: Kitchener’s Question.1 “Why aren’t you in Khaki? / This means you! / Any old excuse won’t do,”2 flooded the streets during recruitment marches with the intention of inspiring the enlistment of Britain’s sons.3 The success of Muriel Bruce’s collection of songs grants her the honour of common historiographical representation as the token women when discussing entertainment on the Canadian home front. Less commonly remembered are the multitude of amateur and professional female Canadian composers who contributed to creating the flourishing musical climate in Toronto and the neighbouring regions of Anglo-Ontario during the war period. “Doing one’s bit” in the war effort did not only pertain to enlisted men, rather it was the vital motive behind the composition of the vast library of popular music published by women throughout the war. Studying the overlooked genre of commercially popular music by women in Ontario between 1914-1918 provides insight into common contemporary attitudes; where content, audience and social meaning can be analyzed through lyrics and cover art.4 Songs composed and sung by women on the home front acted as propaganda in the pursuit of two objectives: increased recruitment and the cultivation of general approval for the war. Through the stories told in the lyrics, the women of Ontario targeted four audiences to maximize their inspirational, pro-enlistment message: the men themselves, their mothers, their sweethearts/wives and their children. Lyrics pertaining to a woman’s role in the war effort, the symbolic Khaki uniforms, widespread anti-German sentiment, rising Canadian nationalism and irreverence towards suffering and death, all converge within the catalogue of themes cultivated and endorsed by this unique form of propaganda to rouse support for the Empire’s Great War. 1 Jeffrey A. Keshen, Propaganda and Censorship During Canada’s Great War (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1996), 21. 2 Muriel E. Bruce, "Kitchener’s Question" Toronto: Empire Music & Travel Club, 1915. 3 Keshen, Propaganda and Censorship During Canada’s Great War), 21. 4 John Mullen, The Show Must Go On! Popular Songs in Britain During the First World War (Dorchester: Henry Ling Limited, 2015), 4. 2 The examination of musical contributions by everyday women during these distressing times serves to illuminate not only Canadian wartime society as a whole, but also exposes the overlooked legacy of Canadian women whose effect on that society and the war effort was profound. Despite the rise of the suffragette and feminist movements during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the commencement of war re-established the deep-seeded tradition of supportive wartime work that fit with Christian Victorian ideals women as “self-sacrificing, submissive, sexually pure, docile, and maternal” who functioned as “Mothers of the Nation.”5 The greatest contribution a woman could offer the imperial cause “…remained the donation of a man close to her for the war effort”.6 However, the level of patriotic dedication expected from Canadians expanded concurrently with the duration of the war. Women were obliged to become nurses in the Canadian Army Medical Corp (CAMC) and to contribute as a volunteer or paid member of industrial sectors traditionally closed to them, including farm labour, munitions manufacturing or other factory work in addition to their mandatory role as mother and wife.7 According to the first officer to conduct a Toronto based recruitment campaign, Lieutenant Col. W. B. Kingsmill of the 124 Overseas Battalion, a woman’s contribution to the war effort was twofold; she encouraged, supported and even guilted male loved ones into performing their patriotic duty, and freed men for service by replacing them in traditionally male areas of employment.8 Composing home front entertainment, a recognized male profession, was an alternative approach for women responding to the growing social responsibilities of war. However, the reality of the media’s scope and social influence made composing popular music drastically more impactful than the myriad methods of wartime employment women partook in. As the composers of popular entertainment, women were given an extensive platform that held 5 Keshen, Propaganda and Censorship During Canada’s Great War), 249. 6 Ian Miller and Hugh Maclean, Our Glory and Our Grief: Toronto and the Great War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 134. 7 Ibid., 134 8 Ibid., 120. 3 influence on a national level. Through published compositions, professional and amateur female composers and lyricists proudly contributed to the war effort by cultivating pro-war popular opinions. The outpouring of imperialistic appeals for recruitment, engineered to mobilize and create a unified, war ready nation, focused not only on the prospectively “khaki-clad”9 husbands, fathers, and sons needed for combat, but also contained a call to arms aimed at the Empire’s daughters.10 From the onset of the war it was a requirement for a married man to present a letter of permission from his wife prior to enlistment, thus reinforcing the cultural role of women as arbiters of recruitment.11 Since the military was dependent on volunteerism until conscription in 1917, women were therefore targeted by recruitment efforts and proved crucial in promoting the sense of inherent responsibility and duty present within Britain’s sons.11 Initially, the duty of women was to endorse the virtues of enlistment in private. Ian Miller, a historian on the Toronto and the Great War, explained, “…they were to do so in private, in ‘a quiet way’, among their friends and acquaintances rather than out in the public sphere.”12 This focus on discrete, private encouragement could explain the publishing of only eight songs by Ontarian women in 1914. As the months progressed, however, women were encouraged and required to partake in the recruitment campaign that became a “public phenomenon” after the recruitment crisis of 1915.13 This new recruiting scheme bombarded able-bodied men by embarrassing them in public while privately pressuring married men into enlistment, all through the actions of women who created an atmosphere fixated on recruitment.14 The novel advancement of women’s influence into the public sphere is reflected in their production of songs, particularly during the 1915 crisis when over one third of the war songs by Ontario women were published (figure 1). As sheet music can 9 Miller and Maclean, Our Glory and Our Grief: Toronto and the Great War, 13. 10 Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw, A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012), 25. 11 Gaylee Magee, "“She’s a Dear Old Lady”: English Canadian Popular Songs from World War One," American Music (Winter, 2016), 489. 11 Ibid. 12 Miller and Maclean, Our Glory and Our Grief: Toronto and the Great War, 120. 13 Miller and Maclean, Our Glory and our Grief: Toronto and the Great War, 111. 14 Ibid. 4 be performed as both a private and public form of entertainment, the expansion of women’s influence into the public sphere allowed for continued increased composition and publication of their works, which afforded them a greater influence on the home front listeners. Songs 35 30 29 28 25 20 15 15 10 10 5 4 0 Figure 1: Data sourced from personal collection of Ontarian Women's songs available in the Index. 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 Yearly Output of Ontarian Women's 5 Often dismissed and almost forgotten in the scope of national history is domestic popular sheet music and its ability to reflect the pervasive effect of the War fought by Canadians overseas. Limited scholarship and references to sheet music as “a curious footnote” disregards the pivotal role that entertainment played for the tens of thousands of people whose loved ones were overseas in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.15 Popular music’s position within Canadian society was significant; it represented the majority of the 25 000 works of sheet music published by or for Canadians between 1850 and 1950.16 The pre-war examples of this music reflect the Anglo-centric beliefs of the predominantly British Canadian population who modeled themselves after the British example. The widespread idea of European superiority, particularly that of the Empire herself, dominated the general opinion of domestic listeners, evident in the dominance of the market by foreign publishers rather than Canadian product.17 However, as Clifford Ford makes clear in Figure 1, a significant dip in the importation of overseas music during wartime resulted in a flood of domestic product as Canadian composers and lyricists filled the void. The recently established domestic sheet music publishing houses that were founded in Canada at the turn of the twentieth century responded by publishing amateur and professional composers’ wartime songs for distribution across the nation.18 Ontario was the hub of this activity, publishing wartime marches, parlour songs, ballads, salon pieces, and dances whose focus on singularly domestic thematic material created a distinctly Canadian genre of wartime music.19 The many amateur composers who established publishing companies to published their wartime music serve as an example of the surge in local support for the war effort.20 The dissemination of sheet music inspired a culture of celebrity that made popular songs and their composers or 15 Wayne Norton, "Music of the Great War," British Columbia Studies, no.182. (Summer 2014), 124. 16 Elaine Keillor, Music in Canada: Capturing Landscape and Diversity (Kingston: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 2006), 161.