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Middle Power Music: Modernism, Ideology, and Compromise in English Canadian Cold War Composition

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Middle Power Music: Modernism, Ideology, and Compromise in English Canadian Cold War Composition SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Middle Power Music: Modernism, Ideology, and Compromise in English Canadian Cold War Composition A Dissertation Presented by Sarah Christine Emily Hope Feltham to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music History and Theory Stony Brook University December 2015 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Sarah Christine Emily Hope Feltham We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Dr. Ryan Minor - Dissertation Advisor Associate Professor, Department of Music, Stony Brook University Dr. Sarah Fuller - Chairperson of Defense Professor Emerita, Department of Music, Stony Brook University Dr. Margarethe Adams Assistant Professor, Department of Music, Stony Brook University Dr. Robin Elliott—Outside Reader Professor (Musicology), Jean A. Chalmers Chair in Canadian Music Faculty of Music, University of Toronto This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Dean of the Graduate School ii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Middle Power Music: Modernism, Ideology, and Compromise in English Canadian Cold War Composition by Sarah Feltham Doctor of Philosophy in Music History and Theory Stony Brook University December 2015 This dissertation argues that English Canadian composers of the Cold War period produced works that function as “middle power music.” The concept of middlepowerhood, central to Canadian policy and foreign relations in this period, has been characterized by John W. Holmes as “a way of explaining to the world that Canadians were of greater consequence than the Panamanians but could not take on the obligations of the Americans, or even the French.”1 Political scientist Adam Chapnick has noted that it is paradoxically through acceptance of a second-tier position that Canadian political leaders sought increased international status and means of resistance to the interests of more powerful nations.2 In cultural domains, likewise, English Canadian cultural nationalist artists frequently accepted (or even embraced) second-tier status, voicing ambivalence towards modernist notions of canonicity, progress, and prestige. Yet at the same time, these artists largely embraced a narrative of national modernization and decolonization, and sought to participate in international modernist or postmodernist movements. English Canadian composers in this context would produce music that is stylistically, technically, and ideologically flexible—a kind of double-voiced discourse that imports or utters the sounds of the modernist metropolis, but inflects, unsettles, and strikes compromises with the ideologies and power structures that accompany those sounds. 1 John W. Holmes, "Most Safely in the Middle," International Journal 39/2 (Spring 1984): 366-67. 2 Adam Chapnick, “The Middle Power Myth," International Journal 55/2, (Spring 2000). iii Thus serialism becomes neither a language of radical refusal (as Mark Carroll argues about Pierre Boulez), nor a technique of anti-Stalinist high culture (as Martin Brody argues of Milton Babbitt), nor a “polar opposite” of neoclassicism, but instead a compositional technique that can be deployed in the context of compositions that indeed sound neoclassical, or can be dissolved into minimalist processes. Neither is neoclassicism tarnished or marginalized by association with leftist politics, as Elizabeth Crist and Jennifer DeLapp-Birkett suggest of the United States in the 1950s. Situating this project in the Cold War context clarifies George Grant’s iconic assertion that Canada becomes, by the mid-1960s, “a branch-plant society of American capitalism,” and opens up the narratives of Canadian modernization and decolonization in this period for refinement or recontextualization. 3 English Canadian composers in this period respond to British influence in a manner that can be characterized as colonial or post- colonial resistance. Their reactions to American culture, on the contrary, are shaped not by a colonial relationship to the United States, but rather by second-tier status in relation to the dominant western power. This dissertation thus recognizes Canadian composition and Canadian culture as meaningfully different from (and in some senses opposed to) U.S. culture, but qualifies claims to Canadian “colonial resistance” of the United States. In addition to representative works by Barbara Pentland and R. Murray Schafer, this dissertation focuses on the serial techniques of John Weinzweig, Harry Somers, and Barbara Pentland, composers often identified in histories of Canadian music as “radical” or avant-garde. The final chapter explores the intersection of serialism, minimalism, and feminism in Ann Southam’s Rivers. 3 George Grant, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, 40th Anniversary ed., Carleton Library (Kingston and Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005), 40. iv For A. & M., without whose love and support I could not have finished this project, and for my late grandmother Emily Kelloway Feltham. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION III LIST OF FIGURES VIII LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS X PREFACE XI Chapter One 1 CRITICAL PARADIGMS AND CULTURAL CONTEXT 13 Canada as Postcolonial and Postmodern 13 Northrop Frye: Thematic Criticism, Evaluation, and Canonicity 17 George Grant: A Corrective to the “Collective Victim” Narrative 21 Middlepowerhood 32 Cold War Sovereignty 36 DECOLONIZATION AND MODERNIZATION 39 Corollary: Decolonization and Modernization of Musical Institutions 42 MIDDLE POWER MUSIC: CLEARING SPACE AND “CATCH-UP” 51 Complex Compromises vs. “Provocative Percolation” 55 Chapter Two 60 GUIDING CONSIDERATIONS FOR ANALYSIS 60 1. Participation and Modernization 61 2. Inflection, Resistance, or Parody 64 THREE CONTEMPORARIES 66 TWO FANTASIES 80 Compromise 81 Copland’s Piano Fantasy 88 Pentland’s Fantasy for Piano 91 Chapter Three 98 THE PRESTIGE OF THE BOMB 102 CANADA AND NUCLEAR ARMAMENT 104 CANADIAN SERIALISM AND NEOCLASSICISM 106 Harry Somers, 12x12 Fugues (1959) 107 John Weinzweig’s Piano Sonata (1950) 109 Chapter Four 122 MINIMALISM AS AMERICAN PRACTICE: EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES 126 “SEMI-PERIPHERAL” REACTIONS TO MINIMALISM: BEVERIDGE AND BURN 130 DOUBLE-VOICED DISCOURSE: FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES 136 ANN SOUTHAM: INFLECTING AMERICAN MINIMALIST PRACTICE 141 RIVERS 146 vi CONCLUSION 158 CONCLUSION 160 REFERENCES 163 DISCOGRAPHY 175 APPENDICES 177 APPENDIX ONE: ROW FORMS IN HARRY SOMERS’S 12X12 FUGUES 177 APPENDIX TWO: JOHN WEINZWEIG’S PIANO SONATA, 1950 183 Figure A2.2: Weinzweig, Piano Sonata, Movement 2, mm. 1-10 183 Figure A2.3: Weinzweig, Piano Sonata, Movement III, trichord content of the sets 184 APPENDIX THREE: ANN SOUTHAM, RIVERS 2-II 186 APPENDIX FOUR: ANN SOUTHAM, RIVERS 2-III 192 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: Key Dates in Canadian National Development, 1867-1982 ............................................... 25 Figure 1.2: Letter from G. Welton Marquis to Barbara Pentland Regarding Resignation from UBC, 01 May 1963 (Barbara Pentland Fonds, LAC, MUS 110 1991-22, Box 6). ................................... 49 Figure 2.1: R. Murray Schafer, Text of Three Contemporaries .................................................................... 69 Figure 2.2: R. Murray Schafer's "Benjamin Britten," mm. 1-12 ................................................................. 73 Figure 2.3: R. Murray Schafer's "Paul Klee," mm. 1-12 ................................................................................. 76 Figure 2.4: R. Murray Schafer's "Paul Klee," mm. 48-53 .............................................................................. 77 Figure 2.5: R. Murray Schafer’s "Ezra Pound," Conclusion ......................................................................... 78 Figure 2.6: Barbara Pentland, Fantasy for Piano, Opening ....................................................................... 92 Figure 2.7: Aaron Copland, Piano Fantasy, Opening .................................................................................. 93 Figure 2.8: Peter Evans, Diagram of Copland Piano Fantasy Row Form ............................................... 93 Figure 2.9: Barbara Pentland, Fantasy, "Basic Materials" ........................................................................... 94 Figure 3.1: Harry Somers 12x12 Fugues, i: Opening ................................................................................ 108 Figure 3.2: John Weinzweig, Piano Sonata: Prime Rows ........................................................................ 111 Figure 3.3: John Weinzweig, Piano Sonata Mvt. 1: Trichord Content of Set ................................... 111 Figure 3.4: John Weinzweig, Piano Sonata, Mvt. I, mm. 1-6, Trichordal Content .......................... 111 Figure 3.5: John Weinzweig, Piano Sonata, Mvt. I, mm. 25-30 ............................................................. 112 Figure 3.6: John Weinzweig, Piano Sonata, Mvt. 1 Form ........................................................................ 113 Figure 3.7: John Weinzweig, Piano Sonata, Mvt. 1, mm. 1-6: Implied Tonal Direction ................ 115 Figure 3.8: John Weinzweig, Piano Sonata, Mvt. i, Structure
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