Canada's Choral Music Development

CANADA’S CHORAL MUSIC DEVELOPMENT HILARY APFELSTADT Hilary Apfelstadt is the director of choral activities at the University of Toronto and conductor of Exultate Chamber Singers of Toronto. email: [email protected] 34 CHORAL JOURNAL Volume 54 Number 8 Until the mid-nineteenth century, Canada’s music reflected Marius Barbeau, W. Roy Mackenzie, Helen Creighton, and the stylistic elements of traditional musical periods because Maud Karpeles, among others, contributed to a vast resource emigrants were trained outside the country and brought their of folk materials. In time, their work led to arrangements and traditions with them, as well as the influence of their own new compositions by a variety of Canadian composers, such training. Singing schools developed, as in the United States, as W. H. Anderson, Claude Champagne, Sir Earnest MacMil- beginning around 1800 in the Maritime Provinces and eventu- lan, and Healey Willan. Many English-speaking composers ally moving west over the next hundred years. The movement were influenced by church music styles and wrote in the British contributed to the development of church choirs. Together tradition (e.g., MacMillan and Willan), but French-speaking with singing societies such as the New Union Singing Society composers like Claude Champagne tended to reflect more (1809) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, these singing schools enhanced the influence of their contemporaries further afield, such as the growth of choral music. Publishing followed and libraries Debussy and Scriabin. grew. School music education began officially in 1850, and The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was an the Toronto Conservatory of Music, recognized widely for its ardent supporter of choral music, sponsoring an annual CBC national system of graded examinations, was founded in 1886. Radio competition for amateur choirs and generating Cana- In 1903, Canada’s national music festival movement began dian choral compositions. That event is now cosponsored by and continues to this day with annual competitive festivals the Association of Canadian Choral Communities (ACCC), the throughout the country. Canada Council for the Arts, CBC Music, and Festival 500. Author’s note: The first part of this paper is based on a chapter written for Conducting Women’s Choirs: Strategies for Success (ed. Debra Spurgeon), which was published by GIA Publications, Inc. in 2012. See “Canadian Repertoire for Women’s Choruses,” pp. 69 – 102. CHORAL JOURNAL Volume 54 Number 8 35 CANADA’S CHORAL Since the mid-twentieth century, important contributor to the develop- outside the country certainly show Canada’s musical growth has skyrock- ment of Canadian choral repertoire evidence of those external infl uences, as eted. Examples include (1) university of the last century. Elmer Iseler was a would be expected. There is no point in music degree programs; (2) the founding champion of Canadian composers and denying those infl uences; everyone is a of professional organizations and their a standard bearer of fi ne performance product of background. subsequent journals; (3) the develop- in general. He shared a Grammy Award At the same time, composers whose ment of professional organizations for with the composer for his recording of education and infl uences are largely Canadian composers, including the Stravinsky’s music. Walter Pitman’s book Canadian may be the ones in the fu- Society of Composers, Authors and Elmer Iseler: Choral Visionary1 provides a ture to set the parameters for what Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), detailed history of the Festival Singers becomes known as “Canadian music.” the Canadian League of Composers and of Iseler’s infl uence, which has been In the meantime, there are a number (CLC), and the Association of Canadian now passed on to Lydia Adams, who of characteristics that seem to relate to Women Composers (ACWC); (4) the conducts the Elmer Iseler Singers and Canadian choral composers, and those founding of the Association of Cana- actively commissions and promotes will constitute the focus for the remain- dian Choral Communities (formerly Canadian works. der of this discussion. known as the Association of Canadian The proliferation of children’s and Choral Conductors, 1980). Eight of ten youth choirs throughout Canada is a provinces have a choral federation that major infl uence on the development of ESSENTIAL INFLUENCES ON supports choral events, including work- Canadian choral music. One prominent CANADIAN CHORAL MUSIC shops, choral festivals, and annual youth example is the Toronto Children’s Cho- Three infl uences seem predominant choirs and camps. rus, founded in 1978 by Jean Ashworth in Canadian choral music composition: Professional choirs such as the Van- Bartle, and accompanied by Ruth Wat- folk music, nature references, and com- couver Chamber Choir (Jon Washburn, son Henderson. For many years, Gordon positional trends that are incorporated conductor) and the Elmer Iseler Singers V. Thompson, a Canadian music publish- into so-called “art” music. (Lydia Adams, conductor) are also an er, produced a series edited by Bartle, to essential part of the Canadian choral which Henderson and other prominent scene. Ensembles such as these contrib- Canadian composers contributed. Much 1) FOLK MUSIC ELEMENTS ute in multiple ways, serving as cham- of that music is suitable for performance Folk music is the music of ordinary pions of Canadian composers and the by older treble voice choirs and is still people: songs and tunes that are passed choral art in general. Music Intima, based available through other publishers. on from one to another by ear rather in British Columbia, is a professional The Canadian Music Centre (CMC) than by print and thus over time take ensemble that has garnered high praise now has over eight hundred associate on different forms. Canada has a rich both locally and internationally for its members—composers who are invited variety of folk music, and The Canadian innovative programming and repertoire. to membership on the basis of submis- Encyclopedia3 is a helpful resource both The infl uence of Canadian choral sion review. Many of these composers for a general description of folk music conductor the late Elmer Iseler deserves write for the choral idiom. The CMC in Canada and also for information particular mention. For many years provides numerous resources for choral on both Anglo-Canadian and French- he conducted the Toronto Mendels- conductors and singers who wish to Canadian folk music. sohn Choir and the Festival Singers borrow or purchase scores, or simply which, in the 1970s, set the standard to investigate the wealth of Canadian Anglo-Canadian Folk Music for professional choral singing in the repertoire housed there.2 The largest number of Anglo-Cana- country. Because of his infl uence, other Canadian music represents a wide dian folk songs came to this country conductors formed professional choirs, variety of genres and styles, some based with the early settlers from Britain the best known of which is the Van- on folk idioms, some paying homage to and Ireland, who initially settled on the couver Chamber Choir, still led by Jon historical elements or the landscape of East Coast. Many of these songs were Washburn, as mentioned above. Wayne nature, some simply representing cur- passed from generation to generation. Riddell’s ensemble, the Montreal Tudor rent techniques that are evident in other Newfoundland is especially rich in its Singers, now defunct, was another countries. Canadians who have studied folk songs, and there is a strong choral 36 CHORAL JOURNAL Volume 54 Number 8 MUSIC DEVELOPMENT culture in that province. In addition to dia, “the most notable characteristic of dancing. The fi ddle was by far the ditties and ballads, the music comprises the native Anglo-Canadian songs is their most popular folk instrument, lullabies, love songs, sea shanties, and predominantly Irish quality… Both sea followed by the accordion and tin whistle. The most common fi ddle music-hall songs. ballads and lumbering songs fall into the tunes were Scottish and Irish, and Nearly all the native Canadian songs typical ‘come-all-ye’ pattern and nearly all some were composed by local 5 use melodies from Old World sources. are set to Irish tunes.” fi ddlers.6 Texts were about the occupations of the Author Edith Fowke, a well-known early settlers—the two largest groups Canadian folk song collector, continues: “Mouth music,” or “chin music,” as it being men who earned their living on was sometimes called, is referenced in the sea or in the woods. Thus, Nova Traditional folksingers always sang the use of nonsense syllables in Somers’s Scotia and Newfoundland have sea unaccompanied until very recently, “Feller from Fortune” and “The Old shanties, or songs about whaling, seal- and “mouth music” or lilting was sometimes used to accompany Mayfl ower,” for example, where the ing, and fi shing, as well as ballads about maritime disasters such as shipwrecks. In New Brunswick and Ontario, most of the folk songs came from the lumber camps. Other songs came from sailors on the Great Lakes, coal miners in Cape Breton and British Columbia, and home- steaders and cowboys on the Prairies. In the Maritimes and Newfoundland (all four comprise the Atlantic Prov- inces), there is a good deal of music that honors these folk roots. Famous among the Newfoundland examples are Harry Somers’s arrangements of “Five Songs of the Newfoundland Outports,” in particular, “Feller from Fortune,” with its rollicking theme and characteristic mixed

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