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Before 1900
Orchestral compositions by Canadians have been produced mainly in the 20th century and particularly after 1950, but there was orchestral writing as early as Joseph Quesnel's light opera Colas et Colinette, performed in 1790, and Quesnel is said to have written symphonies. In 1863 another French immigrant, Antoine Dessane, wrote two overtures for orchestra for a Quebec City ensemble. Both Arthur Dumouchel and Calixa Lavallée are credited with symphonies which have not been found. (Eugène Lapierre in his biography of Lavallée asserts that a symphony was performed in 1874, but no proof has been found. It may be the same composition that Charles Labelle referred to in 1888 as a suite.) Only Lavallée and Joseph Vézina can be considered experienced 19th century writers of marches, waltzes and overtures 'for orchestra or band.' A performance of Guillaume Couture'sRêverie, a lyrical mood piece, did take place in Paris in 1875, and this work was published by Girod soon after the performance. It was the only Canadian orchestral work to be published before the Clarence Lucas overtures at the turn of the century.
Composers during the 19th century had few incentives to write symphonic pieces, as efforts to form orchestras of any size in Canada rarely were successful. As a consequence musicians could not acquaint themselves with the standard repertoire, or gain experience in trying and hearing instrumental combinations. The few Canadian composers active in the medium left only a handful of works, usually student assignments abroad, such as W.O. Forsyth'sRomanza, played in Leipzig in 1888, or works for foreign orchestras, eg, Lucas' overtures and operettas performed in England at the turn of the century.
Hints Of New Influences In The Early 20th Century
Orchestral organizations became more prevalent in Canada in the early years of this century, but works for orchestra of symphonic proportions remained rare. The immigrants Douglas Clarke, Donald Heins, Leo Smith, and Allard de Ridder wrote descriptive symphonic poems, as did the Canadian-born Alexis Contant, whose L'Aurore (1912) contains some striking dissonant textures, and Champagne, whose Hercule et Omphale (1918) is in the tradition of Saint-Saëns. The Trois Préludes (1912-15, for piano) by Rodolphe Mathieu are remarkable in their orchestral version. The third one, Une Muse, foreshadows Webern's Klangfarbenmelodie technique (the changing of instrumental colours within one held note or one strand of melody) and is virtually atonal. Another work that was avant-garde for its time, the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Colin McPhee, left its Toronto audience bewildered in 1924.
The beginning of the folksong movement as a basis for Canadian composition was marked by Ernest MacMillan's Two Sketches for Strings (1927), Claude Champagne's Suite canadienne (with chorus, 1927), and Miro'sSymphonie canadienne (early 1930s). The use of melodies that were modal and often metrically fluctuating forced these composers to depart occasionally from diatonic harmonic progressions and regular metres.
The orchestral output of the 1930s included two symphonies of more import than the many written as doctoral exercises and possibly never performed: Percival Price'sSt Lawrence Symphony (1932), which in fact was written as a doctoral exercise but also was performed, and Healey Willan'sSymphony No. 1 (1936). Although the latter is traditional in form and much of its harmonic language is indebted to Wagner, there are traces of contrapuntal modal writing. Above all, the work signals the dawn of the 'symphonic age' in Canadian composition.
Establishment Of An Orchestral Repertoire In The 1940s And 1950s
With the formation of the CBC in 1936 and the NFB in 1939 commissions and performances of orchestral works became more frequent. Weinzweig began writing film scores and incidental music for radio plays in 1941 and also conducted, thus gaining a broad experience of orchestral practice. Applebaum and Rathburn followed this pattern later. Ridout and Brott also conducted for the CBC (and if the latter's ease in handling orchestral material probably owed more, in the long run, to his work as conductor of the McGill Chamber Orchestra, which he founded in 1945, it should be remembered that by then he already had written three large and skilful orchestral works). A certain official timidity in the face of contemporary idioms, not to mention the high cost of copying, led the new commissioning agencies to request more short works than long. Champagne, however, realized the importance of major orchestral works in any significant national repertoire, and in his Symphonie gaspésienne he created a tone poem in a wide variety of orchestral timbres coupled with melodies that contain characteristic modules of folksong, without exact quotations. He also encouraged his pupils to write for orchestra.
Another area into which the orchestral repertoire was able to expand in the 1940s was ballet music. Several dance companies, each with directors who also were ambitious and competent choreographers, attained a stage of maturity at about that time, and with it came a desire for original music to dance to. The Winnipeg (later Royal Winnipeg) Ballet commissioned Walter Kaufmann'sVisages and Robert Fleming'sChapter 13 in 1947, the Ballets Ruth Sorel of Montreal Jean Papineau-Couture'sPapotages/Tittle-Tattle in 1949, and the Volkoff Canadian Ballet John Weinzweig's Red Ear of Corn in 1949; such commissions initiated a repertoire of rhythmic-dramatic, economically scored works which was augmented steadily if not extravagantly in the ensuing three decades. (See Ballet and dance theatre)
When the CLComp compiled the Catalogue of Orchestral Music in 1957, 233 pieces were included, of which most had been written since 1940 and particularly during the years 1950 to 1953. A wide variety of styles is evident in this music as the influences of Bartók and Stravinsky become ever more evident along with a continuing neo-romanticism. Two prolific composers for orchestra - Violet Archer and Jean Coulthard - did, in fact, study with Bartók, though it may be said that both show his influence less overtly than do many who did not. In the works of Papineau-Couture the influence of Stravinsky, although transmuted into his own distinct style firmly based on polyphony and the ideal of a strong structure, can be seen in the evolution from neoclassicism to serial procedures in the Pièce concertante No. 3 (1959). Weinzweig, who had been using 12-tone series, or parts of series, as sources of motives for over a decade, began to have fellow explorers in the materials and procedures of dodecaphony in his pupils Harry Somers and Harry Freedman, while Clermont Pépin and Serge Garant (both Champagne pupils) discovered serialism through works of Boulez and Stockhausen during their Parisian sojourns of the early 1950s. Other compositional styles entered Canada with the European immigrants Oskar Morawetz (homophonic neo-romanticism), S.C. Eckhardt-Gramatté and Talivaldis Kenins (polyphonic neo-romanticism), Otto Joachim (free serial writing), and István Anhalt (strict serial writing). It was in the mid-1950s that the music of Webern and his followers began to have an impact on Canadian composition. Barbara Pentland'sSymphony for Ten Parts (1957) reflects Webernian influence in its soloistic scoring for chamber orchestra, pointillism, and Klangfarbenmelodie. Subsequently this trend - modified, be it said, by a variety of other influences including the teaching of Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen, and Bernard Wagenaar and the ideas of John Cage and Edgard Varèse - yielded a large repertoire for chamber orchestras and ensembles. Among those who contributed to it were Adaskin, Applebaum, Beckwith, Beecroft, Buczynski, Cherney, Dolin, Fleming, Garant, Glick, Hambraeus, Hétu, Kenins, Papineau-Couture, Rathburn, Mather, Schafer, Schudel, Somers, Symonds, Turner, and Wilson.
New Sounds And Techniques With A Canadian Accent
In the 1960s the colour contrasts of the post-Webern school were explored, particularly in new percussion effects with instruments from the East, Latin America, and Africa. Varèse's influence is reflected in the percussion-only section of Roger Matton'sL'Horoscope (1958) and in the superimpositions of block sonorities that occur in works of François Morel, Pépin, occasionally André Prévost, and others. Novel percussive effects were obtained by tapping the string and wind instruments while other timbres were procured by varied bowing, blowing, and fingering techniques, in works by Schafer and Gilles Tremblay among others. The expanding world of electronic sounds entered symphonic music when Champagne included the ondes Martenot in Altitude (1959), a work inspired by the Rocky Mountains. In Somers' Five Concepts for Orchestra (1961) the predominant parameters are timbre, rhythm, and dynamics rather than melody or harmonic progression.
Meanwhile, US composers were exploring chance and indeterminacy, led by Cage and Feldman, whose works were introduced to Montreal by Mercure and to Toronto by Kasemets. In her Symphony No. 4 (1959) Pentland had included a cadenza to be improvised by the percussionist. Improvisation was characteristic of jazz, and that genre's playing styles and rhythms had influenced Matton, Freedman, Morel, Weinzweig, and the Third Stream representative Norman Symonds, among others. Spatial indeterminacy and the dimension of sound is explored in Somers' Stereophony (1963) by prescribing the arrangement of the players both on stage and throughout the hall. To procure quasi-electronic sounds from the traditional orchestra Mercure devised some indeterminate notation involving time in Lignes et points (1964) but pitch, apart from microtonal inflections, is precisely given. More extensive aleatoric sections with indeterminate notation for durations appear in Joachim's Contrastes (1967).
Outstanding orchestral works resulting from centennial commissions again demonstrate the variety of techniques and styles to be found: Freedman's Tangents, in which the strings are divided into as many as 59 parts and solo instruments are rhythmically independent; Bruce Mather's Orchestral Piece 1967, with cluster chords and intervallic cells as its basic material, but written in a traditional notation; and Weinzweig's Harp Concerto, which includes new notational signs and serialization of time durations, pitch, and dynamics.
Two works of 1968 incorporate serial technique and aleatoric sections and call on the players to speak. Garant's Phrases 2 is, in Xenakis' term, a heteronomous work with the orchestra divided in two, each half with a conductor who determines the order of the sequences. A tone-row is used, but some sequences are improvisational. Schafer's Son of Heldenleben uses two series and aleatoric elements but reflects another trend, the strong movement towards pastiche and parody through quotation. This work has an accompanying electronic tape. Previously (1967) Anhalt's Symphony of Modules and Peter Clements' Cloud of Unknowing have combined live with electroacoustic sounds.
In the 1970s orchestral composition reflected the continuation of the exploration of sounds. Robert Aitken'sSpiral (1975), which includes microphoned instruments in a variety of key noises and other effects, is an example. In it, colourful blocks of timbre are contrasted with delicate sounds, often evocative of Eastern music. The influence of the Orient was marked in Canadian music of the 1970s, and Aitken, Somers, Tremblay, Schafer, Vivier, and Weisgarber all travelled extensively in the East. Vivier's Siddhartha (1976) reflects this, as does Schafer's East (1972).
Because Canada is a mosaic of cultures one cannot expect a strong uniformity of style in its orchestral repertoire, but some recurring elements can be suggested as being primarily Canadian. Most serious Canadian composers have adopted an intellectual yet independent attitude to the dominant international trends; they have studied and absorbed, but have not necessarily copied. Canadian music does show some characteristics of the European directional emotive surge but more of the North American fondness for repetitive effects producing a relaxed mental withdrawal similar to that prompted by many Eastern musics. The Canadian tendency to a sparse texture supporting a long, expressive line has been noted frequently. Such characteristics frequently are set off by bold use of silence or by sections which give the effect of immobility. Weinzweig's Dummiyah (Silence) (1969) and Pépin's Quasars (1967), two works that are otherwise dissimilar, nevertheless both illustrate to some degree these elements. Another characteristic present in Canadian music after Somers' combination of tonality and atonality in the 1950s is the willingness of composers who write in a free 12-tone style to allow tonal centres to occur. As Tremblay has pointed out, the overtones do not support in pitch the 12-tone technique, so he combines elements of serialism with a structure that is centred on the harmonics of a particular note, as exemplified in Fleuves (1976).
The 1980s saw the almost total abandonment of serial procedures and an increasing post-modernistic tendency to comment on earlier works through stylistic references and quotations. Works of this nature include Alexina Louie'sO Magnum Mysterium (1983), Michael Colgrass'Letter to Mozart (1976), Patrick Cardy'sVirelai (1985), and Michel Longtin'sAutour d'Ainola (1986). Colouristic sonorities have become the composer's major interest in much orchestral writing, for example, John Rea'sOver Time (1987), and works by Chatman, Buhr, and Louie, among others.
Light Orchestral Music
The tradition of composing music for 'promenade concerts' goes back to the bandmasters of the 19th century. Lavallée's works in the genre were written mostly in the USA, but those of Vézina were for domestic bands and orchestras. They portray an age of easy-going charm when catchy melodies and elegant rhythm were valued above all.
Beginning in the 1940s the most influential Canadian composer of light orchestral music has been Robert Farnon, who not only has provided many popular short orchestral compositions, but has significantly influenced the style and sound of popular music today with his scoring for strings. More recently Hagood Hardy has prepared versions for larger ensembles of his most successful works. The Imperial Oil McPeek Pops Collection, a project administered by the Canadian Music Centre, contains some 50 arrangements for orchestra from 3 to 18 minutes in length of Canadian popular songs and dances, old and new. Other Canadian composers who have been active in producing light orchestral music include Howard Cable, Johnny Cowell, François Dompierre, and André Gagnon.
The State Of Orchestral Composition And Performance
The continuing output of orchestral works (which in the third quarter of the 20th century exceeded that of solo and chamber pieces) is an indication of the healthy atmosphere. Nadia Boulanger and Olivier Messiaen have been influential teachers abroad, but composers born after 1925 have been mainly Canadian-trained, most often with either Champagne or Weinzweig. They, along with Mercure, Freedman, Morawetz, Tremblay, and others, are known as excellent orchestrators able to guide students in the analysis and use of orchestral sounds and textures.
The Canada Council, formed in 1957, has been an important source of commissioning funds, as have the CBC, the (later) arts councils of the provinces, and the orchestras themselves. Along with its support to orchestras the Canada Council for many years recommended a 10 per cent Canadian representation in programming. In the 1978-9 season at least six of the major orchestras achieved this percentage, presenting 31 different compositions of which 12 were premieres. Of these, few would be published but through the CBC a larger proportion gradually would become available through recordings.
Among the most frequently performed Canadian orchestral works have been Archer's Fanfare and Passacaglia, Brott's Spheres in Orbit, Champagne's Danse villageoise, Freedman's Images (impressionistic poems on three Canadian paintings), Gellman'sSymphony No. 2, Hétu's Symphony No. 1, Kelsey Jones'Miramichi Ballad (based on folksongs of New Brunswick), Louie's Songs of Paradise, MacMillan's Two Sketches, Matton's Mouvement Symphonique II, Mercure's Pantomime, Kaléidoscope, and Triptyque, Morawetz' Carnival Overture and Overture to a Fairy Tale, Morel's Antiphonie and L'Étoile noire (Tombeau de Borduas), Papineau-Couture's Pièce concertante No. 2, Pentland's Symphony for Ten Parts, Pépin's Guernica, Prévost's Évanescence, Ridout's Fall Fair, Schafer's Son of Heldenleben and East, Somers' Suite for Harp, Fantasia for Orchestra, and Picasso Suite, Turner's Opening Night (Theatre Overture), and Weinzweig's Divertimento No. 1 and Symphonic Ode.
In 1990 the Canada Council began a composer-in-residence program for orchestras. Designed to develop appreciation of contemporary orchestral music, it provides financial support to professional orchestras for two-year residencies covering costs of two major compositions, consultation, and promotional activities.
