WALTER, ARNOLD, 1902-1973
MUS 71

Arnold Walter fonds.  - [ca. 1920]-[ca. 1973].  - 5 m of textual records.  - 170 photographs. 

Biographical sketch
Educator, administrator, musicologist and composer born in Czechoslovakia, Arnold Walter studied jurisprudence at the University of Prague and musicology at the University of Berlin.  He also took private piano lessons with Rudolf Breithaupt and Frederic Lamond, and composition lessons with Franz Schreker.  Being without employment as a pianist-composer in Berlin, Walter decided to turn to writing, and contributed to the magazine Melos.  In the early 1930s, he was put in charge of the music column for the periodical Die Weltbühne, and also became music critic for the Vorwärts magazine.  Arnold Walter moved to Canada in 1937, finding employment as a teacher at Upper Canada College in Toronto.  In 1945, hired by the Toronto Conservatory of Music, he applied the recommendations of Ernest Hutcheson's report on the reform of music education in Toronto by establishing the Senior School of the Toronto Conservatory of Music and the opera school (Royal Conservatory Opera School).  In 1952 he became director of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music.  As a composer, he wrote works for piano and for orchestra, as well as chamber music and electroacoustic music. 

Scope and content
The fonds contains records pertaining to the musical activities of Arnold Walter.  His writings also reveals a man who was conscious of the development of musical education in Canada and open to new music learning theories.  It includes: curriculum vitae; passports; certificates and diploma; personal and professional correspondence, including letters from such personalities as Carl Orff, Jean-Marie Beaudet, Aaron Copland, Emily Carr and Marshall McLuhan; lecture notes and speeches; articles; radio texts; reports; files on the publication of Aspects of Music in Canada and other publication projects; files on his visits to Japan, Moscow and Vienna; music manuscripts; articles on Arnold Walter; brochures; press clippings; photographs, chiefly of Arnold Walter, artists and performances. 

Immediate source of acquisition:  acquired from Trudi Le Caine, stepdaughter of Arnold Walter, in a number of accessions between 1976 and 1995. 

Restrictions:  the personal correspondence is confidential. 

Finding aids:  provisional description.