Encyclopedia of Music in Canada

INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION

The concept

The Encyclopedia of Music in Canada is about music in Canada and Canada's musical relations with the rest of the world; it is not a Canadian version of a general reference work on music. It relates the activities and contributions of Canadian individuals and organizations in their great diversity and discusses general topics in their Canadian aspects. For these topics brief definitions and explanations of technical terms are given and where necessary the world context is sketched, but EMC does not attempt to provide, for instance, an introduction to electronic composition in the world at large or to explain the mechanisms of different types of reed organs. There are many excellent music dictionaries which may be consulted for such purposes.

The idea of devoting a dictionary to the music of one country has been realized before, but the editors are not aware of any previous attempt to describe a nation's musical culture in all its breadth and depth: the historical and the current aspects of popular, folk, religious, concert, and other forms of music, and educational, critical, administrative, and commercial manifestations. The editors believe that some of EMC's approaches to musical information break new ground: entries on the relationships with other countries and sister arts; on the memorials that a nation provides for its musicians; on the musical involvements of 'Sovereigns, statesmen, and other public figures'; or on the reflection in music of 'Wars, rebellions, and uprisings,' 'Lakes,' 'Mountains,' 'Rivers,' 'Sports,' 'Transportation,' and that annually recurring Canadian condition 'Winter,' It is believed, also, that EMC provides new emphases in including in city entries lists of the names of some of the cities' sons and daughters who contributed to musical life and also in including lists of outstanding pupils of a teacher (most reference works name a musician's teachers but rarely his pupils) and indications of the location of deceased musician's surviving papers.

Since by definition encyclopedias and dictionaries break down their main subjects into alphabetical sequences of constituent or component subjects, it was not regarded as EMC's task to provide a single 'historical outline' or a single 'survey of composition.' For many such large subjects, however, EMC has provided 'reader's guides' (eg, Education, Religions, and music, Universities) which list entries on specific aspects of those subjects.

The reader who wishes to gain an impression of the course of musical development in Canada will find certain basic themes recurring in many of EMC's broad survey articles: the coincidence of the three-and-a-half centuries of Canada's colonization with the period of the creation of the vast majority of the works which appear in the standard western concert repertoire of the 20th century; the expansion of co-existing (and sometimes cross-fertilizing) musical cultures, beginning with the Indians, Inuit, and French and expanding into the 'musical United Nations' that Canada has become; the diversification of genres, beginning with the native, folk, and church music, growing into an ever more complex web of specialized repertoires with specialized audiences; the urbanization and industrialization of musical life, reflected in the formation of large organizations for the teaching and performance of music, supported by a diversified system of patronage; the establishment of a professional stratum of musicians, in addition to the amateur; the continuing and overwhelming foreign influence on musical composition, teaching, and audience tastes, giving way only gradually to homegrown traditions.

Several decisions regarding presentation and coverage of information were made at the outset. It was agreed that EMC should address itself to a wide range of readers -- laymen as well as experts, students as well as advanced scholars -- and that statements should be unambiguous and supported by facts. To these ends the editors have striven for clear and nontechnical language, compromising only in some technological and ethnomusicological entries and in some descriptions of the works of advanced composers. It was agreed to supplement articles with bibliographies, discographies, and other lists. It was agreed also that musicians from all regions should be given due attention (of paramount importance in a country of Canada's size and diversity), and that the temptation to give disproportionate prominence to major figures in the larger cities should be kept in check.

It was understood further that EMC should be published in English and French versions containing the same information. About two-thirds of the entries were written in English and one-third French, and all have been translated into the other language. The French edition is entitled Encyclopédie de la musique au Canada.

The need

Between the late 19th century and the mid-20th little information on Canadian music and musicians appeared in European and U.S. journals and reference works. The Musical Times of London, the Guide musical of Brussels, the Musical Courier of Philadelphia, and Musical America of New York rarely featured reports from Canadian cities, and Pazdírek's Universal-Handbuch der Musikliteratur, a turn-of-the-century list of 'all' published music, ignored Canada (forgivably perhaps, since few Canadian publishers issued catalogues). Even in the late 1960s, by which time a vigorous generation of Canadian composers had reached maturity, dictionaries and surveys of the world's music gave Canada only spotty coverage. This was not entirely the fault of the compilers or authors of these works; in many cases accurate, up-to-date information representative of all parts of Canada was all but impossible to obtain.

The few useful Canadian reference works -- eg, the Dictionnaire biographique des musiciens canadiens (1935) and Catalogue of Canadian composers (1952) -- were limited in scope and were aging. Contemporary Canadian Composers was still unpublished; when it did appear, in 1975 in English and in 1977 in French, it represented a vast advance over its forerunners, but it too had the limitations indicated by its title: it treated only composers, and only the composers of the 20th century. Even so, its 144 entries (160 in the French-language edition) were one indication of the staggering rate at which music had developed since the end of World War II, and of the keenly felt need for a survey and record -- indeed, a general stock-taking -- of music and musical life in Canada. Music in Canada (1955) and Aspects of Music in Canada (1969, 1970) had been attempts to fill the need, and may be said to have succeeded the degree that essay-volumes could, but they also indicated that the growing mass of information in future could no longer be treated in essay form. The step from narrative survey under broad headings to encyclopedic coverage under specific headings seemed preordained; the very absence of such a work had become palpable; the need for it lay in the air. John Beckwith's article 'About Canadian Music: the P.R. failure' (Musicanada, 21, July-Aug 1969), though it was concerned specifically with the coverage of Canadian composition in the major and purportedly international reference works (coverage which, he demonstrated with wit and example, ranged from nonexistent to condescending to complacently mistaken), gave one focus to the need. To Floyd S. Chalmers, who read the Beckwith article with the eye of a publisher, it pointed up what it did not actually articulate: the necessity for a nation to provide systematic published discussion of its own music before it could expect other nations to enter that discussion. He saw the clear need for an encyclopedia that would be Canada's own statement about its music and decided to do something about it. In the early fall of 1970 he approached Keith MacMillan, the editor of Musicanada, and with his help set up a committee to study the feasibility of producing such a work. It was a measure of Chalmers' conviction and determination and of the committee's enthusiasm that by the end of 1971 the three editors had been enlisted, by 15 Dec 1972 the board of directors had been incorporated, and by 30 Dec 1972 the first $65,000 of a promised grant of $100,000 from the Floyd S. Chalmers Foundation had been received, all before the arrival (5 Feb 1973) of a $5000 feasibility grant from the Canada Council. (Once the project was established, however, the council was to prove a staunch ally and major contributor.) The first articles were written in the summer of 1973.

The realization

Most old-world or US music encyclopedias have been harvesters of existing, completed research and have been able to call upon the resources of solid ranks of recognized experts. By contrast EMC to an unusual extent has been a sower of seeds, a mobilizer and developer of writers and experts, and a stimulator of research by national organizations into their own pasts. Of course it has harvested as well -- for example in the area of folk music, in which scholarship has been established for a long time -- and it would be an exaggeration to suggest either that Canada is deficient in musical authorities or that all of its authorities were too busy or too little interested to contribute. EMC was fortunate in finding experts on many specific subjects: certain contemporary composers, the musical life among some individual ethnic minorities, the musical histories of some organizations, or the activities in certain genres of popular music, to give only a few examples. But these pockets of expertise were outweighed by a Canadian scarcity of reliable and ready writers on other aspects of Canadian musical life, eg, the musical histories of some cities, traditional dance music, or piano building.

Thus, for many contributors and certainly for the editors EMC has been a journey of discovery, arduous but rewarded by the revelation of a rich fabric of activity and achievement. Pioneering achievements in recorded sound and electronic instruments, an international operatic career which began with an irrepressible youngster singing persistently in a prairie town, an astonishing survival of Moravian hymns in an Inuit settlement, a great piano-building firm which grew out of a workshop in the house of an immigrant European craftsman, a middle-aged woman with a lot of children to feed singing out of her poverty and leaving a legacy of songs which became the prototype of a new genre in Quebec -- the story of these* and many hundreds of other people, institutions, and accomplishments reveal something of the energy that has flowed ceaselessly through Canadian musical endeavours over the years.

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Created: 2001-08-20 Updated: 2004-03-12	Top of Page	Important Notices