The Music of Harry Freedman

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University, and editor of the CAML
Review.

More than 50 works come under the microscope in this impressively
detailed survey of the art of Toronto composer Harry Freedman. Dixon, a
professor emeritus at the University of Western Ontario’s Faculty of
Music, also includes dozens of musical examples drawn from Freedman’s
versatile and eclectic oeuvre. This approach is essential, since so many
of Freedman’s compositions exist only in manuscript at the Canadian
Music Centre.

Dixon is at her best when analyzing Freedman’s musical architecture.
She gives us the tone set on which each work is built and then comments
insightfully on the compositional method. Pertinent biographical
information is also discussed. Freedman, who began his compositional
studies in Toronto after World War II under the tutelage of John
Weinzweig, has acknowledged a wide array of composers and influences
that helped shape his imagination. Aaron Copland, Béla Bartуk, J.S.
Bach, and Olivier Messiaen figure during the course of the narrative, as
do “cool” jazz, Canada’s Native peoples, and painters (notably
Harold Town). His musical language evolved from Stravinskian
neoclassicism to a flexible kind of serialism. Lyricism and complex
rhythms are among the hallmarks.

Dixon, who interviewed Freedman as well as having access to his papers,
also provides reproductions of the composer’s notes and sketches of
the genesis of the Symphony No. 3 (1983), which Freedman considers one
of his crowning compositional achievements.

One does wish more had been said about the emotional impact of the
music. For instance, several “signature” musical motifs are noted,
but their significance is not explained. I was also surprised at the
absence of any analysis of Freedman’s contributions to film and
television. He has written more than 30 soundtracks, yet none were
chosen for this study. There are also some errors in the bibliography
(Kenneth Winters did not edit the 1992 edition of The Encyclopedia of
Music of Canada).

Despite these shortcomings, Dixon has given us by far the most
sophisticated and thorough assessment of Freedman’s music yet to be
published. It is a solid foundation on which other scholars of Canadian
music can now build.