Taking a Stand: Essays in Honour of John Beckwith

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University.

John Beckwith could well be the Sir Ernest MacMillan of our time. Like
MacMillan before him, he has amassed accomplishments that straddle
several fields including composer, educator, administrator, writer, and
broadcaster. But Beckwith resembles MacMillan most in the way he has
helped to define the evolution of our culture. Above all, his seminal
1969 article, “About Canadian Music: The PR Failure,” captured the
attention of a rising young generation of scholars and led to such
publications as The Encyclopedia of Music in Canada.

Edited and introduced by Timothy McGee, Taking a Stand brings together
13 papers in honor of Beckwith’s retirement from the University of
Toronto. The composers represented include Beckwith himself (in
musicological analyses of two of his works), Istvan Anhalt, John
Hawkins, and popular musician Bruce Cockburn. Music education in
19th-century Toronto as well as in the contemporary school curriculum
are also discussed. The North American context is addressed with respect
to the 19th-century “Canadian connection” in Oswego, New York, early
English-speaking worship music, and the differing treatments of
indigenous music by American and Canadian composers.

There are essays on Ernest Gagnon’s classic Chansons populaires du
Canada, narrative approaches to Canadian music history, and private
patronage of the arts in Canada. A poem written in 1984 by Beckwith’s
longtime literary collaborator James Reaney is also included, while the
bibliography updates Beckwith’s writings and music to 1994.

Despite the variety of topics and writers, these essays make a cohesive
impression. The quality is excellent and the discussion is consistently
thought-provoking. Taking a Stand, which gets its title from a Beckwith
composition, forms a fine tribute not only to Beckwith but to Canadian
culture.