Piano Music 2

Desmond Maley is a librarian at the J.W. Tate Library, Laurentian
University.

The Canadian Musical Heritage Society was formed in 1982 with the purpose of publishing the first comprehensive anthology of Canadian music. This sixth volume in the Society’s series consists of piano music written between the mid-1880s and 1940. Edited by Elaine Keillor, Professor of Music at Carleton University, it complements Piano Music I which appeared in 1983. Professor Keillon also provides the well-researched introduction, critical notes, and bibliography to this volume.

Most of the music consists of the stylized dance forms and lyrical pieces popular at the turn of the century. In the days before radio, musical entertainment was a family pastime, and sheet music was sold in large quantities to meet this demand. The compositions of W.O. Forsyth, Clarence Lucas, Emiliano Renaud, and Edmund Hardy would rate as examples of this genre. All of them make for agreeable “easy listening” and are well within reach of the amateur. The compositions of J. Humfrey Anger, George M. Brewer, and Georges-Emile Tanguay are rather more avant-garde in their approach, but the real surprise is the music of Rodolphe Mathieu, whose “Trois Preludes” and “Sonate” combine harmonic innovation with a keen sense of the piano’s sonorities. One can only concur with Keillor’s verdict: “amazing.”

The volume concludes with compositions by Claude Champagne, Colin McPhee, Barbara Pentland, and John Weinzweig, young composers who were to make their mark in the post-World War II era. While the works by Champagne and McPhee are conventional period pieces, Pentland’s “Rhapsody 1939” is atonal and Weinzweig’s “Dirgeling” employs a twelve-tone set. According to Keillor, “Dirgeling” is the first Canadian composition to use what has become a standard 20th-century compositional technique.

There is much to admire in this volume. For example, facsimile reproductions of printed music are used whenever possible. Original cover illustrations also add interest and appeal. The quality of the reproductions is exceptionally fine. Though it might have been useful to include more material from the 1930s, there can be no question that this volume represents an important step forward in documenting the history of early Canadian music.