Music from Within: A Biography of the Composer S C Eckhardt-Gramatte

Darlene Money was a writer in Mississauga, Ontario.

Ferdinand Eckhardt wrote his original two-volume biography of his wife, the composer, in German, translated it into English, then published both privately. Now Gerald Bowler has shortened the biography and adapted it for a broader readership.

The place and date of birth of Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté (or Sonia, the name she preferred) are uncertain, as is the identity of her father. (She was probably born in Moscow in 1899.) As a child she lived in England, in Paris, where she was recognized as a prodigy, and in Berlin. During World War I she supported her family by playing piano in cafés, until her talent attracted patrons. Her patrons disapproved of her composing music and insisted, without success, that she concentrate on performing. During her short marriage to artist Walter Gramatté in the 1920s, she began to achieve recognition, and Eckhardt, her second husband, provided the stability and emotional support she needed. She and her husband came to Canada when he was appointed director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1953. Canadian musical circles were slow to accept the temperamental European composer, but her international reputation continued to grow, and long before her death in 1974 her adopted country proudly claimed her as its own.

This is a warm personal biography, though it is not unbiased, as the author admits. Sonia’s refusal to compromise her ambition is admirable, but at times it inconvenienced and hurt her friends and associates. Eckhardt acknowledges her “artistic” temperament but makes light of its less attractive manifestations with an indulgence exemplified by this episode in 1972: “a tumor on my neck flared up, requiring ten operations and highly painful skin grafts. Though the ordeal was hideous for me, it was worse for Sonia, whose nature was sensitive” (p.165).

The book’s brevity causes some topics or periods to seem disappointingly hasty or superficial: the World War II years in Austria, the decision to emigrate to Canada and the process of adjustment there. But there are vivid descriptions of the creative process, most notably in excerpts from Sonia’s letters to her husband during May and June, 1962, recounting the composition of her Third String Quartet, movement by movement, exhilaration and joy alternating with bone-aching weariness, insomnia, and tears.

The book is well illustrated and has a name index and a list of selected works and recordings.