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John Beckwith. Music Papers: Articles and Talks by a Canadian Composer, 1961-1994. Ottawa: The Golden Dog Press, 1997. xiii, 256 pp. ISBN Q919614-72-8 (paperback). Few individuals have influenced the musical affairs of Canada during the past fifty years as profoundly as John Beckwith. As one of Canada's leading composers and a prominent member of the oft-mentioned "first generation" of modern, self-consciously Canadian composers, Beckwith's compositional achievements are well known. Yet not to be overlooked are his remarkable contributions as a pianist, teacher, university administrator, critic, writer, and broadcaster at various times during his illustrious career. From his days as a founding member of the Canadian League of Composers in the early 1950s to his role as founding director of the Institute for Canadian Music at the University of Toronto in the 1980s and beyond, Beckwith remains a central force in Canadian music. 1997 marked the completion of two important recording and publishing projects. The first is a new compact disc of four Beckwith works: Keyboard Practice, Upper Canadian Hymn Preludes, Etudes, and Quartet (CMC Centrediscs WRC8-7070). The second is the publication of Music Papers, a compilation of articles and talks by Beckwith from the past thirty years (many of them previously unpublished). Since some of the chapters were written for a professional authence and others for a more general readership, the book has something to offer for both music specialists and those with a general interest in Canadian music. The subject matter ranges widely, with chapters grouped into five broad categories: "A 'Universal Tongue?'"; "CanMus"; "Some Toronto Musicians"; "Composing"; and "Sounds Like..." A "Universal Tongue"? The first two chapters, "Trying to Define Music" (1970) and "Music, the Elusive Art" (1967), outline the author's thoughts on the nature and origins of music. The latter chapter, the more detailed of the two, examines musical gestures which have acquired special meaning within a culture and the concept of referential meaning in modern music (i.e., music which refers to earlier compositions or musical traditions). It is interesting that Beckwith's previously unpublished 1967 article essentially proposes an intertextual theory of music which pre-dates the recent explorations of musical intertextuality by a number of scholars in the 1980s and 1990s.1 In "Music, The Search for Uni versais" (1978), the author attempts to tackle a longstanding question: What universals, if any, are shared by the various musical cultures of the world? While Beckwith makes some interesting observations on the topic initially, the central thesis soon becomes obscured by a lengthy digression which, at times, reads more like a critique of pop music than a "search for universals." The author, in retrospect, acknowledges that the attempt to "fit the 'classical' composer into the world music setting" (p. 18) was not entirely successful. (Each article in the book is contextualised by a newly written prefatory note.) Despite being written in mid-1970s, "A Big Song and Dance" addresses an issue of particular relevance for universities of the 1990s: the place of music in the curriculum. In the process, Beckwith touches on some recurring themes developed elsewhere in the book, such as the distinctiveness of Canadian culture (music, in particular), and the modern composer's constant struggle to assert his/her own creative voice amidst the looming shadows of great musical figures from the past. On this topic, Beckwith concludes with the following colourful observation: "One facet of being a musician is this sense of making comparisons (however absurd) every time you write a new piece, or perform or analyse or study an old one - comparisons with the top achievements of Bach and Mozart and Chopin and Debussy and Mahler, those bastards who are so good they keep you humble" (p. 3 1).2 CanMus A series of eight articles on aspects of Canadian music follows. …

canadian university music review

John Beckwith. Music Papers: Articles and Talks by a Canadian Composer, 1961–1994. Ottawa: The Golden Dog Press, 1997. xiii, 256 pp. ISBN 0-919614-72-8 (paperback)