The Growth of Creative Activity in Canada
OSKAR MORAWETZ WAS
born in Czechoslovakia and came to Canada in 1940. He received his Doctor of Music from the University of
Toronto, where he is now Professor at the Faculty of Music. His works have been performed not only in Canada
but by many orchestras in the U.S.A., Europe and Australia, under conductors like Walter Susskind, Sir Ernest
MacMillan, William Steinberg, Raphael Kubelik and Sir Adrian Boult. His piano works have been performed by Rudolf
Firkusny, and Glenn Gould, his vocal compositions by Lois Marshall and Dorothy Maynor. In 1960 he was commissioned
to write a new work for the T.S.O.; in 1961 he was awarded a Canada Council Fellowship, and recently he won a
competition given by the Montreal Symphony for a new piano concerto to be conducted by Zubin Mehta this April.
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When historians speak about composers according to their nationality, we often hear them say that certain
countries or nations are more gifted than others. To a certain extent this might be true,
but I think that these differences are greatly exaggerated. Perhaps this belief was particularly popular in
Germany and Austria of the 18th and 19th centuries because they had played such an important part in the
development of the history of music in that period. And it was also during that time that the German musical
dictionaries and encyclopedias initiated the belief that the English people have no particular gift for composition.
Little did they expect that in the following 20th century composers like Britten, Walton and Williams would have
greater importance on the international scene than any composer living in Austria today. Nor did these history
books seem to pay much attention to the great esteem English music had around the whole world with the name of
Henry Purcell, of the 17th century.
I personally think that the creative ability of a country both in quality and quantity does not depend so much
upon its natural gift but more on the possibilities offered to the development of its talent. And the many outer
stimuli a composer in Canada has now, compared to the years preceding the Second Great War, is, in my opinion,
the main reason for the great amount of creative activity in this country today.
While in the years around 1940, Sir Ernest MacMillan, Healey Willan and Claude Champagne were the only composers
whose names we could see programmed regularly by our orchestras, today the Canadian League of Composers alone
comprises around forty-five members.
It is also interesting to note that almost all of them have been born within
twenty-five years between the beginning of the First and Second World Wars.
There seems to be three main reasons for this new era of musical composition in Canada. First, the interest of the
CBC in our composers, second, the help offered by the Canada Council, and third, the modern possibilities for study
given by our music libraries.
The importance of the CBC in this respect is enormous. It has not only performed on the air most of our composers'
works, but has also commissioned many new compositions. I am sure that every composer living in this country could
show quite a list of his works which were performed over the radio a long time before they got their first public
performance. As a matter of fact, many a radio performance became a reason for being heard later in the concert hall.
This is due not only to the much larger listening audience, compared to a performance in public, but also
because a radio performance can be taped, giving an interested performer a chance to get a quicker idea of a new
work he might like to schedule for a public appearance.
The tape obtained through a radio performance is of greatest importance to the composer for another reason.
Almost every composer tries to check after a premiere if all his tempo indications, dynamics and perhaps even
the orchestration, sounded exactly as he wished. By playing back the tape, he can judge, even if the performance
has not been perfect, where he should make adjustments in the editing of the work, and where the performer did
not understand his indications. These advantages given to our composers through the CBC can be particularly
appreciated when we consider that in the U.S.A., there is no organization comparable to the CBC. Even if a young
American composer were lucky enough to be performed by some major orchestra, he usually does not have a second
chance to hear it on tape, as very few of the American orchestras are heard on the air.
One section of the CBC little known to the general public, which started after the war and has played a big role
in promoting Canadian music abroad, is the International Service, which has recorded on disc many Canadian
compositions. These records are not for sale, but are sent free of charge to most embassies and important radio
stations throughout the world. And so it happens quite frequently to our composers, that they are notified that
their works have been played on the air in countries as distant as South Africa, Israel, New Zealand or Australia.
The establishment of the Canada Council has played one of the most interesting and valuable roles in encouraging
Canadian composers during the past few years. It has helped them to study abroad, as well as offering commissions.
The latter was particularly enterprising, for I think that for the first time in the history of our orchestras,
composers have been asked to write new works for their regular subscription series. The approach of the Council was
quite new and wise in commissioning; instead of choosing the composer, the Council approached the conductor,
soloist or chamber music group, leaving them the choice or composer and type of work.
The tremendous facilities which every young Canadian composer has today for the study of his craft, compared to
what existed only twenty years ago, are equally important in explaining the recent growth of creative activity
in this country. Before explaining these in detail, I would like to branch off and explain a few things about the
studies of a composer which seem, for some reason, quite unknown to the general public.
Most people realize that any great performing artist has studied his instrument for many years and has to work
constantly at least four to five hours daily to keep up to his standard. About a composer, the view of the layman
and many a concert-goer is quite different. People are sure that a real composer has always had facility in his
craft ever since the day he was taught how to read music. This opinion would seem to be substantiated by the
fact that works listed by composers like Brahms and Beethoven as Opus 1, are real masterpieces, and because we
know that composers like Schubert or Mendelssohn wrote some of their finest music when they were only sixteen
years old. But let us keep in mind that not only have these composers written a fantastic amount of music in
their teens before even allowing a work to be numbered Opus 1, but also that youthful precocity is not synonymous
with musical genius in composing. Stravinsky wrote his first immortal works only in his late twenties,
Tschaikovsky in his thirties, Wagner reached the full maturity of his style only in his forties, Janacek and
Williams in their fifties, and Verdi, though world-famous after he wrote Rigoletto at the age of thirty-eight,
wrote his two greatest operas between the ages of seventy and eighty.
This certainly shows how much experience, study and hard work even some of the greatest composers had to go through
before reaching the highest point of their development. Tschaikovsky mentions in one of his letters that he
composes every day as much as he can, even if he has no particular inclination to do so, as he found out that
often the compositions on his "gloomy days" turned out to be much greater than those when he felt
"inspired".
But the most interesting examples of hard work are the sketch-books of Beethoven. It seems almost unbelievable
how many times he changed the themes of his works before he was fully satisfied. The first version of themes of
Beethoven's Symphonies sounds often so naive or even trivial compared to the inspired music we know now, that I
am sure our audiences would burst into laughter if they heard these first drafts. Just imagine that the first
sketch of the opening of his Fifth Symphony with the well- known, three-times-repeated note falling down a third,
has been originally written not as G,G,G, E flat, but as G,G,F, E flat. It might perhaps be of interest to
many people that the exercises in counterpoint which Beethoven had to cover with his theory teacher, have been
preserved until the present day. Many composition students of today, who so dislike to work on this type of
exercise, should realize that even Beethoven not only had to work on them, but that he spent, despite his genius,
much more time on them than most of our students who find them either unnecessary or even below their dignity.
And it is in this connection that the enormous advantages offered to our young composers in Canada during the past
decade should be mentioned. With the tremendous growth of the music libraries in the Faculty of Music at the
University of Toronto and in the public library, they can study music of any country, any century and any style.
They can read letters written by great composers and study their working methods. They can get thorough
knowledge of works performed in Toronto ahead of time. And through the
great collection of records, they can listen to compositions of the past or present, which have never been
performed on this continent. And all this with so little expense and such a saving of time! I remember how
often as a student I had to wait a whole evening at a concert to hear how a certain combination of instruments
would sound, and then wait a whole year or more before hearing the same work again. Today with the invention
of L.P. records and their availability at the libraries, all these problems can be solved by an interested
student in a few minutes because he has the chance to listen to the same passage as often as he chooses.
If the students of today will make use of all these advantages in the course of their studies, the next
generation of Canadian composers should be even more active than the one of today.
