Classical Canadian composer puts little stock in 'style'
Oskar Morawetz, one of the most-performed classical
Canadian composers inside and outside Canada, puts little stock in "style" and
definition in music. He thinks that composing in a "style" can be insincere.
"Did Bach as an old man begin composing like his sons because they were
setting the musical style?" he asks.
Additionally, he says, style is so transient in today's greedy pace that "it's a lost battle" when
"style" can become dated within a few years. He suggests that his performance record is partly due
to the fact that he has never followed a "style" of composition. His First Carnival Overture has
been performed more than 160 times; among the conductors have been Sir Adrian Boult and Rafael Kubelik.
Morawetz still has an office at the University of Toronto, as one of the country's most-performed composers,
although he is considered to have retired. While he is a phenomenal collector of anecdotes on music and musicians,
on his musical odyssey from Czechoslovakia as a student, to Vienna, Paris, Italy and
flight to Canada in 1940, he is himself the subject of many stories around the University of Toronto.
His involvement in music and his students has been so complete he is said to identify every one of his students
by the music they created in his classes. When a former student asks if he remembers him or her,
he will recall note-for-note the compositions written for him. His total recall of his worldwide encounters
with the greats of the music scene is a legend in itself. The details that he retains make him a walking
musical encyclopedia.
Despite his phenomenal memory, he is himself the subject of one often-repeated anecdote. It is said that he
one day saw an elderly woman getting on the street car with difficulty. He helped her on and continued to
ride on in the street car, forgetting momentarily that he had left his car standing in the street.
He will be composer-in-residence next week when the University of Western Ontario music faculty holds a series
of events observing National Universities Week. Morawetz will be represented in two major appearances. A program
of his compositions will be performed on Tuesday, Oct. 4 in the faculty's recital hall at 8 p.m.
Then, on "Friday Oct. 7 at 12: 30 p.m., he will speak on his composition The
Diary Of Anne Frank which has had a wide international success. Scores will be
lent - if reserved ahead of time - to the audience for the occasion to
follow the recording of the 1970 premier with Lois Marshall.
He is so deferential to the strain on artists prior to a concert of his or any other music, that he
will arrive in London this weekend to attend rehearsals of the program that will include his latest work,
a complete revision of the second of Two Fantasies For Violoncello which will be performed by Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi.
Bass Peter Wall, the Fanshawe Concert Singers under Gerald Fagan, flutist Anne-elise Keefer-Rnic and former
Toronto Symphony oboe principal Harry Sargous will appear with accompanists
Susan Chenette, Jane Hayes and Morawetz in flute and oboe sonatas and a number of his songs.
The Diary Of Anne Frank has added to the international recognition that has come to Morawetz. After its
premier in 1970, the late conductor Karel Ancerl called it one of the most moving works he had conducted in
two decades. Zubin Mehta conducted it in Tel Aviv in 1977. It was on the Spring Festival program in his native
Prague the same year. It has received more than 50 performances all
over the world. The composition was inspired by Morawetz's reading of the moving writings by a teen-aged
Dutch girl, hidden with her family in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of
Holland, but who later died in Bergen Belsen concentration camp.
"Like so many others who had to flee the Nazis, I had hesitated to read the diary for almost 20 years after its publication."
