Mapping Canada's Music

Selected Writings of Helmut Kallmann

Helmut Kallmann, John Beckwith, editor, and Robin Elliott, editor

Book Description

Mapping Canada’s Music is a selection of writings by the late Canadian music librarian and historian Helmut Kallmann (1922–2012). Most of the essays deal with aspects of Canadian music, but some are also autobiographical, including one written during retirement in which Kallmann recalls growing up in a middle-class Jewish family in 1930s Berlin under the spectre of Nazism.

Of the seventeen selected writings by Kallmann, five have never before been published; many of the others are from difficult-to-locate sources. They include critical and research essays, reports, reflections, and memoirs. Each chapter is prefaced with an introduction by the editors. Two initial chapters offer a biography of Kallmann and an assessment of his contributions to Canadian music.

The variety, breadth, and scope of these writings confirm Kallmann’s pioneering role in Canadian music research and the importance of his legacy to the cultural life of his adopted country. In the current climate of cuts to archival collections and services, the publication of these essays by and about a pre-eminent collector and historian serves as a timely reminder of the importance of cultural memory.

About Helmut Kallmann, John Beckwith, and Robin Elliott

Born in Berlin in 1922, Helmut Kallmann lost his mother, father, and sister in the Holocaust. He was sent to England on the Kindertransport, and later to Canada, where he was interned as an enemy alien from 1940 to 1943. After graduating from university with a B.Mus., Kallmann worked from 1950 to 1970 at the CBC Toronto Music Library. In 1970 he was appointed chief of the newly created music division of the National Library, where he developed the plan for the collection and preservation of musical Canadiana and curated several exhibitions. In retirement he produced a newsletter for those who were interned with him in Canada, and assisted the Berlin government with exhibitions documenting the lives of Jewish residents in his childhood neighbourhood. Kallmann was appointed as a member of the Order of Canada in 1987.

John Beckwith, composer, music educator, and writer, was associated with the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, from 1952 to 1990. His more than 150 compositions include operas, a dozen orchestral works, chamber, solo, and choral works. Previous publications with WLU Press include In Search of Alberto Guerrero (2006), Unheard Of: Memoirs of a Canadian Composer (2012), and, as co-editor with Brian Cherney, Weinzweig: Essays on His Life and Music (2011).

Robin Elliott holds the Jean A. Chalmers Chair in Canadian Music at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. He recently co-edited two books for WLU Press, Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts (2010) and Centre and Periphery, Roots and Exile: Interpreting the Music of István Anhalt, György Kurtág, and Sándor Veress (2011).

Table of Contents
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Related interest

Music

By the same author

In Search of Alberto Guerrero, John Beckwith

Weinzweig: Essays on His Life and Music, John Beckwith, editor, and Brian Cherney, editor

Unheard Of: Memoirs of a Canadian Composer, John Beckwith

Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts, Robin Elliott, editor, and Gordon E. Smith, editor

Centre and Periphery, Roots and Exile: Interpreting the Music of István Anhalt, György Kurtág, and Sándor Veress, Friedemann Sallis, editor, Robin Elliott, editor, and Kenneth DeLong, editor