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Memoirs of a Canadian Composer
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Order online and receive a 25% discount $29.95 Paper, 408 pp. ISBN13: 978-1-55458-358-4 Release Date: |
Book Description
Canadian composer John Beckwith recounts his early days in Victoria, his studies in Toronto with Alberto Guerrero, his first compositions, and his later studies in Paris with the renowned Nadia Boulanger, of whom he offers a comprehensive personal view. In the memoir’s central chapters Beckwith describes his activities as a writer, university teacher, scholar, and administrator. Then, turning to his creative output, he considers his compositions for instrumental music, his four operas, choral music, and music for voice. A final chapter touches on his personal and family life and his travel adventures.
For over sixty years John Beckwith has participated in national musical initiatives in music education, promotion, and publishing. He has worked closely with performing groups such as the Orford Quartet and the Canadian Brass and conductors such as Elmer Iseler and Georg Tintner. A former reviewer for the Toronto Star and a CBC script writer and programmer in the 1950s and ’60s, he later produced many articles and books on musical topics. Acting under Robert Gill and Dora Mavor Moore in student days and married for twenty years to actor/director Pamela Terry, he witnessed first-hand the growth of Toronto theatre. He has collaborated with the writers Jay Macpherson, Margaret Atwood, Dennis Lee, and bpNichol, and teamed repeatedly with James Reaney, a close friend. His life story is a slice of Canadian cultural history.
About John Beckwith
In his sixty-year career, John Beckwith has drawn attention with performances, broadcasts, and recordings of his more than 150 compositions and with his critical and research writings on personalities and issues of Canadian music past and present. Associated from 1952 to 1990 with the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, he was a witness of, and often a participant in, “the excitement of new creative directions in theatre, painting, and music” (as he once put it) of late-twentieth-century Canada. John Beckwith is a member of the Order of Canada and holds honorary doctorates from five universities.
Reviews
“Beckwith describes his life in prose packed with ... rich detail.... As a history of his times, it is fascinating. As a portrait of a creative mind, it is awe-inspiring.... Maybe his passion for getting things right makes it easier to tolerate his ‘bossiness’ or his ‘naturally bitchy personality.’ Maybe not. The reader can’t know. But the reader can know something of the mind of an extraordinary man leading a remarkable life, and loving it.”
— E.A. Breen, The Music Times
“In this fascinating personal and professional odyssey, John Beckwith delivers rich cultural history, opening a wide window on Canadian musical and educational institutions of the mid-to-late twentieth century. The book’s wryly modest title reflects its author’s gentle wit, but don’t be misled: Unheard Of chronicles a life of high professional visibility and intellectual engagement.”
— Carol J. Oja, Department of Music, Harvard University
“Throughout his career, Beckwith’s writings have been marked by his outspokenness—what he himself calls his ‘habitual critical bitchiness.’ But here, though he is uncommonly candid about his own shortcomings and outright failures, he is surprisingly tolerant of the shortcomings of others.... The extensive endnotes, index, and score excerpts all contribute to the considerable pleasure of reading this beautifully-written memoir. The collection of photos includes a terrific ad from 1968 for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. It features a photo of a Volkswagon Beetle, and reads, ‘The bug and John Beckwith.’ By the end of this memoir Beckwith is ready to admit that he does, perhaps, exaggerate his obscurity. ‘Unheard Of’?—hardly. ‘Unheard’—undoubtedly; though what Canadian composer feels otherwise? ‘Essential’ would be more like it.”
— Pamela Margles, The WholeNote
“With clarity, grace, and wit, Beckwith chronicles the astounding breadth and passion of his life as a composer, performer, writer, historian, journalist, teacher, and administrator. His collaborations, friendships, and tiffs with colleagues; his private life in both sweetness and sorrow; the genesis of his unique musical language: all are recounted with unaffected candour. What remains is his enthusiasm and sense of adventure as one of Canada’s musical pioneers.”
— James Rolfe, composer, past president, Canadian League of Composers
Related interest
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
Related link
Press Release for Toronto Operetta Theatre production of TAPTOO