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298 pages

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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.

Sujets

Life writing

Cultural Studies

Music

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Publié par	Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Date de parution	01 avril 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781554583850
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0030€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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UNHEARD OF
LIFE WRITING SERIES
In the Life Writing Series , Wilfrid Laurier University Press publishes life writing and new life-writing criticism and theory in order to promote autobiographical accounts, diaries, letters, and testimonials written and/or told by women and men whose political, literary, or philosophical purposes are central to their lives. The Series features accounts written in English, or translated into English from French or the languages of the First Nations, or any of the languages of immigration to Canada.
From its inception, Life Writing has aimed to foreground the stories of those who may never have imagined themselves as writers or as people with lives worthy of being (re)told. Its readership has expanded to include scholars, youth, and avid general readers both in Canada and abroad. The Series hopes to continue its work as a leading publisher of life writing of all kinds, as an imprint that aims for both broad representation and scholarly excellence, and as a tool for both historical and autobiographical research.
As its mandate stipulates, the Series privileges those individuals and communities whose stories may not, under normal circumstances, find a welcoming home with a publisher. Life Writing also publishes original theoretical investigations about life writing, as long as they are not limited to one author or text.
Series Editor Marlene Kadar Humanities Division, York University
Manuscripts to be sent to Lisa Quinn, Acquisitions Editor Wilfrid Laurier University Press 75 University Avenue West Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5
John Beckwith
UNHEARDOF Memoirs of a CanadianComposer
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Beckwith, John, 1927- Unheard of: memoirs of a Canadian composer / John Beckwith.
(Life writing series) Includes a list of compositions. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued also in electronic formats. ISBN 978-1-55458-358-4
1. Beckwith, John, 1927-. 2. Composers-Canada-Biography. I. Title. II. Series: Life writing series
ML 410.B397A3 2012 780.92 C2011-905721-2
Electronic monograph. Issued also in print format. ISBN 978-1-55458-398-0 ( PDF ).- ISBN 978-1-55458-385-0 ( EPUB )
1. Beckwith, John, 1927-. 2. Composers-Canada-Biography. I. Title. II. Series: Life writing series (Online)
ML 410.B397A3 2012a 780.92 C2011-905722-0
Cover design by Sandra Friesen. Cover photo, by Andr Leduc, shows John Beckwith in rehearsal, Walter Hall, Toronto, September 2010. Text design by Catharine Bonas-Taylor. Endpapers reproduce pages 47 and 48 from the manuscript score of Circle, with Tangents , for harpsichord and thirteen strings (1967).
2012 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada www.wlupress.wlu.ca
This book is printed on FSC recycled paper and is certified Ecologo. It is made from 100% post-consumer fibre, processed chlorine free, and manufactured using biogas energy. Printed in Canada
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Music Examples
LIFE, PART 1
1. Father
2. Mother
3. Victoria: Childhood and Adolescence
STUDIES
4. Toronto: Youth
5. Composing
6. Paris
CAREER
7. Writing
8. Academia
9. Politics
COMPOSITIONS
10. For Instruments (1)
11. For Instruments (2)
12. Operas
13. Choirs
14. For Voice(s)
LIFE, PART 2
15. Full Length

Notes
Acknowledgements
Recordings and Scores
Index
List of Illustrations
Great-grandparents Beckwith
Great-grandfather McLeod
The Beckwith family, Victoria, circa 1895
Grandad Beckwith
Dad (a) aged ten, (b) the McGill graduate, 1911, (c) the lawyer, Victoria, circa 1940
Dad in the mid-1950s
The Dunn family, Victoria, circa 1909
Gran Dunn
My parents wedding, 1922
Mother, the school trustee, 1943
Mother in 1971
The Beckwith family, Victoria, circa 1931
With Gwendoline Harper, circa 1945
The high-school newspaper co-editor
Pastel by Peggy Walton, 1944
Conservatory program, 1946
James Reaney, 1949
Ray Dudley, 1948
With Alberto Guerrero, Vancouver, 1949
Goldberg Variations advertisement, 1950
Toronto delegation to the first Student Composers Symposium, Rochester, 1948
Cover design, Five Lyrics of the T ang Dynasty , 1949
Ms. page, The Great Lakes Suite , 1949
Flyer for CBC Wednesday Night program, 1950
Program, Union interalli e, Paris, May 1951
Program, Gene Gash piano recital, Paris, December 1951
Pamela Terry, Paris, 1950
Program, Maison canadienne, Paris, May 1951
With Pamela Terry in the Tyrol, spring 1952
In front of CBC headquarters, Toronto, 1954
Toronto Star columns, 1962, 1964
Advertisement, Toronto Symphony Orchestra house program, 1968-69 season
Editorial board, Canadian Musical Heritage Society, Ottawa, circa 1990
Cover design, In Search of Alberto Guerrero , 2006
The teacher, University of Toronto, 1980
With John and Helen Weinzweig, 1974
Canadian League of Composers annual general meeting, Toronto, 1955
Ten Centuries Concerts program cover designs, early 1960s
The faculty dean, circa 1972
Addressing a meeting of teachers, 1975
Deans, Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, 1970-2000
Page from the score of Taking a Stand , 1972
Page 1 , ms. score of Quartet, 1977
Ms. page, Keyboard Practice , 1979
Rehearsing Keyboard Practice , 1979
Robert Aitken rehearsing A Concert of Myths with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, 1996
Ms. page, tude no. 3, 1983
Ms. page, Round and Round , 1992
Analytical chart, Round and Round
Title-pages, After-images, After Webern (1993), Blurred Lines (1997), Ringaround (1998)
Title page, Night Blooming Cereus (1958)
The Shivaree , 1982: Caralyn Tomlin and Avo Kittask; Patricia Rideout
Fabric hangings by Kathleen McMorrow for The Shivaree , 1979
With James Reaney, Banff, 1988
Crazy to Kill , 1989: Paul Massel, Jean Stilwell, doll puppets by Anna Wagner-Ott
Flyer for Taptoo! , Toronto, 2003
Cover image, Jonah , 1963
Co-conducting Place of Meeting with Elmer Iseler, Toronto, 1967
Ms. page, Mating Time , 1982
Chart, Mating Time , 1982
Ms. page, Harp of David , 1985
CD cover photo, with Doug MacNaughton and William Aide, 2007
Title-page, Avowals , 1985
Performing Synthetic Trios with Peter Stoll and Teri Dunn, 2010
The Beckwith family, Toronto, 1957
Pamela Terry, the director, circa 1960
Robin Beckwith, circa 1980
Jonathan Beckwith, 2002
Symon Beckwith, 1993
With Lawrence (Larry) Beckwith, circa 1995
With Kathleen McMorrow, cycling tour, 1984
Kathleen McMorrow, circa 2000
Cycling-tour map, France, 2006
With Kathleen McMorrow, 2010
List of Music Examples
Example 1: Montage , 1953
Example 2: (a) Flower Variations , 1962; (b) The Mother of Us All (Thomson)
Example 3: (a) Concertino, 1963; (b) Horn Concerto, K447 (Mozart)
Example 4: Circle, with Tangents , 1967
Example 5: Eureka , 1996: (a) basic set, two versions; (b) corollaries
Example 6: Phrase from Crazy to Kill , 1988, quoted in Back to Bolivia , 2006
Example 7: Variations for string orchestra, 2011
Example 8: Song of the shivareers, The Shivaree , 1978
LIFE, PART 1
1 Father
The surname Beckwith is Anglo-Saxon, and it means beechwood. My father s branch of the family traces back to the emigration of Samuel Beckwith from his birthplace, Pontefract in Yorkshire, to the area near New London, Connecticut, in 1638. His is the first of twenty-five alphabetically listed names of land grantees in the village of Lyme (now Old Lyme), Connecticut. After he died in 1680 or 81, his children and grandchildren continued to live and work in the area. There is a Beckwith Lane and a Beckwith Hill in Old Lyme, and the name was still to be seen on a few rural mailboxes when my son Lawrence and I visited in 1977. Samuel s great -grandson John, born at Lyme, seventh son of James Beckwith, emigrated in 1760 (at the mature age of forty-seven) with his wife Jane and their children to Cornwallis, Nova Scotia. He was among the New Englanders who benefited from the cheap settlement offers made by the British on the expulsion of the Acadians at that period. Thus, I may be described as a descendant of Nova Scotia Yankees. An opportunist rather than a loyalist, this John may have been a prototypical Canadian survivor : he died in Cornwallis in 1810, aged ninety-seven.
Other John Beckwiths in the family include his son, his great-great-grandson, and his great-great-great-grandson; the last two were respectively my great-grandfather, J