Volume 9 Issue 3 - November 2003

A great Bookstore ... now with Music!
GREAT ~OOK.S • GREAT Ml:JSfC
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WANTED: Composer
for Open.ing Night 2004!
"New Creations" Competition for Young Composers
• Open to composers residing in Ontario, up to
the age of 35 as of September 2004
'• Composers must be.Canadian citizens or
Permanent Residents
• Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2004
Music Director Designate Peter Oundjian is inviting
young Canadian composers residing in Ontario to
submit a work for possible inclusion in the opening
concert of his first season as Music Director of the
Toronto Symphony Orchestra ·(2004/2005).
Scores will be judged by Peter Oundjian.
\
, For details and application information,
visit www.tso.ca or call 416.593~776'9,
ext. 382.
BATTLER FOR BRITTEN
. A mere year and a half after'his third
major choral festival in Toronto,
"The Joy of Singing within the Noise
of the World," the ninety-five year
old Nicholas Goldschmidt has masterminded
"Benjamin Britten: A
Celebration" in honour of the composer's
ninetieth birthday. The event
provides us with an opportunity not
only t0 assess or re-assess Britten's
contribution to music in the Twentieth
Century, but also to examine our
own ideas of what a composer could
or should be, of "modernity"· or
"contemporariness" in music, and the
place of art in life.
The Oxford Dictionary of Music
says of Britten: "Few composers
have caught the public's imagination
in their lifetime as vividly as did
Britten; each new work was eagerly
awaited and absorbed." In 1964 he
was honoured with the first Aspen
Award, which was established the
year before' to honour "the individual
anywhere in the world judged to
have made the greatest contribution
to the advancement of the humanities."
In 1976 he was honoured by
being awarded a life peerage. He
wrote music for the greatest performers
of his time, including Rostropov
ich, Vishnevskaya, Fischer-
. Dieskau, Janet Baker' and Peter Pears
and in his visits to the Soviet Union
became, a friend of Shostakovich,
who dedicated his Fourteenth Symphony
to him.
What perhaps makes these extraordinary
accomplishments all the more
remarkable is that his music was tonal
and therefore stylistically out of the
mainstream.' Retired Dean of Music
at the University of Toronto,. Carl
Morey, who will be giving lectures
on "Britten and the Crisis in Tradition"
as part of the festival, told me
that in 1945- French composer 01-
•ivier Messiaen called Britten brave
for writing tonal music. One of the
problems for post-romantic composers
from Britten's day up to the
present time, Professor Morey told
me, is whether to stay within the
parameters of a tradition considered
moribund and thus rejected by many
composers, or to follow the lead of
those who had broken with the tradition
- in Britten's day Stravinsky
and Schoenberg.
It was Britten's decision to write
tonal music; and, according to Morey,
to work within strict traditional
musical forms. While this may have
QUODLIBET
by Allan Pulker
Benjamin Britten 1975
been courageous it was ultimately a
decision to be true to himself. He
addressed this issue in his acceptance
speech for the Aspen Award:
"There are many dangers which
hedge round the unfortunate composer:
pressure groups which demand
true proletarian music, snobs
who demand the latest avant-garde
tricks ... . [who] may makethe ... composer
self-conscious, .and instead of
writing his own music ... which
springs naturally from his gift and
personality, he may be frightened into
writing pretentious nonsense or deliberate
obscurity." While this decision
resulted in Britten's music never
being highly valued by musical
academia, it did result in music that
audiences were eager to hear.
It is music which, 27 years after
his untimely death, still speaks to
those who hear it. "Benjamin Britten:
A Celebration" will give people
in Southern Ontario many opportunities
to hear some of Britten's greatest
works. The War Requiem,
Noye's F,ludde, The Prodigal Son
and concerts of his solo voice and
chamber music in Toronto, London,
Waterloo, Guelph and Goderich.
Also veiy much in the spirit of
Britten, the festival has commissioned
Canadian composer, Gary
Kulesha, to write a work for the
event. "I believe," wrote Kulesha,
"that the best way for a contemporary
Canadian composer to celebrate
Britten is to be true to the ideals that
he established. Britten often spoke
and wrote about the relationship between
technique and expression, and
articulated a paradigm which perfectly
suits my own beliefs: technique must
be elegant, polished, and detailed,
but subservient to expression."
You can hear the paradigm in action
when Kulesha's Variations on
CONTINUES ON PAGE 16
NOVEMBER 1 - DECEMBER 7 2003