Volume 24 Issue 4 - December 2018 / January 2019

ANNIVERSARIES
University
of Toronto
Faculty
of Music
Reaches
100 D AV ID PERLMAN
”
A hundred years from what exactly?
“we ask, searching for clues.
Our host is Robin Elliott, Professor of
Musicology and Jean A. Chalmers Chair of
Canadian Music at the University of Toronto
Faculty of Music. We (WholeNote managing
editor Paul Ennis and I) are sitting in Elliott’s
office on the western flank of the Edward
Johnson Building (the faculty’s home base
since 1962) overlooking Philosopher’s Walk,
a meandering path which, at least in theory,
connects the U of T Faculty of Music to the
Royal Conservatory of Music, a couple of
hundred metres (or yards as the Faculty’s
founders would have called them) to the
north. Reason for our visit is to find out more
about the Faculty’s proclamation of 2018/19
as its 100th anniversary.
“Aha!” says Elliott. “Good question. A hundred years from the date
of the first faculty council meeting. In June 1918, the U of T actually
decided to set up a faculty of music. Prior to that there had been music
degrees awarded at the university, dating back to the middle of the
19th century, but those were offered by examination only, there was
no instruction in music given in the University of Toronto. So I guess
it’s the 100th anniversary of music instruction in the university.”
And the specific impetus for the decision? “Post-World War One?”
Elliott replies, although it sounds more like a question than an answer.
“Restructuring of cultural life in Canada, I suppose, and at the university?
There was a number of mostly British organists around that had
an interest in setting up shop at U of T, so they met together with the
university president, over at University College – June 1918.”
There were no courses offered by the new faculty, at the start and
for a good while after that. “What they offered were set lectures that
may or may not have been helpful in writing the exams for getting
a degree. But gradually in the course of the 1930s and 40s it shifted
towards a more familiar kind of course-based instruction. You could
take a course rather than just attend lectures. Smaller groups. And you
registered at the university rather than just paying a fee.”
Composer and teacher John Beckwith has spent a large part of his
working life associated with the U of T Faculty of Music, including
attending as a student in the years between the two World Wars, a
subject he addressed in a series of two lectures at Walter Hall, bracketing
the Faculty’s 75th anniversary in 1993, and subsequently gathered
into a small book called Music at Toronto: A Personal Account.
“Taking a bachelor’s degree in music at Toronto in the 30s and
40s was as thoroughly English an experience as could be found
anywhere in Canadian university life of the period,” Beckwith writes.
“Thursdays you went in threes and fours to Healey Willan, who blew
pipe smoke at you, told witty anecdotes about English notables of the
turn of the century and called you ‘old man.’ Mondays you went in
similar small convoys to Leo Smith, who stroked his white pencil-line
moustache, caressed the piano keys, and called you ‘dear boy’.”
8 | December 2018 - January 2019 thewholenote.com