John Weinzweig Research Articles

Brian Cherney as Scholar and Creative Artist

While best known as a composer, Cherney has also been active in music scholarship. His doctoral thesis in musicology was on German music criticism during the Weimar era, but in his later career he has made important and timely interventions into Canadian music studies. Among his publications are articles on John Weinzweig and Pierre Mercure, as well as a monograph on Harry Somers, who is the subject of his ongoing research. His course on Canadian music at McGill University has introduced many students to the serious study and understanding of composed music in Canada. This article considers Cherney’s music scholarship and speculates on how this work may have had an impact upon his creative activities as a composer.

Writing for CBC Wartime Radio Drama: John Weinzweig, Socialism, and the Twelve-Tone Dilemma

Radio drama was a quintessential source of entertainment for Canadian audiences during the Second World War, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) used the art form to distribute propaganda and garner support for the Canadian war effort. Similarly, CBC radio drama became an essential artistic outlet for artists and composers to articulate their political beliefs to a national audience. This article frames Canadian composer John Weinzweig’s works for the CBC radio drama series New Homes for Old (1941) within the socio-political climate of the 1930s and 1940s and suggests that radio drama provided Weinzweig with a national soapbox for his radical socialist ideals during a time of political upheaval. My research draws on archival materials from Library and Archives Canada, the CBC Music Library Archives, and Concordia’s Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism Studies to build upon the biographical work of Elaine Keillor and Brian Cherney. I establish Weinzweig’s socialist ties and argue that his political leanings prompted him to simplify his serial language in favour of a simplified modernist aesthetic, which appealed to Canada’s conservative wartime audiences. This study of Weinzweig’s radio works reveals how the composer desired to make serial compositions accessible and palatable, and shows how he incorporated vernacular idioms such as folk songs and national anthems as foils to the elitist European serial aesthetic. In doing so, I show how Weinzweig uses a powerful and pervasive medium to promote his unique compositional style and also to reflect the cultural, political, and aesthetic ideals of leftist socialism.

Radical Socialism, Simplified Serialism: John Weinzweig and CBC Wartime Radio Drama during the Second World War

Radio drama was a quintessential source of entertainment for Canadian audiences during the Second World War, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) used the art form to distribute propaganda and garner support for the Canadian war effort. Similarly, radio drama became an essential artistic outlet for artists and composers to articulate their political beliefs to a national audience. This article frames Canadian composer John Weinzweig’s works for the CBC radio drama seriesNew Homes for Old(1941) in light of Canada’s wartime socio-political climate and the rise of the Popular Front movement during the 1930s, and suggests that radio drama provided Weinzweig with a national soapbox for his radical socialist ideals during a time of political upheaval.Drawing upon archival materials from Library and Archives Canada, the CBC Music Library Archives, and Concordia University’s Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism Studies, this article builds upon the biographical work of Udo Kasemets (1960), Elaine Keillor (1994), and Brian Cherney (2011). It establishes Weinzweig’s socialist ties and argues that his political leanings prompted him to simplify his serial language in favour of a simplified modernist aesthetic which appealed to Canada’s conservative wartime audiences. Specifically, this study of Weinzweig’s radio works reveals how the composer desired to make serial compositions accessible and palatable, and shows how he incorporated vernacular idioms such as folk songs and national anthems as foils to the elitist European serial aesthetic. Finally, this article demonstrates how Weinzweig, in incorporating these devices, uses a powerful and pervasive medium to promote his unique compositional style and reveals how his simplified serial aesthetic reflects the cultural, political, and aesthetic ideals of leftist socialism and the Popular Front.

Perspectives on the Late Piano Music of Oskar Morawetz and John Weinzweig

Oskar Morawetz and John Weinzweig were colleagues of Carl Morey at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. Each composed considerable piano music throughout his compositional career. In this article, the author examines the late piano compositions of Morawetz and Weinzweig, comparing approaches to the instrument, and how those approaches were reflected musically in this group of late compositions. Because Morawetz based his approach on the late Romantic piano compositions with which he was familiar, pianists do not encounter extended techniques in his works. Weinzweig, on the other hand, makes new demands upon the performer to bring across his “disparate gestic/phonetic shapes.”

Neglected Canadian Orchestral Music

This article examines neglected orchestral works by six Canadian composers: Rodolphe Mathieu, Colin McPhee, John Weinzweig, Harry Somers, Istvan Anhalt, and R. Murray Schafer. Despite the considerable professional accomplishments and career achievements of these composers, each has at least one orchestral work in his catalogue that failed to make a good impression with the musical public or has never been heard in live performance. The article attempts to find why these compositions did not win a place in the repertoire and also considers how these works illustrate broader issues relating to the Canadian orchestral repertoire.

A “League Against Willan”? The Early Years of the Canadian League of Composers, 1951–1960

AbstractThe founders of the Canadian League of Composers were young modernists who resented the conservative musical climate in Canada epitomized by the traditional British style of Canada's most famous composer, Healey Willan. In their first decade (1951–60), during which their membership grew from eight to more than forty and they presented dozens of concerts of new Canadian music, they struggled to find a balance between two competing goals: championing the cause of all Canadian composers, regardless of style, and promoting modern and avant-garde styles, which had been virtually ignored by the older Canadian musical establishment. This article probes how those tensions played out in two of the league's early activities: membership decisions and concert programming. Although the league did admit composers and feature works representing a wide variety of stylistic influences, its membership and concerts were nonetheless dominated by younger composers interested in modern styles, especially the group of composers in John Weinzweig's circle in Toronto. The group earned a reputation as young radicals because of their modernistic programming choices and a controversial policy that limited membership to composers younger than sixty. Although its members may not have been entirely successful in their efforts at inclusivity, the league's ground-breaking activities in the 1950s did help to establish a place for composition generally and musical modernism in particular in the postwar Canadian cultural landscape.

John Weinzweig and His Music: The Radical Romantic of Canada

John Weinzweig and His Music: The Radical Romantic of Canada

John Weinzweig and His Music: The Radical Romantic of Canada

John Weinzweig and His Music: The Radical Romantic of Canada

John Weinzweig and his music: the radical romantic of Canada

John Weinzweig and his music: the radical romantic of Canada

“What Happened to Ravel’s Bolero?”: Weinzweig’s Serialism

WHAT HAPPENED TO RAVEL’S BOLERO?” : WEINZWEIG’S SERIALISM S.R . M A C G IL L IV R A Y A N D N O R EE N IVAN CIC Lakehead University I f all art constantly aspires to the condition of music, as Pater assures us is the case (140), it is somewhat surprising that there have not been more discussions of the structural relationships between musical compositions and works of literature. E.K. Brown’s examination of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India and Helen Gardner’s of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets are two notable exceptions that help to prove the rule. In Canadian studies particularly there has been a dearth of such enquiries. The point is not made with reference to works that have a musician as hero or heroine, such as Robertson Davies’s A Mixture of Frailties, or to works that may include pieces of actual music, such as William Kirby’s The Golden Dog, or to works of literature, usually poetry, that have been given musical settings,1 but rather with reference to those works of literature the structure of which can be profitably examined in musical terms, not just to prove the correctness of Pater’s assertion, but in order to discover new means by which to appreciate the literature and the artistry of the writer willing to challenge conventional modes of expression. Two examinations of some of D.C. Scott’s poetry published in recent years (Roberts; Kilpatrick) indicate a number of the rewards to be derived from such an approach. But these studies also suggest that a good deal more can be done, not only with Scott, himself a noted amateur musician, but also with other writers who have had training in music (among Canadian writers E.J. Pratt, Earle Birney, and Robert Finch come immediately to mind), or whose writing gives clear evidence of a musical influence. Such a writer is Helen Weinzweig, author of two novels, Passing Ceremony (1973) and Basic Black with Pearls (1980), and a number of short stories, most of which have appeared in the recently published A View from the Roof (1989). She has been married since 1940 (Such 15) to John Weinzweig, the man called by the Toronto Star “the Dean of Canadian Composers” (Littler G3), for whom she has been a patient, sympathetic, supportive, but not exclusively uncritical listener (Such 18). The close relationship, both personal and artistic, has had an almost in­ evitable effect, to the good, as it turns out, for Weinzweig’s career as a professional writer. “I don’t understand myself how I started writing in a manner that turned out to be professional from the beginning,” she told inEnglish Stu d ies in Ca n a d a , x v ii, 2 , June 19 9 1 terviewer Nancy Bauer. “My husband is a composer, and in being part of his career, I did do lots of absorbing of the creative process by osmosis” (Bauer 12; Such 18). The point here, however, is not whatever effect her composer husband’s work has had on the astonishing maturity of Weinzweig’s prose (even from the first published story there is virtually nothing that can be pointed out to as ‘prentice work), but rather the shaping effect that John Weinzweig’s interest in experimental composition has had in sparking her own interest in the composition of some of her own work. Since 1938 John Weinzweig has been vitally interested in Arnold Schoen­ berg’s twelve-tone technique and the variations that can be worked on it. Twelve-tone’s abandonment of the classic diatonic scale seemed to offer free­ dom from a stale and outmoded conventionality and to provide the means to an expressiveness of mood needed by a modern composer writing for a mod­ ern age and its audience. “I listened to a recording of Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite in the music library of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where I w eis taking my Meister’s degree,” John Weinzweig told an interviewer, “. . .and. . .1 heard music that w eis essentially very dramatic and highly expressive. I was so moved...

Elaine Keillor, ed. The Canadian Musical Heritage - Le Patrimoine musical canadien. Vol. 6. Piano Music II. Ottawa: Canadian Musical Heritage Society, 1986. 282 pp. ISBN 0-919883-0709

Elaine Keillor, ed. The Canadian Musical Heritage - Le Patrimoine musical canadien. Vol. 6. Piano Music II. Ottawa: Canadian Musical Heritage Society, 1986. 282 pp. ISBN 0-919883-0709. Un article de la revue Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes (Volume 11, numéro 2, 1991, p. 1-164) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

The Founding of CAUSM: A Personal Recollection

Dear friends: I have been asked by our [CUMS] President, Dr. Philip Adamson, to talk about the beginnings of our Society, or rather of our parent organization CAUSM, the Canadian Association of University Schools of Music. He has given me about fifteen minutes for a crash course in this chapter of Canadian music history, so here goes. The story begins wim the Canada Council and House. To avoid any misunderstanding, let me just say that House is not the place where the Holy Grail of Canadian hockey, the Cup, is being kept. Still, the name Stanley does represent a tenuous link between hockey and the arts. It was Lord Stanley, the sixth Governor-General of Canada, who donated the famous hockey cup in 1893. House was the summer retreat he had built for himself a few years earlier at New Richmond, on the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec. It was also the place where the plans for the creation of CAUSM hatched in 1963 and '64. Having been donated by its French-Canadian owner to the Canada Council in 1961, this beautiful property overlooking the Baie des Chaleurs opposite the coast of New Brunswick, became a unique contribution to the cultural life of Canada. To quote from the publicity given out at the time, the Council had decided ... to make of House a select meeting place for artists and scholars, away from the noise and distractions of the city, to think and exchange ideas with others in their fields, or with representatives of other disciplines, in a setting conducive to talk and discussion. The Council wished to encourage as free an expression of views and ideas as possible and to reduce formalities to a minimum. Programmes were to be kept flexible, and participants should have leisure time between working sessions and discussions, to establish and strengthen lasting bonds of friendship and collaboration. It was the late Peter Dwyer, then the Council's Assistant Director for the Arts, who organized the first summer meeting of musicians at House in 1963. I was one of those lucky enough to be invited by the Council to that first music conference. There were only a few of us, less than a dozen. After all, the house wasn't big enough to accommodate a crowd. Those present, according to a couple of photographs I kept, included: Lou Applebaum, at that time Music Consultant to CBC TV; Eugene Hallman, who was then CBC Programme Director; the late Roy Royal, Music Director of the CBCs International Service; the late John Adaskin (brother of Harry and Murray), who was at that time executive Secretary of the Canadian Music Centre; Roland Leduc, directeurgeneral du Conservatoire de Musique et d 'Art dramatique de Quebec; composers John Weinzweig, Gabriel Charpentier and Francois Morel, as well as a bright young man whom I tentatively identified on the photo as Kenneth Winters, then art and music critic of the Winnipeg Free Press. There may have been a few more, but if so, they were enjoying leisure time - or enjoying a swim - while the photos were taken. We did have an informaragenda (topics to be discussed) under six main headings: Broadcasting, Music Education, Recording and Publication, the other Performing Arts (Opera, Theatre, Ballet), Subsidies and Community Support, and Miscellaneous (meaning, as always, everything else that bears on the above). In looking over the concerns of our little group of almost thirty years ago, I am impressed how topical they still are. This is not to say that nothing was done about them. On the contrary. Indeed, something is being done about them all the time. For the problems we confronted then continue to arise anew in a growing society, and each generation faces the challenge of dealing with them according to changing circumstances and new insights. To illustrate the point let me quote some of the topics we discussed in 1963: - The need to relate new musical output more closely to its practical use in society. …

John Beckwith and Frederick Hall, eds., Musical Canada: Words and Music Honouring Helmut Kallmann. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988, 369 pp.

John Beckwith and Frederick Hall, eds., Musical Canada: Words and Music Honouring Helmut Kallmann. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988, 369 pp.. Un article de la revue Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes (Volume 9, numéro 2, 1989, p. 1-161) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

REVIEWS OF MUSIC

Journal Article REVIEWS OF MUSIC Get access Festival March. By William Alwyn Miniature Score. ( Lengnick. 3s. 6d.) Marche Caprice and Summer Evening. By Frederick Delius Miniature scores. ( Joseph Williams. 3s. each.) Divertimento I, for Flute and Strings, and Divertimento II for Oboe and Strings. By John Weinzweig Reduction for Solo and Piano by Harold Perry ( Boosey and Hawkes. 5s. each.) Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. By Federico Elizalde Arranged for Violin and Piano. ( Chester. 12s. 6d.) I. K. I. K. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Music and Letters, Volume XXXII, Issue 4, October 1951, Pages 390–391, https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/XXXII.4.390 Published: 01 October 1951