Canada.

Country in North America. It is bounded to the north by the Arctic ocean, to the west by the Pacific and to the east by the Atlantic; the only land borders it shares are with the USA, on the south and between Yukon and Alaska in the north-west. Although it occupies almost 10,000,000 km², the vast majority of the population of 30·68 million (2000 estimate) live within 160 km of the Canada–US border. The first permanent settlements were established by the French in the early 17th century.

CARL MOREY (I), GORDON E. SMITH (II, 1, 3(i), 6), ELAINE KEILLOR (II, 2, 4–5), JAY RAHN (II, 3(ii)), GEOFFREY WHITTALL (II, 3(iii)), ROB BOWMAN (III)

Canada

I. Art music

1. Early historical background.

2. Choral, orchestral, band and chamber music.

3. Opera.

4. Education.

5. Composition.

6. Instrument making, music publishing.

7. Broadcasting.

Canada, §I: Art music

1. Early historical background.

In the French colonies during the 17th century music was almost exclusively religious, associated either with the liturgy or with the conversion of the Amerindian peoples, whose attraction to European music was often noted by missionaries. In 1635 Father Le Jeune (1591–1664) began teaching elementary music, as did members of the Ursuline order after 1639, and 17th-century chronicles frequently refer to devotional singing and viol playing. The first indigenous practitioners of European music appear to have been the explorer Louis Jolliet (1645–1700) and Charles-Amador Martin (1648–1711). An organ, the first in North America, was in use in Quebec by 1661. Little record of secular music survives. An exception is the masque with music, Le théâtre de Neptune, written by Marc Lescarbot at Port Royal in 1605. Despite the censure of religious authorities, balls took place, and colonial administrators often brought music and instruments for personal use. An inventory made in 1728 of the possessions of the Intendant Claude-Thomas Dupuy includes most of the operas of Lully, as well as music by Campra and Clérambault. Materials in Quebec archives indicate that a good deal of French music and many books on music arrived in New France in the early 18th century.

Colonial life until the mid-18th century was conditioned by two ambitions: religious conversion and the development of the fur trade. Neither of these was conducive to the establishment of settled communities, and security was further disrupted by constant struggles between England and France. These problems were largely resolved by the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (1759), which secured British supremacy and brought a new measure of stability to the colonies. Thousands of loyalists migrated from the USA after the American Revolution (1776), of whom many were educated and came to make permanent settlements. A few German immigrants significantly helped the growth of music.

By the end of the 18th century the principal towns of Quebec, Montreal and Halifax had considerable musical life. In February 1770 the Quebec Gazette advertised ‘Gentlemen’s Subscription Concerts’. In Montreal there were performances of Shield’s The Poor Soldier (1787), Egidio Duni’s Les deux chasseurs et la laitière (1789) and other operatic works. Joseph Quesnel, J.-C. Brauneis and Guillaume Mechtler were prominent composers and teachers, and in Quebec, Frederick Glackemeyer was active as a teacher and dealer in music and instruments. In Halifax there were sufficient resources in 1789 to perform the final chorus of Handel’s Messiah and one of his coronation anthems, and Dibdin’s The Padlock was performed in 1791. The lawyer Jonathan Sewell (1766–1839) was a skilful and knowledgeable violinist and organized performances of Haydn and Mozart quartets in Quebec in the 1790s.

By the early 19th century musicians had formed a discernible group in Lower Canada (Quebec), and a varied musical life grew up both there and in the newer communities, such as Kingston, Toronto, Hamilton and London, in the predominantly English-speaking province of Upper Canada (Ontario). Communities had their own resident musicians and performing societies; halls and theatres were built; schools were set up; musical trades developed. After the middle of the century, a railway system vastly improved communication among Canadian towns and to centres in the USA. Occasional earlier visitors to Canada, among them John Braham, were soon to be followed by such figures as Thalberg, Patti, Vieuxtemps, Sarasate, Reményi and Anton Rubinstein, musicians who often played in any centre that was on the railway and had a suitable hall. As settlements grew up between the Great Lakes and the Pacific, these patterns of growth recurred in the western provinces.

Canada, §I: Art music

2. Choral, orchestral, band and chamber music.

By the end of the 19th century most Canadian cities had sizable choral societies, which were the principal performing organizations; these included the Sacred Harmonic Choir in Toronto, which gave a complete performance of Messiah in 1857; the Philharmonic Society of Montreal (1875–99) under Guillaume Couture; the New Westminster Choral Union in British Columbia, which presented Messiah and Elijah during the 1880s; the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir (1894) and the Bach–Elgar Choir (1905) in Hamilton. Among the many choirs that originated in the 20th century are the Vancouver Bach Choir (1930), and the Festival Singers (1954–79) and Elmer Iseler Singers (1979).

Orchestral ensembles sometimes existed as adjuncts to choirs, but the first independent orchestras were the Société Symphonique de Québec (1903) and the Toronto SO (1906). As the population increased during the 1930s, and particularly after 1945, every large city had a permanent orchestra, and many amateur and semi-professional orchestras were formed throughout the country. In 1969 an orchestra of about 50 under Mario Bernardi was formed at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. In 1960 the National Youth Orchestra of Canada was formed, conducted by Walter Susskind; each summer about 100 Canadian instrumentalists aged between 14 and 26 assemble for private instruction, chamber music and orchestral playing.

Bands were important in 19th-century Canada; members of regimental bands frequently formed the core of instrumental ensembles in the cities, and community bands and bands sponsored by business firms were prominent in amateur musical life. The earliest military bands were attached to British regiments, but local organizations began early in the 19th century. The band at Sharon, a settlement founded north of Toronto by a religious sect called the Children of Peace, was well known during its heyday in the 1820s. In Quebec, Jean-Chrysostome Brauneis organized a band in 1832; he was the first of several outstanding bandmasters in Quebec province, including Charles Sauvageau (1802–49), Joseph Vézina (1849–1924) and J.J. Gagnier (1885–1949). By 1900 there were many civilian bands throughout the country. Among the oldest still active at the end of the 20th century were those in Newmarket, Ontario (1843), and Nanaimo, British Columbia (1872), as well as several Indian brass bands in British Columbia. Although military bands declined in importance, in 1990 there were still 39 authorized bands of the Reserve Canadian Forces using standard military instrumentation, as well as 23 pipe bands and nine bands in the Regular Forces.

Amateur performances of chamber music are recorded from the late 18th century, but professional ensembles were not formed until the late 19th century. Arthur Lavigne led the Septuor Haydn (1871–1903) in Quebec City. The Dubois Quartette of Montreal (1910–38), the Hart House String Quartet of Toronto (1924–46) and the Orford Quartet (1965–92) were established later. Since the 1960s several chamber groups have been centred on particular regions, frequently in association with the local orchestra and educational authorities.

Interest in historical performance was evident in the 1930s and 40s in Toronto and Montreal. A number of organizations later grew up to perform early music, notably the Manitoba University Consort (1963–70), the Vancouver Society for Early Music (1970), the Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal (1974) and, in Toronto, the Toronto Consort (1972), Tafelmusik (1978) and Opera Atelier (1983).

Canada, §I: Art music

3. Opera.

Grand opera was one of the most popular entertainments during the 19th century. As early as 1798, Grétry’s Richard Coeur de Lion was performed in Halifax, and in the mid-19th century touring opera companies from the USA visited towns from Toronto to Quebec City. Before 1860 audiences were familiar with such operas as Norma, Lucia di Lammermoor, La sonnambula, La traviata, Il trovatore and Der Freischütz. In 1891 the Vancouver Opera House opened with a performance of Lohengrin. Winnipeg inaugurated a new theatre in 1907 with the Canadian première of Madama Butterfly. Edmonton prospered after 1900, largely as a result of the Klondike goldrush, and received its first touring grand opera company in 1909. Despite the enthusiastic reception of opera, the personnel did not exist to sustain local companies, and successes were outnumbered by failed enterprises until well into the 20th century.

Since 1940 opera has been produced in Montreal by the Montreal Opera Guild, the Montreal SO, the Opéra du Québec and, since 1980, the Opéra de Montréal. In Toronto the Canadian Opera Company grew out of the Royal Conservatory Opera Company (1950); though its main productions take place in Toronto, its touring company has visited most parts of the country, as well as many centres in the USA. There are also opera companies in Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Ottawa and Quebec City, and opera has played an important part in the Stratford Festival and the summer activities of the National Arts Centre. The CBC Opera Company was formed in 1948 (see §7 below). Few operas and operettas were composed before the 1950s; those written since then are mostly small in scale, although larger-scale works have been composed by Harry Somers, R. Murray Schafer, Charles Wilson, Raymond Pannell, André Gagnon and Healey Willan.

Canada, §I: Art music

4. Education.

During the 19th century musical instruction was given mainly by private teachers. Specialized institutions were established at the end of the century: the Académie de Musique (Quebec, 1868), the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto, 1886), the Maritime Conservatory (Halifax, 1887) and the McGill Conservatorium (Montreal, 1904). In 1942 Quebec province founded the Conservatoire de Musique et de l’Art Dramatique. The University of Toronto awarded a bachelor of music degree as early as 1846 and set up a music department in 1918, but formal university music courses developed mainly after 1945. In 1965 the Canadian Association of University Schools of Music was formed; by 1995 it had 42 institutional members. Most towns have locally administered music courses in elementary and secondary schools; in 1959 provincial teachers' organizations formed the Canadian Music Educators’ Association.

Private teaching continues to be important, particularly in early training; there are provincial associations of private teachers and a national organization, the Canadian Federation of Music Teachers’ Associations (1935). The Royal Conservatory of Music and the Western Board of Music (1936, operating in association with the provincial universities in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta) set up local examination centres twice yearly throughout the country.

Canada, §I: Art music

5. Composition.

From the end of the 18th century much salon music was written in Canada. Colas et Colinette (1788), Quesnel’s little opéra comique, was exceptional; more representative works of the period were the piano pieces of Sauvageau (1840s) and the songs and anthems of Stephen Codman (c1796–1852) and James Paton Clarke (1808–77). Subsequently larger works were produced, such as the operettas of Joseph Vézina, the opera Torquil (1896) by Charles Harriss, and the oratorios Caïn (1905) by Alexis Contant and Jean le précurseur (1911) by Couture. Several other composers developed refined technical, if conservative skills, such as W.O. Forsyth, or more modernist outlooks, such as Rodolphe Mathieu. In the first half of the 20th century the principal Canadian composers were Claude Champagne and Healey Willan, influential through their teaching activities and through their serious purpose and technical skill.

From the 1940s onwards Canadian composers worked with distinctive voices in the wide variety of styles and media characteristic of the age. The Canadian League of Composers, founded in 1951 with John Weinzweig as president, has presented concerts, awards and scholarships and generally promotes the interests of Canadian composers. Membership grew from 20 in 1952 to about 250 in the 1990s. In 1959 the Canadian Music Centre was set up in Toronto as a service to composers and performers. By 1995 it had a library of some 13,000 published and manuscript scores and parts for circulation throughout Canada and abroad, and a collection of about 4000 recordings of Canadian music. Offices, with libraries, were set up in Montreal (1973), Vancouver (1977) and Calgary (1980).

In the 1950s studios for electronic music opened: the first was the ELMUS laboratory of the National Research Council in Ottawa under Hugh Le Caine; it was followed by the studio at the University of Toronto (1959). Other important studios soon opened: at McGill University (1964) in Montreal, Laval University (1969) in Quebec, the Royal Conservatory (1966) and York University (1970) in Toronto, Simon Fraser University (1963) and the University of British Columbia (1965) in Vancouver. By the 1980s most universities with a professional music faculty had a studio. Further developments including computer applications, of which Gustav Ciamaga was a pioneer at Toronto. A performer-composers' group, the Canadian Electronic Ensemble, was formed in Toronto in 1971 to promote live performances of electronic music.

Canada, §I: Art music

6. Instrument making, music publishing.

Canadian instrument making dates from about 1820, when Richard Coates built a barrel organ with 133 pipes at Toronto. In 1836 Samuel R. Warren opened a successful organ building firm in Montreal. Paul-Olivier Lyonnais (1795–1850) and Augustin Lavallée (1816–1903) built string instruments; however, by far the largest manufacturing trade was in organs, melodeons, harmoniums and pianos. By 1870 about 70 firms and individuals were manufacturing these instruments for domestic and foreign sale; most of these enterprises either amalgamated or went out of business in the period 1914–18 or around 1930. Some, however, continued, notably the piano firm Heintzman & Co. (1860–1986) and the organ builders Casavant Frères (founded 1879).

Many musical import businesses had opened by the mid-19th century, the most notable being A. & S. Nordheimer, founded in Kingston, Ontario, in 1842 but active from 1844 to 1928 in Toronto. They were importers, publishers and, later, piano manufacturers. Whaley, Royce & Co. were founded in 1888, Ed Archambault in 1896.

Le graduel romain (Quebec, 1800) contains the first music printed in Canada. A few items of religious and popular music were printed during the first half of the 19th century, but the printing of sheet music developed substantially only after 1850, with the rise of such publishers as Nordheimer, Adélard, J. Boucher and Henry Prince. Music by local and foreign composers was sometimes included in periodicals, the earliest being L’artiste (Montreal, 1860); many other French and English journals followed, though they rarely lasted long. Two of the most successful were Le passe-temps and Musical Canada (both 1895–1948).

In 1925 the Canadian Performing Rights Society was formed in association with the British and American performing rights organizations. To accommodate increased activity in Canada, this was reorganized in 1947 as the Composers, Authors and Publishers Association of Canada Limited (CAPAC), which gradually became an entirely Canadian organization. In 1940 BMI Canada Limited (Broadcast Music Incorporated) was formed by its parent company in New York to license performing rights of Canadian composers, and this too evolved into a Canadian company. In 1989 the two societies amalgamated as SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada).

Canada, §I: Art music

7. Broadcasting.

A government broadcasting system was inaugurated in 1933, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was established in 1936, since when it has been the most influential single agency for all aspects of Canadian music. On its French and English networks, it carries regular broadcasts from abroad throughout Canada, and virtually all important musical events in Canada are broadcast and often also made available to foreign systems. In 1938 the CBC launched its own series of orchestral concerts and has subsequently maintained broadcasting orchestras, notably in Vancouver (1938), Winnipeg (1947–84) and Quebec City (1954–88). From 1952 to 1964 the CBC SO was maintained in Toronto, chiefly under the direction of Geoffrey Waddington, but with guest conductors and soloists from abroad who made important contributions to performing standards and broadened the repertory, especially of 20th-century music. In 1948 the CBC Opera Company was formed, and during the 1950s it presented Canadian performers in radio productions both of the standard repertory and of works such as Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (1953), Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero (1953), Walton’s Troilus and Cressida (1956) and Janáček’s Jenůfa (1957). Televised opera began in 1953 with Don Giovanni, which was followed by many other productions; there have also been numerous television concerts. In 1966 the CBC became active as a record producer, first for broadcast and since the 1980s commercially. In the private sector, broadcasting has had little direct influence on musical development.

See also Halifax (ii); Montreal; Ottawa; Quebec; Toronto; Vancouver; and Winnipeg.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

general

W.R. MacKenzie: The Quest of the Ballad (Princeton, NJ, 1919)

L. Saminsky: Living Music of the Americas (New York, 1949)

E. Macmillan, ed.: Music in Canada (Toronto, 1955/R)

H. Kallmann: A History of Music in Canada 1534–1914 (Toronto, 1960/R)

G.A. Procter: Old-Time Fiddling in Ontario (Ottawa, 1963)

A. Walter, ed.: Aspects of Music in Canada (Toronto, 1969)

F.A. Hall: ‘Musical Life in Windsor’, Cahiers canadiens de musique/Canada Music Book, no.6 (1973), 110–24

I.L. Bradley: A Selected Bibliography of Musical Canadiana (Vancouver, 1974, 2/1976)

W. Antmann: Music in Canada, 1600–1800, (Cambridge, ON, 1975)

H. Kallmann and S. Willis: ‘Folk-Music-Inspired Composition’, Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, ed. H. Kallmann and others (Toronto, 1992), 481–3

B. Diamond and R. Witmer, eds.: Canadian Music: Issues of Hegemony and Identity (Toronto, 1994)

G. Smith: ‘The Genesis of Ernest Gagnon’s Chansons populaires du Canada, ibid., 221–37

M. Melhuish: Oh What a Feeling: a Vital History of Canadian Music (Kingston, ON, 1996)

art music

Sisters of Sainte-Anne: Dictionnaire biographique des musiciens canadiens, (Lachine, PQ, 1935)

H. Kallmann, ed.: Catalogue of Canadian Composers (Toronto, 1952)

C. Gingras: Musiciennes de chez nous (Montreal, 1955)

W. Amtmann: La vie musicale dans la Nouvelle France (diss., U. of Strasbourg, 1956)

H. Kallmann: ‘A Century of Musical Periodicals in Canada’, Canadian Music Journal, i/1 (1956–7), 37–43; i/2 (1956–7), 25–36

J.E. Robbins, ed.: Ëncyclopedia Canadiana, (Ottawa, 1957–8)

J. McCook: ‘Some Notes on Musical Instruments among the Pioneers of the Canadian West’, Canadian Music Journal, ii/2 (1957–8), 21–4

D. Salisbury: ‘Music in British Columbia outside Vancouver’, Canadian Music Journal, ii/4 (1957–8), 34–44

D. Smith: ‘Music in the Further West a Hundred Years Ago’, ibid., 3

H. Kallmann: ‘From the Archives: Organs and Organ Players in Canada’, Canadian Music Journal, iii/3 (1958–9), 41–7

A Bio-Bibliographical Finding List of Canadian Musicians and Those who have Contributed to Music in Canada, ed. Canadian Music Library Association (Ottawa, 1961)

A. Asselin: Panorama de la musique canadienne (Paris, 1962)

A. Lasalle-Leduc: La vie musicale au Canada français (Quebec, 1964)

Reference Sources for Information on Canadian Composers, ed. Canadian Music Centre (Toronto, 1970)

R.L.Y. Duguay: Musiques du Kébèc (Montreal, 1971)

P. Such: Soundprints: Contemporary Composers (Toronto, 1972)

R. Napier: A Guide to Canada’s Composers (Toronto, 1973)

I.L. Bradley: Twentieth Century Canadian Composers (Victoria, BC, 1977)

Canada

II. Traditional music

1. Introduction.

2. Early accounts.

3. Immigrant traditions.

4. Indigenous adaptations of immigrant traditions.

5. Composition.

6. Research.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Canada, §II: Traditional music

1. Introduction.

Traditional music in Canada encompasses indigenous musics (for which see Amerindian music), folk musics (including that of French, English and other recent immigrant groups; oral and written traditions; vocal and instrumental genres; and music from rural and urban contexts), transplanted Western and non-Western art music traditions and popular music.

References to indigenous and traditional music in reports by explorers, travellers, missionaries, priests and nuns from the 16th to 19th century are of historic value, even when tinged with ethnocentric biases. Early visitors to colonial Canada were particularly struck by the diversity of functions music played in Amerindian societies, as well as by the variety of social and performance contexts of music-making, musical instruments and dancing.

Attempts to convert Amerindians to Christianity in the maritime east coast region and New France (Quebec) often involved music. Many of the religious leaders from France were skilled in music and used music as a means of relating to the people and achieving their goal of conversion to the Roman Catholic faith, believing that native peoples had innate musical instincts. This process at times resulted in the blending of native and non-native musics, as in the singing of hymns.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, newcomers to Canada from France and the British Isles brought their musical, dancing and instrumental traditions, transplanting and cultivating them in their New World setting. Singing and dancing, often accompanied by instruments (see illustration), are an important part of the social history of colonial Canada. French-speaking Canadians in Quebec were major contributors to the folksong discovery movement in the 19th century, with important early collections rooted in the preservationist ideals that dominated much of the traditional music-collecting effort in English-speaking Canada from the turn of the 20th century until the 1950s.

In recent years, demographic patterns and changing processes of urbanization and Westernization have blurred the traditional versus art music boundaries and have diversified and enriched traditional music genres. Searching for ‘authentic’ folk or traditional music is no longer as important as is understanding the contextual processes reflecting the contemporary realities of an ethnically plural Canadian society. Popular music and cultural studies have also added important new dimensions to studies of traditional music in Canada.

Canada, §II: Traditional music

2. Early accounts.

Ever since John Cabot landed in Newfoundland in 1497, accounts by travellers and settlers in Canada have included comments on musical activities that are valuable for providing details of music-making prior to the 20th century and the invention of sound recording. Their observations concerned musical expressions of indigenous peoples, folksong heritage, music of the church, professional touring musicians and music for dancing and in the home.

Except for melodies produced on an end-blown aerophone with an external block, these authors dismissed indigenous music as little more than noise. Before 1850 a few accounts provide valuable information about percussion instruments, dance, participation of women and the contexts of musical rituals. Marc Lescarbot (1609) was the first to transcribe Amerindian music using solfège syllables to notate four songs by the Micmac chief Membertou. As indigenous peoples assimilated more of the musical expressions of the settlers, they either abandoned their traditions or practised them secretly, as when the Canadian government passed ordinances against particular ceremonials in 1884 and 1895.

Until railway building began in 1853, visitors to Canada travelled by boat and heard French songs used to coordinate paddle stokes: ‘They strike off singing a song peculiar to themselves called the Voyageur song: one man takes the lead and all the others join in the chorus’ (Gray, 1809, p.155). Travellers often recognized that some of these voyageur songs had French origins with an added refrain. The songs were often modal and had an ‘unusual minorish’ quality for travellers; the songs were often closely modelled on melodic motifs from France. J.J. Bigsby noted that a whoop or ‘piercing Indian shriek’ finished performances of these songs, even when performed in the parlour and accompanied by piano (1850, p. 119).

In descriptions of music in homes, travellers often remarked on the ability of young women to both milk cows and play competently on the piano or organ and sing (Roper, 1891, p.90). The songs varied considerably and included hymns, psalms, folksongs in French, Gaelic or English, comic ballads, glees, operatic arias, minstrel songs and current popular songs.

Travellers’ accounts often comment on the great love that Canadians had for dance, especially during the long winter months. At formal dances, music would be provided by regimental bands or hired groups of musicians, but most dances were accompanied by fiddles, a jew's harp or other substitute. Lack of specificity by the travellers as to tunes used for round dances, quadrilles, lancers etc. played by fiddlers suggests that the repertories had been passed down orally for country dances, jigs etc. from French, Scottish, English and Irish traditions.

Canada, §II: Traditional music

3. Immigrant traditions.

(i) French.

(ii) British and Irish.

(iii) Other.

(iv) Recent developments.

Canada, §II, 3: Immigrant traditions

(i) French.

The singing of folksongs and the playing of traditional instruments by French settlers in New France and other parts of French-speaking Canada, notably the Acadian regions in the eastern maritime provinces of Canada, was and is an important part of everyday life. In the 17th and 18th centuries, folksongs were brought to Canada by French settlers, many of whom came from rural regions of Normandy and the Loire valley. Music played a central role in people’s lives, serving as entertainment and as a sustaining force in a harsh physical climate.

The first to comment on the rich musical experiences of French-speaking Canada were visitors who made references in their travel reports and diaries to various aspects of music-making (John Bradbury, John MacTaggart, Mrs Jameson, James H. Lanman, John Jeremiah Bigsby and Johann Jeremiah Kohl). Of particular note were the paddling songs of the voyageurs, boatmen who travelled in large canoes between trading centres in Lower and Upper Canada. The romantic image of these adventurers had a particular appeal to European visitors who were impressed by the extent to which song was an integral part of the voyageurs’ work (see §2 above).

In the 19th century, documentation of French folksong in Canada followed European paradigms. Aside from isolated instances, the first collections often contained texts only, following the philological preference of early German, French and British collectors. The Québecois folklorist Conrad Laforte compiled a list of over 40 manuscript and printed collections beginning with Cécile Lagueux (1817) through the numerous college and seminary songbooks of the 1840s–60s in Quebec (1973). Interest in documenting melodies as well as song texts is reflected in the Chansonnier des collèges series; the 1860 edition is the first to contain music. Compiled by teachers, students, nuns and priests, and intended for entertainment and to raise spirits and nationalist pride, these songbooks contain popular songs of the day. Thomas-Étienne Hamel’s Annales musicales du Peti-Cap is a later example of this songbook tradition; the collection contains over 100 texts and melodies collected by Hamel during his tenure at the Petit-Cap seminary and retreat from 1866 to 1908.

As in France, folksong text collecting in Quebec began in 1840 by literary figures and historians with nationalist intentions. Inspired by romantic ideals of the people, folksong became a way to express national and local identity in the 19th century. Believing in the intrinsic value of oral tradition and exalted notions of the folk, French-speaking Canadian writers such as Philippe Aubert de Gaspé, Joseph-Olivier Chauveau and Joseph-Charles Taché followed their French colleagues, notably Châteaubriand, Champfleury, Gérard de Nerval and George Sand, by incorporating song texts into their literary works in order to provide local colour and illustrate ‘peasant’ life. A point of departure between the French and French-language Canadian folksong movements was France’s emphasis on collecting and preserving folksong repertories, while in Canada, Quebec folksong was regarded as a means of forming national identity. Following the 1837–8 rebellion and the Durham Report, which advocated assimilation, French-speaking Canadians turned to their past.

The mid-19th-century nationalist movement in Quebec produced two seminal folksong collections in the 1860s. The first was Hubert LaRue’s ‘Les chansons populaires et historiques du Canada’, published in serial form in the nationalist Quebec City journal Le foyer canadien in 1863 and 1865. As much an essay as a collection of song texts, LaRue’s work provides historical and conceptual discussion of folksong, references to the Instructions (poésie populaires de la France) (Paris, 1854–60) of French folksong collecting, and texts of well-known songs of the day. The lack of music in LaRue’s essay prompted a comment by the French writer Champfleury published in Le foyer canadien (1864). LaRue’s reply (1865) informed Champfleury that a collection with music was being undertaken by a musician colleague, Ernest Gagnon.

Like LaRue’s work, Gagnon’s ‘Les chansons populaires du Canada’ was published serially in six instalments in Le foyer canadien (1865–7). Trained in music in Quebec City, Montreal and Paris, Gagnon (1834–1915) already had a reputation as an organist, composer and promoter of Gregorian chant by the time his song collection was published.

The collection includes textual and musical transcriptions of over 100 songs, some of which Gagnon collected in the field. Gagnon also provided commentary for each song, and a concluding essay in which he examines musical aspects of the repertory. Gagnon’s folksong collection anticipated later developments in ethnomusicology, particularly concerning the goals of musical transcription. His removal of appoggiaturas from the first edition foreshadowed the difference Charles Seeger later distinguished as prescriptive versus descriptive notation. Gagnon also foreshadowed Bartók in his distinction between two types of rhythm – poétique and prosaique – in folksong (Robbins, 1993). Further, Gagnon anticipated a later trend of separating rural and urban song repertories with a view to identifying the ‘authentic’ product and establishing hypotheses on issues of origin. His approach to establishing concordances with contemporaneous French and French-language Canadian sources followed the comparative methodology current in France, and anticipated the theme of text and tune dissemination that has been the focus of a number of folksong studies in the 20th century up to and including Marius Barbeau and Bertrand Bronson. One of the dominant analytical and ideological themes in Gagnon’s work is the hypothesis that there is a link between the modality in the song melodies and that of plainchant. The hypothesis is explained by Gagnon in technical terms taking into account the current theoretical stances of François-Joseph Fétis, Louis Niedermeyer and Joseph d’Ortique. Gagnon’s interpretation is important both in the emergent context of 19th-century ethnic identity and in the context of the current nationalist movement in Quebec.

An important collection at the end of the 19th century was Ernest Myrand’s history of the French cantique de Noël tradition in Quebec (1899). Owing to Gagnon’s influence, French scholars also turned their attention to French-language Canadian song traditions. Julien Tiersot’s settings with accompaniments (1907) and George Doncieux’s study of popular French songs (1904) are noteworthy examples. Interesting, if somewhat contentious, is Abbé F.-X. Burque’s collection (1921) in which the compiler argues in favour of ‘correcting’ what he believed to be inferior musical and textual elements of the folk repertory.

Gagnon’s work was later supplemented by the work of Edouard-Zotique Massicotte (1867–1947), who began collecting in the Montreal region in the 1880s, and by Marius Barbeau (1883–1969), whose long career as a collector and scholar of French folksong began soon after he was hired as an anthropologist by the Geological Survey of Canada. Educated in anthropology, archaeology and ethnology at Oxford and the Sorbonne, Barbeau was inspired initially by his German-born colleague, the anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir, and by George Herzog. In cooperation with Massicotte, Barbeau published transcriptions of Massicotte’s field recordings (1919) and, with Sapir, the landmark Folk Songs of French Canada (1925). Barbeau was largely self-taught and relied on the help of others to provide musical transcriptions of the melodies he collected. The Romancero du Canada (with Marguerite Béclard d’Harcourt, 1937) and the Jongleur Songs of Old Quebec (with Jean Beck, 1962) are two examples. In the latter collection, Barbeau and Beck attempt to establish links between French medieval secular song and the French-language Canadian repertory, an idea also discussed in the collections of Marguerite and Raoul d’Harcourt (1956) and Dominique Gauthier and Roger Matton (1975). Transcriptions of many of Barbeau’s more than 10,000 field recordings appeared in his numerous collections, the largest of which is the four-volume Répertoire de la chanson folklorique française au Canada: le rossignol y chante (1962), and En roulant ma boule and Le roi boit, published posthumously (1982; 1987).

The influence of Barbeau’s work contributed to the establishment of the Archives de Folklore at Laval University in 1944 by Barbeau, Félix-Antoine Savard and Luc Lacourcière, a pupil of Barbeau and director of the archives from its inception until 1975. Studies by instructors and students in the folklore programme at Laval include the song collections of Soeur Marie-Ursule (1951) and Russell Scott Young (1956), the sound recording Acadie et Québec by Roger Matton and the subsequent collection with Dominique Gauthier (1979). The musical analyses of the Young and Matton-Gauthier volumes focus on rhythmic elements in the song repertory. Expanding on the work of French scholars, two studies by Lacourcière and Barbeau included textual variants and musical versions of songs in an attempt to recreate a song’s original version. Inspired by this work, Laforte began developing the Catalogue de la chanson folklorique française in 1958. The goal of a global methodological classification of French folksongs (including North America and French-speaking Europe) is discussed in Laforte’s Poétiques de la chanson traditionelle française (1976).

The documentation of traditional French music in the Acadian regions of Canada (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island) has been the focus of Québecois collectors Lacourcière and Matton, and of local individuals. Following the traditions of publishing songs in the press, Acadian songs were gathered together by Joseph-Thomas Leblanc and published in the Moncton, New Brunswick, newspaper La voix de Évangeline in 1938–41. The work of Father Anselme Chiasson and Daniel Boudreau resulted in seven volumes of Acadian music from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia titled Les chansons d’Acadie (1942). The archives begun at the University of Moncton by Chiasson later became the Centre d’Études Acadiennes, the major repository of Acadian traditional instrumental and vocal music. The centre has focussed on collecting and comparative work led by its director Charlotte Cormier. Other regional work has been performed in Prince Edward Island (Arsenault, 1980), Nova Scotia (Chiasson, 1986; Labelle, 1988), and Newfoundland (Thomas, 1978).

The study of traditional French music in Ontario was initiated by Father Germain Lemieux who became the director of the newly established Institut de Folklore (renamed the Centre Franco-Ontarien de Folklore in 1975) at Laurentian University in Sudbury in 1959. Studies on Métis traditional music in the western provinces of Canada have been published by Barbara Cass-Beggs (1967) and Ann Lederman (1987). Regional studies by Robert Seguin (1986), Simone Voyer (1986), Carmell Bégin (1989) and Jean-Marie Verret (1983) demonstrate a recent interest in documenting dance genres. Studies of individual musicians include Bégin’s examination of the life and music of the famous Québecois fiddler Jean Carignan (1981) and Colin Quigley’s paradigmatic study of the equally famous Newfoundland fiddler Emile Benoit (1987).

After World War II a new generation of popular performing artists emerged in Quebec and gradually also in the Acadian region. Coinciding with the advent of television in the 1950s and changes in popular music, ‘chansonniers’ extended the trend of combining folk and popular music idioms in songs that often reflected the cultural, spiritual and political themes of emancipation and identity of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. Inspired by folk music, indigenous poetry and songwriters from France such as Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel, the long list of successful Québecois chansonniers includes Hélène Baillergeon, Clémence Desrochers, Félix Leclerc, Claude Léveillée, Monique Leyrac, Ginette Reno and Gilles Vigneault. Robert Charlebois, Roch Voisine and Céline Dion have had international as well as national careers.

Canada, §II, 3: Immigrant traditions

Robbie Robertson became a member of what has been called one of the most influential rock groups of all, the Band, with his guitar style based on what he heard back at his mother’s Six Nations reserve. More recently he has written many songs dealing specifically with indigenous culture. The Mi’kmaq musician Don Ross has also strongly influenced writing and playing for guitar in Canada. Lawrence Martin, the first winner of the newly created Juno Award Best Music of Aboriginal Recording in 1994, has created a strong contemporary voice in a country form relating the experiences of his people, the Mistassini Cree.

The above musicians concentrated on writing songs usually only in English to reach a wide audience. Alanis Obomsawin, an Abenaki, who frequently joined Buffy Sainte-Marie on the influential TV series Sesame Street, sang and created songs in her own language, as well as English and French. Except for a few early songs written with an English text, Charlie Panigoniak initiated a strong tradition of country/folksongs with texts in Inuktitut concerning family, friends and everyday events in his life. His example has been followed by a number of Inuit performers including Tumasi Quissa, Sikummuit (Charlie Adams, Lucassie Koperqoaluk), Joseph Tuglavina, Alexis Utanaq and Lucassie Irqumia. Many now perform in a combination of their own language with one of Canada’s official languages. The group Tudjaat (Madeline Allakariallak and Phoebe Atagotaaluk) often preface their bilingual songs with a rendition of an Inuit voice game. Susan Aglukark has become a strong spokesperson for the north, particularly through her rendition of Hinena Hoho Hine by the Slavey Dene, Johnny Landry.

Many performers are now combining elements of their traditional parent-cultures such as instruments in a contemporary musical presentation. The Innu Philippe Mackenzie used a single-headed drum hit with maracas to approximate the traditional sacred drum with snares and modelled his songs on his parent-culture hunting songs. He greatly influenced the group Kashtin (Florent Vollant, Claude McKenzie) who sing in their own Innu language. Their second commercial recording Innu sold over 400,000 copies in its first six months. Jerry Alfred of the Northern Tutchone culture accompanies himself on guitar and a traditional drum for his contemporary songs in his own language. Jani Lauzon performs on a range of indigenous flutes and sings her songs based on the idiom of the blues. Murray Porter of the Iroquois culture calls his particular style ‘country blues’.

In European-derived concert music indigenous peoples continue to contribute as performers and creators. Nathanael of Nain composed four-part anthems for the Moravian Mission. John Kim Bell, initially trained as an orchestral conductor, has written a number of acclaimed film scores including The Trial of Standing Bear (1988). Since the late 1980s he has devoted himself to encouraging indigenous performers in the arts and prepared the traditionally based music for the ballet In the Land of the Spirits (1988). In the 1990s the orchestral works of Barbara Croall of Ojibwa heritage were being performed in Canada and abroad.

Canada, §II: Traditional music

5. Composition.

Traditional music of the indigenous peoples of Canada is very different from European musical traditions. Amerindian and Inuit musical materials were not, therefore, used for art music composition until the mid-19th century. Missionaries did, however, prepare hymn tunes based in part on French folktunes with texts in indigenous languages. The most famous example is the Huron carol Jesous Ahatonia, probably created by Jean de Brébeuf (1593–1649) using the melodic opening of Une jeune pucelle.

The rich French-language oral tradition of song and dance became the basis for many art music compositions, usually in the form of settings for voice and piano or choral arrangements. The first well-known composition was Thomas Moore’s Canadian Boat Song, written during a visit to Canada in 1804 and inspired by the opening of the voyageur song Dans mon chemin j’ai rencontré, which Moore heard while being rowed down the St Lawrence River from Kingston to Montreal. Initially published as a three-voice setting in London in 1805, the song had at least 12 other editions by 1825.

The piano piece Canadian Dance with Variations, composed by G. Pfeiffer and published in Philadelphia in 1817, could be based on an actual jig tune familiar at that time in Canada. Manuscripts from 1817 survive of Frederick Glackemeyer’s settings of two Chansons de voyageurs canadiens. The first published volume of Canadian Airs (London, 1823), collected by Lt George Back, included arrangements by European musicians who freely adapted the tunes to current European practice. By 1840 folktunes (of French-language heritage) began to appear in Canadian periodicals in settings for voice and piano or as medleys and sets of dances for piano. Soon there were longer versions in sheet music form such as Antoine Dessane’s Quadrille canadien (1855) or Ernest Gagnon’s Le Carnaval de Québec (1862), which includes, in addition to French-language tunes, Yankee Doodle, possibly set shortly after the capture of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island (1745), and Dixie, a tune that was extremely popular in American minstrel shows in the 1860s.

Gagnon prepared a landmark collection of over 100 French folksongs in his ‘Chansons populaires du Canada’ (1865). His transcriptions of the melodies provided a source for composers, and Gagnon showed such possibilities in his choral arrangments Les soirées de Québec (1887) and Cantiques populaires du Canada français (1897). His piano piece Stadaconé: danse sauvage (1858) appears to be the first art composition genuinely based on Amerindian traditional music. The band arrangement (1864) was heard by a group of Iroquois ‘who recognized familiar elements of their own music in Gagnon’s composition’.

Such band arrangements of music originally written for or published as piano music became increasingly common in the 19th century, and bandmasters prepared many versions of popular folktunes of individual regions based on available instruments. Thus, in English-speaking areas these tunes could be of Scottish, Irish or American origin. Susie Frances Harrison (‘Seranus’) was probably the first of many Anglo-Canadian composers to utilize French-language folktunes in her opera Pipandor (1884) and Trois esquisses canadiennes (1887) for piano. Beginning in the 1870s more large-scale works drawing on folk materials were created by Canadian composers, including Calixa Lavallée’s Pas redoublé sur des airs canadiens (1870s) for band, Joseph Vézina’s Mosaïque sur des airs populaires canadiens (1880) for band, Alexis Contant’s Fantaisie sur des airs canadiens (1900) for orchestra, and Charles A.E. Harris’s orchestral Canadian Fantasy, first performed in 1904. In his opera Le fétiche (1912) it appears that Vézina drew on his personal knowledge of Iroquois musical practices for the ‘Chanson du scalpe’.

The systematic documentation of indigenous and traditional folk materials began with the advent of recording techniques at the end of the 19th century. The ethnologist Marius Barbeau was a key figure in this effort and by 1919 he was arranging concerts of francophone, anglophone and indigenous folksongs across the country and urging composers to use this material. In 1927 Ernest MacMillan accompanied Barbeau on a trip to northern British Columbia specifically to make transcriptions of Tsimshian songs which Barbeau was recording. Eskimo Songs: Songs of the Copper Eskimos (1925), transcriptions by Helen Roberts of recordings made during Diamond Jenness’s Arctic expedition of 1913–18, remains an important source for Canadian composers including Léo-Pol Morin, John Weinzweig and Violet Archer.

The use of traditional music as source material was greatly stimulated through the performances organized in connection with the Canadian Pacific Railway Festivals, 17 of which took place in the period 1927–31 from Quebec to Victoria. A competition for the 1928 festival produced orchestral, string quartet, chamber, choral and vocal works using French-language folksongs. MacMillan’s Two Sketches for String Quartet (1927) and Claude Champagne’s Suite canadienne (1927) have become part of the Canadian canon. Other festivals displayed the richness of the musical traditions within Canada such as Regina (1929) with over 30 ethnic groups. Larger scale compositions based on English-language sources began to appear at the 1929 Vancouver Festival.

Since singing and dancing to secular material was frowned upon by certain churches in the English-language communities, composers had fewer opportunities to hear or experience this heritage personally or through publications. Notated collections of English-language folk music began to appear with W. Roy Mackenzie’s Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia (1928) drawing in part on informants of Acadian-French origin. Beginning in the 1960s studies of the musical expressions of other ethnic groups, over 70 of which have been documented to date, became available for Canadian composers to utilize. Victor Davies’s The Mennonite Piano Concerto (1975), as well as several of Imant Raminsh’s Latvian-inspired vocal works, are among those that are most frequently performed. Treatments vary considerably from simple and unconventional accompaniments of the original tune to considerable variation of the melody and rhythm as in Harry Somers’s Songs of the Newfoundland Outports (1969). In instrumental settings composers frequently extend the tune by using 20th-century compositional techniques or by using the tune as a motivic source. The latter is the method most frequently used for indigenous materials. Malcolm Forsyth’s Atayoskewin (1984) for orchestra and Christos Hatzis’s radio documentary composition using Inuit materials, Footprints in New Snow (1996), have received acclaim.

Amerindian musicians have contributed greatly to popular and commerical musics, beginning with Buffy Sainte-Marie and Robbie Robertson. Recently John Kim Bell (Land of the Spirit, 1988) and Barbara Croall (The Four Directions, 1996) have composed orchestral works that reflect their respective Mohawk and Odawa musical heritages.

Since the early 1950s composers from Quebec have rarely drawn upon French-language folk music except for the rhythms and tunes of fiddle music. Since the early 20th century there have been many commercial recordings and later radio and television programmes that featured fine Canadian traditional fiddlers. As a result Canadian composers had ready access to this traditional heritage, and it appears in numerous works, including John Beckwith’s String Quartet (1977) and Pierick Houdy’s Messe québécoise (1973). Traditional fiddle music is at the core of the rhythmic essence of much Canadian art music.

Canada, §II: Traditional music

6. Research.

From historical and contemporary perspectives, Canada has played a major role in the study of traditional music. Canadian traditional music has been referred to in well-known works of historical interest incorporating non-Western illustrations. In the early days of comparative musicology at the end of the 19th century, Carl Stump’s Lieder der Bellakula Indianer (1886) was one of a group of sources that focussed on Canadian traditional music. This work is often cited in histories of ethnomusicology as field of study (Robbins, 1993, pp.71–2). Many of the contributions by Canadians, and by others on Canadian traditional music, are discussed above.

The appointment of Marius Barbeau to the anthropology division of the Geological Survey of Canada (now the National Museum of Civilization) in 1911 was a turning point that led to sustained efforts in music research, and French-language folksong collecting and scholarship in the 20th century. Barbeau’s extraordinary career included fieldwork and publication in a wide range of areas. Indeed he extended the dimensions of his research to include folklore, language and popular culture beyond his native Quebec to Amerindians of the Pacific Northwest Coast. He also participated in the establishment of important archival collections both at the National Museum in Ottawa and at Laval University (Archives de Folklore, 1944); his work also inspired, in part, the creation of folk music archives in Sudbury (French-language traditions in Ontario) and Moncton, New Brunswick (Acadian traditions). Beginning in Newfoundland and extending to the mainland provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, the Atlantic region of Canada was an important focus for collectors in the first half of the century. Many of the early collectors were not Canadians (Maud Karpeles, Elizabeth Greenleaf, Grace Mansfield and Edward Ives). The long career of Nova Scotian folklore collector Helen Creighton (1899–1989) in the maritime provinces parallels, in some respects, that of Barbeau in Quebec, as well as that of Edith Fowke (1913–96) in Ontario.

While there was continued emphasis on collecting in the second half of the 20th century, researchers gradually broadened the scope of fieldwork, borrowing and incorporating ethnographic approaches from other disciplines. This is partly a reflection of the establishment of courses and programmes of study in ethnomusicology and folklore at Canadian universities. The first courses in folklore subjects were offered at Laval University in the 1940s by Luc Lacourcière, at the University of British Columbia from 1964 by Ida Halpern and at the University of Toronto from 1966 by Mieczyslaw Kolinski. By the late 1990s graduate programmes leading to doctoral degrees in folklore studies were offered at Laval University and Memorial University in Newfoundland, and graduate programmes in ethnomusicology were offered at the universities of Alberta, British Columbia and Toronto and at York University. Many Canadian universities offer undergraduate courses in ethnomusicology and folklore.

In recent years many Canadian fieldworkers have turned their interest towards investigating music in local and urban contexts. Publication of essays edited by Beverley Diamond and Robert Witmer (1994) reflects this shift. Incorporating current ideas of cultural studies, social structures, individual experience and gender studies, as well as considering new, alternative modes of representing the ‘other’ in ethnographic research, the work of Canadians such as Nicole Beaudry, Rob Bowen, Judith Cohen, Donald Deschenes, Monique Desroches, Beverley Diamond, Jocelyne Guilbault, Elaine Keillor, James Kippen, Regula Qureshi, Neil Rosenberg, Jay Rahn, Franziska von Rosen, Gordon E. Smith, Alan Thrasher, Geoffrey Whittam and Robert Witmer, among others, represents important new contributions to the study of traditional music.

Canada, §II: Traditional music

BIBLIOGRAPHY

a: general

J.M. Gibbon: Canadian Folk Songs (Old and New) (London, 1927)

A.P. Merriam: ‘The Use of Music in the Study of a Problem of Acculturation’, American Anthropologist, lvii (1945); repr. in Ethnomusicology Theory and Methods, ed. K.K. Shelemay (New York, 1990), 84–90

L. Lacourcière, ed.: Les archives de folklore (Montreal, 1946–9)

C.M. Barbeau, A. Lismer and A. Bourinot: Come a Singing! Canadian Folk Songs (Ottawa, 1947)

B. Nettl: ‘Stylistic Change in Folk Music’, Southern Folklore Quarterly, xvii (1953), 216–20

K. Peacock: A Survey of Ethnic Folk Music across Western Canada (Ottawa, 1963)

H. Glassie, E.D. Ives and J.F. Szwed, eds.: Folksongs and their Makers (Bowling Green, OH, 1970)

EthM, xvi (1972) [entire edition on music in Canada, incl. bibliographies]

R.C. Carlisle: ‘Ethnomusicology in Multicultural Society’, Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology, iv/2 (1974), 97–109 [Canadian multiculturalism issue]

E.B. Moogk: Roll Back the Years: History of Canadian Recorded Sound and its Legacy: Genesis to 1930 (Ottawa, 1975)

N.V. Rosenberg: ‘Studying Country Music and Contemporary Folk – Music Tradition in the Maritimes: Theory, Techniques and the Archivist’, Phonograph Bulletin, xiv (1976), 18–21

N.V. Rosenberg: ‘A Preliminary Bibliography of Canadian Old-Time Instrumental Music Books’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, vii (1980), 14–19

C. Bégin: La musique traditionelle pour violin (Ottawa, 1981)

R. Witmer, ed.: Ethnomusicology in Canada (Toronto, 1988)

B. Diamond Cavanagh and J. Robbins: ‘Ethnomusicology’, Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, ed. H. Kallmann and others (Toronto, 1992), 422–31

J. Robbins: ‘Canada’, Ethnomusicology: Historical and Regional Studies, ed. H. Myers (London, 1993), 63–76

E. Keillor: ‘Indigenous Music as a Compositional Source: Parallels and Contrasts in Canadian and American Music’, Taking a Stand: Essays in Honour of John Beckwith, ed. T.J. McGee (Toronto, 1995), 185–220

E. Keillor and others: Annotated Bibliography of Indigenous Peoples within Canada: Written and Recorded Documentation of Music and Dance (Ottawa, 1996)

b: french immigrant traditions

M. Lescarbot: Histoire de la Nouvelle France (Paris, 1609)

F.A.H. LaRue: ‘Les chansons populaires et historiques du Canada’, Le foyer canadien, i (1863), 321–84; iii (1865), 5–72

E. Gagnon: ‘Les chansons populaires du Canada’, Le foyer canadien, (1865–7, 6/1925)

E. Myrand: Les Noëls anciens de la Nouvelle-France (Montreal, 1899)

G. Doncieux: Le Romancero populaire de la France (Paris, 1904)

J. Tiersot: Forty-Four French Folk-Songs and Variants from Canada, Normandy and Brittany (New York, 1907)

F.-X. Burque: Chansonnier canadien-français (Quebec, 1921)

C.M. Barbeau and E. Sapir: Folk Songs of French Canada (New Haven, CT, 1925)

D. Boudreau and A. Chiasson: Chansons d’Acadie, i–iv (Montreal, 1942–8); v (Moncton, 1979); vi–vii (Chéticamp, 1983–5)

Sister Marie-Ursule: Civilisation traditionelle des Lavalois, Les archives de folklore, v–vi (Quebec, 1951)

R.S. Young: Vielles chansons de la Nouvelle-France (Laval, PQ, 1956)

C. Laforte: Catalogue de la chanson folklorique français (Laval, PQ, 1958)

C.M. Barbeau: Répertoire de la chanson folklorique française au Canada: le rossignol y chante (Ottawa, 1962)

I. Katz: ‘Marius Barbeau 1883–1969’, EthM, xiv (1970), 129

C. Laforte: La chanson folklorique et les écrivains du XIXe siècle (en France et au Québec) (Montreal, 1973)

C. Cormier: ‘Situation de la recherche en folklore acadien’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, iii (1975), 30–34

D. Gauthier and R. Matton: Chansons de Shippagan (Quebec, 1975)

C. Laforte: Poétiques de la chanson traditionelle française (Laval, PQ, 1976)

G. Thomas: Songs Sung by French Newfoundlanders (St John’s, NF, 1978)

G. Arsenault: Complaintes acadiennes de l’Ile-du-Prince-Edouard (Montreal, 1980)

C.M. Barbeau: En roulant ma boule (Ottawa, 1982)

R. Giroux: Les aires de la chanson québécoise (Montreal, 1984)

A. Chiasson: History and Acadian Traditions of Cheticamp (St John’s, NF, 1986)

R. Seguin: La danse traditionnelle au Québec (Sillery, PQ, 1986)

S. Voyer: La danse traditionelle dans l’est du Canada: quadrilles et cotillons (Quebec, 1986)

C.M. Barbeau: Le roi boit (Ottawa, 1987)

C. Quigley: Creative Processes in Musical Compositions: French-Newfoundland Fiddler Émile Benoit (diss., UCLA, 1987)

R. Labelle: La fleur du rosier (Ottawa, 1988)

C. Bégin: Danse/Roots, Ritual and Romance (Hull, PQ, 1989)

G. Smith: Ernest Gagnon (1834–1915): Musician and Pioneer Folksong Scholar (diss., U. of Toronto, 1989)

c: british immigrant traditions

H. Gray: Letters from Canada: Written during a Residence There in the Years 1806, 1807 and 1808 (London, 1809)

J.R. Godley: Letters from America, i (London, 1844)

J.J. Bigsby: The Shoe and Canoe, or Pictures of Travel in the Canadas (London, 1850)

W.F. Butler: The Great Lone Land (London, 1872)

F. Monck: My Canadian Leaves (Dorchester, 1873)

E. Roper: By Track and Trail: a Journey through Canada (London, 1891)

J. Burke and G.T. Oliver: The People’s Songster, Buyers’ Guide and Gems of Poetry and Prose (St John’s, NF, 1900)

J. Murphy: Songs and Ballads of Newfoundland, Ancient and Modern (St. John’s, NF, 1902)

J. Murphy: Songs Sung by Old-Time Sealers of Many Years Ago (St. John’s, NF, 1902)

W.R. MacKenzie: ‘Ballad-Singing in Nova Scotia’, Journal of American Folklore, xxii (1909), 327–31

W.R. MacKenzie: ‘Three Ballads from Nova Scotia’, Journal of American Folklore, xxiii (1909), 371–80

J. Murphy: Murphy’s Sealer’s Song Book (St. John’s, NF, 1911)

W.R. MacKenzie: ‘Ballads from Nova Scotia’, Journal of American Folklore, xxv (1912), 182–7

J. Murphy: Old Songs of Newfoundland (St. John’s, 1912)

M.M. MacOdrum: Nova Scotia Ballads (Halifax, 1922)

W.R. Mackenzie: Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia (Cambridge, MA, 1928/R)

S. McCawley: Cape Breton Come-All-Ye (Glace Bay, NS, 1929)

M. Karpeles: ‘British Folk Songs from Canada’, Journal of the Folk Song Society, xxxiv (1930), 218–30

H. Creighton, ed.: Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia (Toronto, 1932/R)

E.B. Greenleaf and G.Y. Mansfield: Ballads and Sea Songs of Newfoundland (Cambridge, MA, 1933/R)

M. Karpeles: Folk Songs from Newfoundland (London, 1934, enlarged 2/1971)

D. Messer: Original Old Tyme Music by Don Messer and his Islanders (Toronto, 1942)

D. Messer: Don Messer’s Way Down East Fiddlin’ Tunes (Toronto, 1948)

D. Senior and H. Creighton: ‘Folk Songs Collected in the Province of Nova Scotia’, Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, vi (1951), 83–91

H. Creighton: ‘Songs from Nova Scotia’, JIFMC, xii (1960), 84–5

E.D. Ives: ‘Satirical Songs in Maine and the Maritime Provinces of Canada’, JIFMC, xiv (1962), 65–9

E.D. Ives: Larry Gorman: the Man Who Made the Songs (Bloomington, IN, 1964)

M.E. Leach: Folk Ballads and Songs of the Lower Labrador Coast (Ottawa, 1965)

K. Peacock: Songs of the Newfoundland Outports (Ottawa, 1965)

E. Fowke: ‘A Sampling of Bawdy Ballads from Ontario’, Folklore and Society, ed. B. Jackson (Hatboro, PA, 1966), 45–61

H. Creighton: ‘W. Roy MacKenzie, Pioneer’, Canadian Folk Music Society Newsletter, ii (1967), 15–22

E. Fowke: ‘Labour and Industrial Protest Songs in Canada’, Journal of American Folklore, lxxxii (1969), 34–50

E.D. Ives: ‘A Man and his Song: Joe Scott and “The Plain Golden Band”’, Folksongs and their Makers, ed. H. Glassie and others (Bowling Green, OH, 1970), 69–146

J.F. Szwed: ‘Paul E. Hall: a Newfoundland Song-Maker and his Community of Song’, ibid., 147–69

H. Creighton: Folksongs from Southern New Brunswick (Ottawa, 1971)

G.J. Casey, N.V. Rosenberg and W.W. Wareham: ‘Repertoire Categorization and Performer-Audience Relationships: Some Newfoundland Folksong Examples’, EthM, xvi (1972), 397–403

E. Fowke: ‘Anglo-Canadian Folksong: a Survey’, EthM, xvi (1972), 133–62

M.B. Knight: ‘Scottish Gaelic, English and French: Some Aspects of the Macaronic Tradition of the Codroy Valley, Newfoundland’, Regional Language Studies: Newfoundland, iv (1972), 25–30

P. Mercer, ed.: The Ballads of Johnny Burke: a Short Anthology (St John’s, NF, 1974)

E.D. Ives: ‘Lumbercamp Singing and the Two Traditions’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, v (1977), 17–23

M. Lovelace: ‘W. Roy MacKenzie as a Collector of Folksong’, ibid., 5–11

M. Shoolbraid: ‘Scottish Songs in B.C.’, Come All Ye, vi (1977), 45–54

E.D. Ives: Joe Scott: the Woodsman-Songmaker (Urbana, IL, 1979)

P. Mercer: Newfoundland Songs and Ballads in Print, 1842–1974: a Title and First-Line Index (St. John’s, NF, 1979)

E. Ives: ‘The Ballad of “John Ladner”’, Folklore Studies in Honour of Herbert Halpert, ed. K.S. Goldstein and N.V. Rosenberg (St. John’s, NF, 1980), 239–58

D. Meeks: ‘Stanley Collins: a Singer-Songwriter of Scotsville, Cape Breton’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, viii (1980), 14–19

N.V. Rosenberg: ‘“It was a Kind of a Hobby”: a Manuscript Song Book and Its Place in Tradition’, Folklore Studies in Honour of Herbert Halpert, ed. K.S. Goldstein and N.V. Rosenberg (St. John’s, NF, 1980)

L. Doucette and C. Quigley: ‘The Child Ballad in Canada: a Survey’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, ix (1981), 3–19

E. Fowke, ed.: Sea Songs and Ballads from Nineteenth-Century Nova Scotia: the William H. Smith and Fenwick Hatt Manuscripts (New York, 1981)

H.V. Hadeed: ‘The Songs of O.J. Abbott: a Survey of Tune Types’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, ix (1981), 54–8

C.J. Hendrickson: ‘English-Language Folk Music in Alberta’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, x (1982), 34–9

C. Quigley: Close to the Floor: Folk Dance in Newfoundland (St. John’s, NF, 1985)

I. Bell: ‘The Big Squeeze: Button Accordians in Canada’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, xxi/3 (1987), 4–7; xxi/4 (1987), 7–11

G. Lyon: ‘We Shook Hands: Wilf Carter Interviewed’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, xxi/2 (1987), 5–14

E. Fowke: ‘Irish Folk Songs in Canada’, The Untold Story: the Irish in Canada, ed. R. O’Driscoll (Toronto, 1988), 699–710

M. MacDonald: ‘The Cape Breton Ceilidh’, Culture and Tradition, xii (1998), 76–85

G.L. Pocius: ‘The Mummers Song in Newfoundland: Intellectuals, Revivalists and Cultural Nativism’, Newfoundland Studies, iv (1988), 57–85

D. Tye: ‘Retrospective Repertoire Analysis: the Case of Ben Henneberry, Ballad Singer of Devil’s Island, Nova Scotia’ Canadian Folk Music Journal, xvi (1989), 3–15

E.D. Ives: Folksongs of New Brunswick (Fredericton, NB, 1989)

J. Rahn: ‘An Introduction to English-Language Folksong Styles: Metre, Phrasing, Rhythm and Form in LaRena Clark’s Traditional Songs’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, xvii (1989), 3–18

M.O. Nowlan, ed.: Michael Whelan: Folk Poet of Renous River (Fredericton, NB, 1990)

J. Rahn: ‘An Introduction to English-Language Folksong Style: Tonality, Modality, Harmony and Intonation in LaRena Clark’s Traditional Songs’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, xviii (1990), 18–31

N.V. Rosenberg: ‘The Gerald S. Doyle Songsters and the Politics of Newfoundland Folksong’, Canadian Folklore canadien, xiii/1 (1991), 45–58

M. Bennett: ‘Gaelic Songs in North America: Twentieth-Century Reflections’, Canadian Folklore canadien, xiv/2 (1992), 21–34

C. Neilands: ‘A Drop of the Irish: the Influence of Irish Folksong on Newfoundland’s Song Tradition’, ibid., 45–74

N.V. Rosenberg: ‘Don Messer’s Modern Canadian Fiddle Canon’, Canadian Folklore Music Journal, xxii (1994), 23–35

H. Snow and others: The Hank Snow Story (Urbana, IL, 1994)

d: other immigrant traditions

EMC2 (‘India’, N. Jairazbhoy, N. McGregor and Q. Quresh; ‘Ukrainian and Greek Orthodox Church music’, W. Klymkiw)

R. Klymasz: The Ukrainian Winter Folksong Cycle in Canada (Ottawa, 1970)

K. Peacock: Songs of the Doukhobors: an Introductory Outline (Ottawa, 1970)

H. Martens: ‘The Music of Some Religious Minorities in Canada’, EthM, xvi (1972), 360–71

R. Qureshi: ‘Ethnomusicological Research among Canadian Communities of Arab and East Indian Origin’, EthM, xvi (1972), 381–96

F. Margaret and E.E. Magee: Catalogue of Canadian Folk Music in the Mary Mellish Archibald Library and Other Special Collections of the Ralph Pickard Bell Library (Sackville, 1974)

R. Gibbons: The CCFCS Collection of Musical Instruments (Ottawa, 1982)

M.J. Bandera: ‘The Western Canadian Championships: Tsymbaly Competitions at the Red Barn’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, xi (1983), 28–33

W. Berg: From Russia with Music: a Study of Mennonite Choral Singing Tradition in Canada (Winnipeg, 1985)

R. Klymasz: The Ukrainian Folk Ballad in Canada (New York, 1989)

S.M. Perry: Selected Psalms, Old Verses and Spiritual Songs of the Canadian Doukhobors: Transcription and Musical Analysis (diss., U. of Arizona, 1992)

B. Cherwick: ‘Ukrainian Tsymbaly Performance in Alberta’, Canadian Folk Music Journal, xviii (1995), 20–28

J. Warwick: ‘Can Anyone Dance to this Music? A Study of Toronto's Bhangra Scene’, Bansuri, xii (1995), 5–17

e: indigenous traditions

B. Phillips: ‘Songs and Traditions of the Miramichi’, Bulletin of the Folksong Society of the Northeast, x (1935), 15–17; xi (1936), 21–3; xii (1937), 23–4

B. Cass-Beggs, ed.: Seven Métis Songs of Saskatchewan (Toronto, 1967)

I. Halpern: ‘Music of the British Columbia Northwest Coast Indians’, Canadian Folk Music Society: Centennial Workshop on Ethnomusicology: Vancouver 1967, 23–42

R. Stevenson: ‘Written Sources for Indian Music until 1882’, Ethm, xvii (1973), 1–40

E. Keillor: ‘The Emergence of Postcolonial Musical Expressions of Aboriginal Peoples within Canada’, Cultural Studies, ix (1995), 106–24

f: recordings

French-Canadian Dance Music, perf. J.-M. Verret and others, Folkways RF120 (1980) [incl. transcr. and notes by C. Bégin]

A Folksong Portrait of Canada, coll. S. Gesser, Mercury 769748000-2 (1992)

Canada

III. Popular music

As with the USA, popular music in Canada can be logically divided in terms of ethnicity, language, region and style. Officially bilingual, the country has experienced mass immigration from all parts of the globe since the 1960s, prompting the United Nations’ designation of Toronto as the most multicultural city in the world. Each wave of immigrants brought popular music traditions with them, and many of these new popular music hybrids have continued to develop within Canada, many featuring lyrics in languages other than French and English. There is also a range of popular music activity among Amerindians in a variety of indigenous languages. Although the popular music industry in Canada is largely tied to Western-based multinational corporations and tends to favour English-speaking artists operating within contemporary rock or pop styles, in the late 1990s a few Amerindian, French-speaking, African and South Asian artists achieved a significant degree of national success.

1. Before 1960.

In the first decades of the 20th century, Canadians clearly embraced new recording technologies, purchasing a variety of discs, the vast majority of which were recorded and pressed in the USA, England or France. Companies such as the Columbia Gramophone Co. established branches in Canada, while others such as the Victor Talking Machine Co. simply licensed their product to Canadian distributors. In these first few decades Canadians wrote several songs that were internatonal hits, including Peg o’My Heart (lyrics by A. Bryan), Til’ We Meet Again (lyrics by R. Egan), K-K-K-Katy (G. O’Hara), Mademoiselle from Armentières (Captain G. Rice) and The World is Waiting for the Sunrise (E. Lockhart and E.J. Seitz).

Guy Lombardo, born in London, Ontario, and his Royal Canadians made their first recording for the Richmond, Indiana-based Gennett label in 1924. Over the course of his 50-year career Lombardo had over 200 hit recordings, the only dance-band leader to sell over 100 million records. Before the end of the 1920s, Maritime country legend Don Messer began his radio career in St John’s, Newfoundland. In 1930 another early Canadian country pioneer, Wilf Carter of Alberta, conducted his first radio broadcast. Two years later Carter’s My Swiss Moonlight Lullabye, recorded by the Canadian branch of RCA Victor in Montreal, became the first Canadian hit to be recorded domestically. The producer of the Carter record, A. Hugh Joseph, signed Maritime-born Hank Snow to the Canadian branch of RCA Victor in 1934. Snow later moved to Nashville and became one of the world’s most successful and influential honky-tonk artists.

Two Canadian jazz luminaries, flautist Moe Koffman and pianist Oscar Peterson, first came to prominence in the 1940s, as did the slick vocal quartet, the Four Lads. In 1951 the Four Lads backed up American singer Johnny Ray on his influential hit single Cry. A year later easy-listening orchestra leader Percy Faith had his first major pop hit with the single Delicado. Faith would continue to produce hits on a regular basis until his death in 1976.

The history of Canadian popular music closely parallels stylistic and technological developments in the USA. Beginning with the formation in Toronto of the Travellers in 1953, Canada produced a large number of performers whose roots were firmly planted in the urban Folk Music Revival. This legacy encompasses artists as diverse as Gordon Lightfoot, Ian and Sylvia, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Cockburn, Murray McLauchlan, Valdy and Stan Rogers. The 1950s were also notable for the advent of two white pop vocal quartets, the Crew Cuts and the Diamonds. Both groups were signed to the Chicago-based Mercury Records, and both enjoyed careers largely based on their covers of African-American materials recorded on independent record labels. The Crew Cuts’ 1954 cover of the Chords’ Sh-Boom reached Number 1 in the USA on Billboard’s pop charts, becoming the best-selling record of the year. It is often cited as the first Number 1 rock and roll record. In 1957, Paul Anka signed with New York-based ABC-Paramount for whom he recorded Diana, which also went to Number 1 on the Billboard pop charts. Anka later wrote It Doesn’t Matter Anymore for Buddy Holly and My Way for Frank Sinatra and enjoyed a number of easy-listening pop hits. In addition to such national and international successes in the 1940s and 50s there was a plethora of independent labels formed throughout Canada, primarily recording country, rockabilly and French-language materials on a regional basis.

2. 1960s and early 70s.

Paralleling developments in the USA, the Canadian popular music scene exploded in the 1960s and early 1970s with artists such as the Guess Who, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Steppenwolf, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and the Band achieving significant international success. Other Canadians, such as Zal Yanovsky (Lovin’ Spoonful) and David Clayton-Thomas (Blood, Sweat and Tears), achieved success as members of American groups. Because of Canada’s underdeveloped industry infrastructure all of these artists, with the exception of the Guess Who, emigrated to the USA before they became successful. Part of the reason for the lack of such an infrastructure was a pervasive colonial mentality deeply rooted in Canadian culture which led many Canadians, including radio programmers, to believe that if a record did not come from the USA or Great Britain, it could not be of value.

3. After 1971.

To combat this situation, the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) enacted legislation in 1971 requiring that 30% of the recordings aired by AM stations in Canada between 6 a.m. and midnight had to meet Canadian content criteria. Over the next several years, similar criteria were phased in for FM radio stations. Although radio programmers claimed that there was not enough high-quality Canadian-produced material to fulfil this quota, the eventual effect of this legislation was the development of a full-fledged industry with a substantial number of studios, record companies, concert promoters, managers and agents emerging around Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.

Since this legislation came into effect, Canada has produced numerous artists who have been able to achieve success on an international level without having to move to the USA. Such artists include Anne Murray, Rush, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, kd lang, Loreena McKennitt, Bryan Adams, the Cowboy Junkies, Roch Voisine, Crash Test Dummies, Céline Dion, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette and Sarah McLachlan. The content legislation has also fostered the development of a second tier of talent who, although not as successful on an international level, are popular within Canada and consequently are able to make their living as full-time musicians. Examples of such artists include Stompin’ Tom Connors, April Wine, Kim Mitchell, Tom Cochrane, Rita MacNeil, and the Tragically Hip.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Yorke: Chops and Hot Licks: The Canadian Rock Music Scene (Edmonton, AB, 1971)

P. Goddard and P. Kamin: Shakin' All Over: The Rock 'n' Roll Years in Canada (Toronto, 1989)

M. Adria: Music of our Times: Eight Canadian Singer-Songwriters (Toronto, 1990)

K.W. Neuenfeldt: ‘To Sing a Song of Otherness: Anthros, Ethno-Pop and the Mediation of “Public Problems”’, Canadian Ethnic Studies, xxiii/3 (1991), 92–118

C. Mishler: The Crooked Stovepipe: Athapaskan Fiddle Music and Square Dancing in Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada (Urbana, IL, 1993)

G.G. Valaskakis: ‘Dance me Inside: Pow Wow and Being “Indian”’, Fuse Magazine, xxvi/5–6 (1993), 39–44

Canada.

I. Art music

1. Early historical background.

2. Choral, orchestral, band and chamber music.

3. Opera.

4. Education.

5. Composition.

6. Instrument making, music publishing.

7. Broadcasting.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

general

art music

II. Traditional music

1. Introduction.

2. Early accounts.

3. Immigrant traditions.

(i) French.

(ii) British and Irish.

(a) Vocal music.

(b) Instrumental music and dance.

(iii) Other.

(a) Ukrainian.

(b) Caribbean.

(c) Indian.

(d) Chinese.

(iv) Recent developments.

4. Indigenous adaptations of immigrant traditions.

5. Composition.

6. Research.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

a: general

b: french immigrant traditions

c: british immigrant traditions

d: other immigrant traditions

e: indigenous traditions

f: recordings

III. Popular music

1. Before 1960.

2. 1960s and early 70s.

3. After 1971.

BIBLIOGRAPHY