Bøger af Brian Cherney

In the fall of 1959 Norma Beecroft, a twenty-five-year-old composition student, left her home in Toronto and travelled to Rome to study with the eminent Italian composer. She left behind her lover and mentor, the thirty-four-year-old Harry Somers, by then recognized as one of Canada's leading younger composers. For the next six months they wrote each other almost every day. Their intense and intimate correspondence documents lives lived apart but shared on the page, until the relationship came to an abrupt end. Selected from the full extant correspondence, the letters show both composers at pivotal moments in their careers, processing music and culture in their respective environments in ways that would remain influential for themselves and to each other. Beyond illuminating a tempestuous love affair, their wide-ranging letters capture the development of Canadian arts and culture of the period. They record observations about significant figures in their circles; the performances, theatre, and art Somers experienced in Toronto; and Beecroft's attempts to forge a viable compositional approach through contact with important artists and composers abroad. Somers eventually realized that what he wanted most was for Beecroft to give up her studies and return to Toronto to marry him. She turned him down and remained in Italy to study and write music, cementing her commitment to the vocation of composer that would shape the rest of her creative life. She would break ground as a woman in her field, a producer for the CBC, and a composer and early champion of electroacoustic music. A window into cultural life in Canada and Rome at the end of the 1950s, Between Composers is a striking record of a turning point in the lives and careers of two young artists that would mark them and their music for decades.

Within the framework provided by major biographical events, Brian Cherney traces Somers' development as a composer from 1939 to 1973 by analysing works from various stages in his career.

First comprehensive study of John Weinzweig (1913 2006), the pre-eminent Canadian composer of his generation, with essays by composers, theorists, and musicologists. Includes a CD of extracts. Influenced by European modernists such as Stravinsky, Berg, and Webern, Weinzweig was the first Canadian composer to employ serialism, thereby bringing a spirit of innovation to mid-twentieth-century Canadian music. A forceful advocate for modern Canadian composition, Weinzweig played a key role in the founding of the Canadian League of Composers and the Canadian Music Centre during a buoyant and expansive period for the arts in Canada. He was an influential force as a teacher of composition, first with the Royal Conservatory of Music and later with the University of Toronto s music faculty. This first comprehensive study of Weinzweig since his death consists of new essays by composers, theorists, and musicologists. It deals with biographical aspects (the social context of early-twentieth-century Toronto, his activism, his teaching, his early scores for CBC Radio dramas), analyzes his compositional processes and his output (his approach to serialism, his instrumental practice, the presence of jazz elements, the vocal works, the divertimenti), and examines various evaluations of his music (his own in letters, interviews, talks, and writings plus those of critics and scholars, of listeners, and of performers). The essays are framed by the co-editors portrait/assessment of Weinzweig and a brief personal memoir. Much of the content draws on new research in the extensive Weinzweig Fonds at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. Included at the end of the book are a List of Works by John Weinzweig by Kathleen McMorrow and a Discography by David Olds. Supplementing the volume is an audio CD of extracts (some in their first public release), ranging from a 1937 student work to a song cycle of 1994. </p