CAML Review / Revue de l'ACBM (Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres / Association canadienne des bibliothèques, archives et centres de documentation musicaux)

Wagstaff, John

My Life in Widening Circles: Music by R. Murray Schafer (CD Review)

s.n., s.n.

Complete issue

-, -

 CAML REVIEW / REVUE DE L’ACBM  40, NO. 3 (NOVEMBER / NOVEMBRE 2012)  PAGE 45 
Correction 
 
Edward Jurkowski's review of Centre and Periphery, Roots and Exile: Interpreting the Music of István 
Anhalt, György Kurtág, and Sándor Veress, which was published in the April 2012 edition of CAML 
Review, refers to Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts as another book about Anhalt. In fact, the 
latter, which was published by Wilfrid Laurier Press in 2010, is a festschrift in honour of 
ethnomusicologist Beverley Diamond. The correct title is Istvan Anhalt: Pathways and Memory, 
edited by Robin Elliott and Gordon E. Smith, published by McGill-Queen's University Press in 2001. 


Correction

 CAML REVIEW 40, NO. 2 (AUGUST 2012)   PAGE 5 
HELMUT KALLMANN: A LIFE IN CANADIAN MUSIC 
 
 
 
Helmut Kallmann, co-founder of the Canadian Music Library Association (predecessor 
of CAML), who died in Ottawa on 12 February 2012, in his ninetieth year, was the 
preeminent pioneer of Canadian music research. His A History of Music in Canada 
1534-1914 (University of Toronto Press, 1960) was the first work in its field to introduce 
historical perspective, tracing musical life back four centuries. As a member of the 
editorial triumvirate of the ground-breaking Encyclopedia of Music in Canada / 
Encyclopédie de la musique au Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1981; Fides, 
1983), as founding chief of the music division of the National Library of Canada (now 
Library and Archives Canada), and as chair of the Canadian Musical Heritage Society 
and editor of two of its twenty-five volumes, he was uniquely influential in the 
establishment of information and preservation mechanisms for Canadian music.  
  
Kallmann came to Canada in the early years of World War II as an internee at a camp 
for “enemy aliens”; most were anti-Nazi refugees and many settled in Canada and went 
on to contribute significantly to the country’s cultural life. Documentation indicates that 
camp officials commended Kallmann, then seventeen, for organizing the camp library.  
  
During his bachelor of music studies at the University of Toronto, Kallmann was struck 
with the dearth of source material on Canadian music and musicians, and began to 
compile lists of names and dates and to collect programs and articles and especially 
sheet music wherever he could find them. Within months of his graduation, he wrote to 
Willi Apel, whose Harvard Dictionary of Music had just appeared, pointing out a few 
errors and offering data on the music of Canada, a topic ignored in the Dictionary. 
Apel’s response was cordial, and Kallmann’s career as a contributor to international 
reference works on music was launched.  
  
He was hired as a clerk in the CBC Toronto music library, and within a few weeks of his 
appointment was assigned the editorship of a new edition of the Catalogue of Canadian 
Composers. Convinced that composition was a central feature of any musical society, 
he became the voluntary archivist for the Canadian League of Composers upon its 
formation. With other music librarians in the mid-1950s, he organized the Canadian 
Music Library Association as a national professional body, and also began regular 
correspondence with the newly-created International Association of Music Libraries 
(IAML). His growing reputation as the prime researcher of Canadian music and musical 
life led to invitations from US, English, and German publishers. He became a prolific 
writer. 
  
He applied his organizing skills to the CBC library collection, and was promoted to head 
of the library in 1962. In 1970, when the National Library in Ottawa decided to create a 
music division, the first subject with that distinction, Kallmann was the logical choice to 
direct its formation. He remained in the position until his retirement in 1987, having seen 
the collection and the staff grow remarkably, and having mounted public exhibitions and 
 CAML REVIEW 40, NO. 2 (AUGUST 2012)   PAGE 6 
supervised the publication of catalogues. Again it was within only a short period of his 
appointment in Ottawa that he was approached to work on the Encyclopedia, with the 
result that the 1970s and 80s became his busiest and most productive years. In the 
year of his retirement, he was named a member of the Order of Canada, and the IAML 
journal Fontes artis musicae published a special number in his honour (vol. 34, no. 4). 
  
By that time, he was engaged with colleagues in producing The Canadian Musical 
Heritage / Le Patrimoine musical canadien, a multi-volume anthology of historical 
Canadian music in all genres, from the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth. By the 
series’ completion in the late 1990s, his vision had brought reference materials and 
musical sources in the country into structures that were both more comprehensive and 
more accessible than ever before.  
 
 
A NEW COLLECTION OF KALLMANN’S WRITINGS 
 
In 2013 Wilfrid Laurier University Press will publish Mapping Canada's Music: Selected 
Writings of Helmut Kallmann, jointly edited by John Beckwith and Robin Elliott. The 
composer John Beckwith was a close friend of Kallmann’s from their student days at the 
University of Toronto over sixty years ago, and a collaborator in several of his projects. 
The musicologist Robin Elliott holds the Jean A. Chalmers Chair of Canadian Music at 
the University of Toronto, and is a frequent author on Canadian musical topics; he 
worked with Kallmann on the second edition of the Encyclopedia, and in July received 
the 2012 Helmut Kallmann Award from CAML. The new volume, begun (with 
Kallmann’s knowledge and approval) in the fall of 2011, incorporates critical and 
research essays, reports, reflections, and personal memoirs. Items have been selected 
from a variety of published sources; several have not previously been published. The 
co-editors have benefited from access to Kallmann’s extensive personal files. 
 
Most of the writings in the new book deal with various aspects of Canadian music. Two 
of them—“The Making of a One-Country Encyclopedia” and the title piece, “Mapping 
Canada’s Music”—are Kallmann’s reminiscences of his professional work. The 
Beckwith-Elliott selection also includes items of a more personal nature, notably a long 
essay written during his retirement in which he recalls his life growing up in a Jewish 
middle-class family in 1930s Berlin. To date it has only appeared in German; the 
English version has not previously been published. Along with shorter accounts, one 
dealing with his internment years, and another with his sense of ethnic identity (a Jew, 
educated first in Germany, and a Canadian citizen), this article affords moving evidence 
of an extraordinary life.  
 
 
 


English

Helmut Kallmann: A Life in Canadian Music

Doi, Carolyn

Conference Notes and Impressions (MLA 2012)

Luyk, Sean

 CAML REVIEW / REVUE DE L’ACBM  40, NO. 3 (NOVEMBER / NOVEMBRE 2012)  PAGE 23 
IAML 2012: A New Librarian’s Experience 
 
by Sean Luyk 
University of Alberta 
Winner of the CAML First-Time IAML Attendee Award 2012 
 
 
The 2012 conference of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and 
Documentation Centres (IAML), held in Montréal, Québec, proved to be an exciting and inspiring 
experience for a “green” music librarian such as myself. In what follows, I share some highlights of 
the conference.  
Sunday 
 
I arrived in Montréal in the early afternoon and checked into the Royal Victoria College Residence. 
With a couple of free hours, I registered, unpacked, and explored the city before it was time for the 
first event. I made my way to the opening night reception at Redpath Hall—a beautiful and historic 
building on McGill’s lower campus, currently used as a performance space by the Schulich School of 
Music. I soon ran into many of my Canadian colleagues, and mingled with the numerous 
international attendees as well. Speeches by Colleen Cook, Dean of Libraries, McGill University, and 
Jan Guise, President of CAML, set the stage for the excellent conference that was to come. 
Monday 
 
The opening plenary session, “Libraries, A Force for Change,” consisted of talks by four major 
figures in the Canadian library and information field: Guy Berthiaume (Chair and CEO of the 
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec), Daniel Boivin (Executive Director, OCLC Canada, 
Latin America & the Caribbean), Daniel J. Caron (Librarian and Archivist of Canada, Library and 
Archives Canada), and Colleen Cook (Dean of Libraries, McGill University). Each speaker discussed 
how their institutions are coping with rapid change in our field, highlighted projects and initiatives 
at their own institutions in light of change, and expressed their visions for the future role of libraries 
and archives in Canada. 
Following the plenary I attended various sessions on topics including digital music libraries, large-
scale music encoding projects, and preservation of our audio heritage. I was pleased to see that 
music libraries around the world are facing similar challenges, and that they are using these 
challenges as opportunities for creating new collections and services for their patrons.  
 CAML REVIEW / REVUE DE L’ACBM  40, NO. 3 (NOVEMBER / NOVEMBRE 2012)  PAGE 24 
The evening consisted of a fine reception held at the Grande Bibliothèque, Bibliothèque et Archives 
nationales du Québec. The reception had as its focus the work of the late great Dr. Helmut 
Kallmann and included the presentation of CAML’s Kallmann Award for Distinguished Service to Dr. 
Robin Elliott, Jean A. Chalmers Chair in Canadian Music, University of Toronto. Dr. Elliott gave a 
moving speech honouring the achievements of the late Dr. Kallmann, and quite impressively did so 
eloquently in all three official languages of IAML.  
Tuesday 
 
Tuesday morning was spent preparing for my own talk: “Scene but Not Heard: Strategies for 
Collecting Local Music.” The panel in which I presented—“Collecting Information, Creating 
Collections”—consisted of an excellent mix of presentations on issues relating to music collection 
development, and discussions of unique music collections projects. I was pleased by the positive 
feedback, encouragement and support, and advice I received from my colleagues. I was also able to 
connect with others from around the world who are working in the area of local music collection 
development, and have since been in touch with them for help and advice on my own project. 
My afternoon was occupied by the very interesting “Future of IAML” session, which involved 
discussion of proposed changes to the governance of IAML. For this new IAML member, the session 
offered a glimpse into the challenges faced by international organizations. Many long-term IAML 
members were present and they discussed the history and drawbacks of the current governance 
structure of the organization. One thing that became clear from this session was that IAML 
members are passionate about their organization, and are willing to work hard to ensure it remains 
vibrant and relevant in the twenty-first century.   
Following some excellent presentations on the revival of the Bolshoi Theatre Library and on CBC 
Radio-Canada’s new online platform for delivering music to Canadians, it was time for a short break 
before heading to the evening concert. The venue was the stunning and historic Chapelle Notre-
Dame-de-Bon-Secours. Overlooking Montréal’s Old Port, the Chapelle was once a refuge for the 
many sailors who arrived at the port as well as immigrants who had just landed in Canada. The 
concert featured the early music vocal ensemble Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal, and 
included works by Tomas Luis de Victoria, Sweelinck, and a handful of other composers of the late 
sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries. Led by Christopher Jackson, the renowned pioneer of 
early music in Montréal, the concert was an excellent way to end a full day of conferencing.  
Wednesday 
 
I was pleased to be able to make it to the perennially early Alexander Street Press Breakfast, and 
hear the latest developments and initiatives that Alexander Street Press is taking with their online 
music products. I then attended sessions on digital audio in music libraries, as well as a very 
informative session on educational training and professional development for music library staff—a 
 CAML REVIEW / REVUE DE L’ACBM  40, NO. 3 (NOVEMBER / NOVEMBRE 2012)  PAGE 25 
roundtable session presented by the Commission on Service and Training. It was time for lunch, and 
I made my way downtown to the Centre de musique canadienne au Québec (CMC). This Open 
House event featured a presentation of CMC services, a lunch, and a wonderful recital of the music 
of current Canadian composers Serge Arcuri and Ana Sokolovic.   
The afternoon consisted of the cultural and social program. I had decided to take part in the walking 
tour of old Montréal, which was an excellent way to see the city.  
Thursday 
 
I spent the early morning at the exhibits, meeting with many vendor contacts I had so far known 
only through email, and making some new contacts as well. I visited the poster sessions and then 
made my way to the CAML annual general meeting. On the way, I had a chance to look at an 
excellent exhibit of Canadian musical ephemera and sheet music on display in the McGill 
Humanities and Social Sciences Library. The CAML meeting was the first I had attended, and I was 
amazed by the amount of work that such a small organization was able to accomplish over the year. 
I had just one more session to attend, “Music Resources – Network, Users, Research,” which was a 
worthwhile look into the role of research in how we develop and position services to our patrons. 
After a short break to catch up on some email and get a quick bite to eat, I made my way to the 
final concert of the conference. Featuring the Montréal-based string quartet Quatuor Bozzini, the 
concert consisted of works by contemporary Canadian composers Cassandra Miller and Michael 
Oesterle, both in attendance. I was proud to see Canadian works featured for an international 
audience, and performed so beautifully by Quatuor Bozzini.  
Friday 
 
During my final day of the conference, I decided to attend multiple sessions in one time slot, seeing 
papers on access to archival collections and on folklore. I was also fortunate to attend a session on 
current bibliographical projects, which included a paper presented (in absentia) by the legendary 
Donald W. Krummel.  
With the conference coming to a close, and many delegates making their way home, it was clear 
that this had been a very successful conference and a fantastic experience for a new music librarian. 
All that was left on the program was the closing banquet. Buses picked up delegates for the forty-
five minute ride to the Sucrerie de la Montagne, in nearby Rigaud, Québec. Led by the eccentric and 
humourous proprietor Pierre Faucher, delegates were treated to a welcome cocktail of “caribou” 
and a tour of the facilities. Dinner consisted of hearty traditional Québecois favourites, folk music 
entertainment, and amusing audience participation. All that remained was for me to reflect on the 
great week I had experienced, and to look forward to the next IAML conference.   


IAML 2012: A New Librarian’s Experience

Jurkowski, Edward

 
CAML REVIEW 40, NO. 1 (APRIL 2012)   PAGE 18 
Centre and Periphery, Roots and Exile: Interpreting the Music of István Anhalt, 
György Kurtág, and Sándor Veress. Friedemann Sallis, Robin Elliott, and Kenneth 
DeLong, editors. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2011. xviii, 461 p. ISBN 978-1-55458-
148-1. $85.00. 
 
 
Do composers work in a vacuum, or do time and place play a role in the compositional 
process? Are such issues also important for the analysis or interpretation of a work? The 
three editors of Centre and Periphery, Roots and Exile have compiled a collection of twenty 
essays that certainly makes a compelling argument that such matters are central to 
composers‟ thinking, the art they produce, and how it is discussed and disseminated. As 
Friedemann Sallis announces: “This book brings together essays that examine how ideas of 
place and identity impinge on the creation, analysis, and interpretations of twentieth-century 
art music” (1). The objects of this study are three composers whose origins stem from 
Hungary—István Anhalt (1919-2012), György Kurtág (b. 1926), and Sándor Veress (1907-
1992). The impetus for the majority of the essays was an international symposium of the 
same name that took place in January 2008 at the University of Calgary (although the 
editors do not indicate which articles were part of the conference).  
 
Over half of the chapters in the book survey aspects of Anhalt‟s oeuvre. It is, of course, a 
welcome event when a publication appears about one of Canada‟s important composers 
and pedagogues of the last sixty years. In fact, a cottage industry of monographs devoted to 
Anhalt and his music seems to have sprung up. This is the third book in recent years 
devoted to the Hungarian-born composer, standing alongside the 2007 Eagle Minds: 
Selected Correspondence of István Anhalt and George Rochberg and the 2010 Music 
Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts (both books are also published by Wilfrid Laurier Press). 
   
The book is in four large sections. Following an introductory essay by Sallis, there are three 
chapters under the heading of “First Word.” Each essay is written by an individual close to 
one of the three composers at the center of the book. The first chapter is by John Beckwith, 
a colleague and close friend of Anhalt since the mid-1950s, who provides some personal 
and touching reflections about Anhalt. The second chapter is by Gergely Szokolay, a pianist 
who studied with Kurtág back in Hungary. The essay is valuable, as it provides a glimpse 
into Kurtág the teacher, a subject that has, unfortunately, received minimal attention by 
Kurtág scholars to date. The final chapter is by Veress‟s son, Claudio. The approach is 
novel: by interpreting characteristics of the eight movements from Orbis tonorum, one of his 
father‟s final works, the son connects each movement to biographical attributes of his 
father.  
 
The next major section, entitled “Places and Displacement,” contains seven chapters. The 
first is arguably the most valuable: it is the text Anhalt submitted as the keynote address for 
the symposium noted above. Anhalt brilliantly uses the binary model of centre-periphery as 
the modus operandi to describe his personal history, tracing his journey from Budapest to 
Kingston, Ontario. Kingston plays an important point of departure for Robin Elliott‟s and 
William Benjamin‟s two superb studies of Anhalt‟s orchestral work, Kingston Triptych, 
written between 2002 and 2005. The next chapter by Florian Scheding is, unfortunately, one 
of the weakest in the collection. The author attempts to draw parallels between Anhalt and 
the Hungarian-born Mátyás Seiber by asserting that their interest in serial composition 
following World War II can be attributed to their respective displacements. However, the 
 
CAML REVIEW 40, NO. 1 (APRIL 2012)   PAGE 19 
features Scheding identifies to support his arguments are, at best, tenuous, since they can 
be found in a wide variety of other serial composers—both displaced and not displaced, and 
in both musical centers and peripheries—thus substantially weakening his central thesis. 
Rachel Beckles Willson offers an attractive contribution in her essay, “Letters to America.” 
In her work, she uncovers direct and indirect meaning from two autobiographical statements 
that Veress prepared in the 1950s as part of his application to immigrate to the United 
States. Through her detailed study, Beckles Willson demonstrates that one‟s identity can be 
reconstructed depending upon the intended destination. The point in itself is minor; far more 
significant, though, is what these statements imply about the orchestral work, Sinfonia 
Minneapolitana (1952-53). Gordon Smith‟s intent, in his article entitled “Roots and Routes,” 
is similar to Scheding‟s, yet his arguments are far more convincing. Specifically, Smith‟s 
impressive examination of Anhalt‟s four operas (in particular, his 1995 opera, Tikkun 
(Traces)) provides a compelling case that Anhalt‟s displacement plays a fundamental role in 
these works. Finally, Rachelle Chiasson-Taylor provides a much-needed update to the 
Anhalt collection held at Library and Archives Canada.  
 
Section 3 of the book is entitled “Perspectives on Reception, Analysis, and Interpretation.” 
The primary theme of these essays is how one‟s perception can affect both the response 
and understanding of a musical composition. Surprisingly, given that three composers are 
the focus of study in the book, four of the five chapters are devoted to Kurtág. (Austin 
Clarkson‟s “Sewing Earth to Sky,” which explores Anhalt‟s Jewish heritage and the role it 
played in forming his pedagogical views, is the sole exception.) Stefano Melis examines an 
intriguing aspect of Kurtág‟s pedagogy—specifically, the intimate relationship between 
composition and interpretation contained in the eight volumes of piano music, collectively 
entitled Játékok (Games). The essay provides valuable insight into Kurtág the pedagogue; 
however, it strikes me as slightly odd that Melis does not introduce even a minimal 
discussion of the inspiration for  Játékok, namely Bartók‟s Mikrokosmos. The remaining 
three chapters by Alvaro Oviedo, Julia Glieva-Szokolay, and Dina Lentsner provide different 
analytical approaches to perhaps the most important portion of Kurtág‟s oeuvre—his vocal 
music. Glieva-Szokolay‟s insights concerning the Russian literary texts represent, to my 
mind, an important contribution to Kurtág research. Lentsner‟s analytical model, which is 
indebted to the literary theorist Yuri Lotman, provides some fascinating insights into 
text/music analysis. My one criticism of this impressive work is that, when the author places 
the model in a larger context, she inexplicably addresses some vocal pieces by George 
Crumb. I believe a much stronger point would have been made by examining vocal works 
by one of the composers central to the focus of the book, or by other prominent Hungarian 
composers such as György Ligeti or Peter Eötvös, to name but two for whom vocal music 
plays a prominent role in their oeuvre.  
 
The final major section of the book, entitled “The Presence of the Past and Memory in 
Contemporary Music,” examines how memory plays a role with identity in music. There are 
four chapters devoted to this theme. Jean Paul Olive and Ulrich Mosch, in their essays 
“György Kurtág et Walter Benjamin : consideration sur l‟aura dans la musique” and “What 
Presence of the Past? Artistic Autobiography in György Kurtág‟s Music,” explore how the 
past informs the compositional approach and content of Kurtág‟s works. Particular attention 
is given to Kurtág‟s miniatures and homage pieces. Alan Gillmor‟s “„Listening to Inner 
Voices‟: István Anhalt‟s Sonance•Resonance (Welche Töne?)” provides a captivating and 
brilliant interpretation of the Beethovenian allusions in this late orchestral work. Gillmor‟s 
intertextual reading is a vital addition to Anhalt scholarship and should be required reading 
 
CAML REVIEW 40, NO. 1 (APRIL 2012)   PAGE 20 
for anyone undertaking study of the composer. Finally, in “Music Written from Memory in the 
Late Work of István Anhalt,” Friedemann Sallis provides a fascinating exploration of how 
memory engenders the integration of the musical relationships that underpin Anhalt‟s Four 
Portraits from Memory, a work written between 2005 and 2007.  
 
The book concludes with an interview between Robin Elliott and Anhalt undertaken on 6 
July 2008. The springboard for their conversation was Lydia Goehr‟s 1997 essay, “Music 
and Musicians in Exile: The Romantic Legacy of a Double Life.” Anhalt suggests that Goehr 
was short-sighted in her assertion that displaced composers experience a crisis of 
“doubleness,” and that, given the complexity of humans, “multipleness” would be a more 
appropriate term. 
 
Centre and Periphery contains a wide variety of approaches that collectively provide 
valuable insights into the three composers and their work. Since over half the book is 
devoted to Anhalt, it is especially important as a contribution to the growing body of Anhalt 
research. Yet, it is precisely this skewed breakdown that makes this reviewer believe that 
an important opportunity has been lost. Specifically, it is a shame that a portion of the book 
could not have been devoted to the music of György Ligeti—unquestionably the most 
influential post-World War II composer from the “peripheral” country of Hungary. This is not 
meant as a slight to Veress‟s art (although I note that the editors themselves felt that only 
two of the twenty chapters warrant inclusion about Veress). On the contrary, I am very 
much a fan of his music. However, I feel the claim that “all three composers have had an 
extraordinary impact on the cultural environments within which their work took place” (back 
cover) is excessive. In fact, even in the introduction, Sallis writes that “notwithstanding the 
enormous contribution he [i.e., Veress] made as a professor and composer in Switzerland, 
his postwar compositions [i.e., the ones written while displaced] never achieved the success 
that his pre-war compositions seemed to portend” (7). Ligeti and Kurtág are nearly exact 
contemporaries, and while Ligeti left Hungary during the 1956 revolution, Kurtág decided to 
remain in Hungary for the next forty odd years (or put another way, to stay centered within 
this peripheral area). However, unlike Anhalt and Veress, Ligeti chose to live for the 
remainder of his life and play a central role within one of Europe‟s musical centres. As such, 
his work would have represented a wonderful contrast with that of Kurtág and could have 
substantially enriched the focus of the book. 
 
The editorial work is top notch, with beautifully typeset musical examples and reproductions 
of manuscript pages. While a bibliography pertaining to each essay follows every 
contribution, it would have been highly desirable to have, at minimum, general 
bibliographies of each composer appearing at the end of the book. Rounding out the 
presentation are biographies of all the contributors as well as a first-rate index. As a final 
comment: unfortunately the book is not stitch bound, and the binding of my review copy split 
after only a day of use. 
 
 
Edward Jurkowski  
University of Lethbridge 
 


Centre and Periphery, Roots and Exile: Interpreting the Music of István Anhalt, György Kurtág, and Sándor Veress (Book Review)

Debly, Patricia

Tapestries: Music by George Fiala and Heather Schmidt (CD Review)

Hung, Eric

Victor Feldbrill: Canadian Conductor Extraordinaire (Book Review)

Kallmann, Helmut

From the Archives / Tiré des archives - CMLA / CAML: 15 plus 25 Years of Flourishing / L'ACBM : 15 ans plus 25 ans d'épanouissement

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