Women in Canadian Music

Emma (Lajeunesse) Albani
(1847-1930)
Opera Singer

Born in Chambly, Quebec, in 1847, Emma Lajeunesse began her musical studies with her parents. She performed publicly in the 1850s and 1860s around Montreal and was engaged as a soloist for three years at a church in Albany, New York, before leaving in 1868 to pursue advanced musical studies in Paris and later Milan. The following year she made her operatic debut in Messina, Italy. She enjoyed early success in Messina in 1869-70 as word of her talent spread rapidly. It was at this time that she adopted the name Albani.

Engagements followed quickly elsewhere in Italy as well as in Malta, where she sang the entire 1870-71 season. In 1871, at age 24, Albani was offered a contract with London's prestigious Covent Garden opera house, with which she would be affiliated from 1872 until 1896. During this period she went on to sing at many of the great opera houses in Europe as well as in Russia and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She made highly acclaimed concert tours in Europe, North America, the British Commonwealth and elsewhere, returning to Canada several times, including a triumphal coast-to-coast tour in 1896. She gave English and American premières of Wagner operas, and world premières of works by Gounod, Dvorak, Liszt and Brahms, among others, some of which were created specifically for her.

In a career that spanned four decades, she sang 43 different roles in 40 operas, and was also highly acclaimed for her oratorio and recital performances. As the first Canadian musician to achieve international fame, Emma Albani set high standards for later generations of Canadians. She received many honours from royalty and became a personal friend of Queen Victoria, singing for the Queen's private soirées many times at Windsor and Balmoral castles. Canadian commemorations include a monument at her birthplace in Chambly, a street named after her in Montreal, and a postage stamp issued in 1980 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her death. Archival materials are held at the National Library of Canada, the City of Chambly, and the Archives nationales du Québec.

Albani, Emma. -- Forty years of song. -- London : Mills and Bonn Ltd., [1911]. -- 285 p.

MacDonald, Cheryl. -- Emma Albani : Victorian diva. -- Toronto : Dundurn Press Ltd., 1984. -- 205 p. -- ISBN 091967075X (bd.), 0919670741 (pa.)

Willis, Stephen. -- "Archives of Emma Albani at the National Library of Canada". -- National Library news. -- Vol. 25, no. 12 (December 1993). -- ISSN 00279633. -- P. 13-14

Helen Creighton
(1899-1989)
Folklorist, Folksong Collector

After receiving a music diploma from McGill University in 1915 and graduating from Halifax Ladies' College in 1916, Helen Creighton spent brief stints as a social worker, journalist and children's radio host in Halifax, and as a teacher in Mexico. In 1928, while researching a journalistic project on pirates, she interviewed people who knew stories and songs from pirate days. Realizing that Nova Scotians were a rich source of folklore, she set about collecting and transcribing songs and stories throughout the province, sometimes travelling on foot or by boat to reach isolated communities, and pushing her metre-long melodeon (reed organ) in a wheelbarrow. In the 1930s she recorded on wax cylinders, later switching to acetate discs and tape as they became available. She collected songs and stories for the Library of Congress in 1943-44 and 1948, and for the National Museum of Canada from 1947 to 1967.

Her collection of over 4,000 songs and many stories, in English, French, Gaelic, Micmac and German, includes some from the 13th and 15th centuries, as well as the now-popular Farewell to Nova Scotia. Many of the songs have been commercially recorded and have become the basis of ballet, opera and symphony scores. A recognized authority on folktales, particularly ghost stories, Creighton published a number of anthologies of stories and songs.

She was a Member of the Order of Canada, and among her many awards were six honorary doctorates and the Canadian Music Council Medal.

Her memory is kept alive through the Helen Creighton Folklore Festival in Dartmouth, and the Helen Creighton Foundation. Her collection is at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia.

Creighton, Helen. -- The best of Helen Creighton. -- Selected and introduced by Rosemary Bachman. -- Hantsport (N.S.) : Lancelot Press, 1988. -- 143 p. -- ISBN 0889993785

Edwards, Barry et al. -- "Collecting the lore of maritime folk". -- Fugue. -- Vol. 2, no. 4 (December 1977). -- ISSN 07028393. -- P. 18-19, 27

Sclanders, Ian. -- "She's collecting long lost songs". -- Maclean's. -- Vol. 65, no. 18 (September 1952). -- ISSN 00249262. -- P. 14-15, 54-57

La Bolduc (Mary Travers)
(1894-1941)
Singer, Songwriter

Born in Newport, a small fishing and lumbering town on the southern coast of the Gaspé Peninsula, Mary Travers came from a large family of English descent. Although there was little or no musical tradition in her family, she learned to play the fiddle, the harmonica, the accordion and the jew's-harp. At 13 she left home to work as a domestic in Montreal. In 1914 she married a tradesman, Édouard Bolduc, and together they had a large family. With the beginning of the Depression years, she turned to public musical performance as a means of augmenting the family's modest income.

Travers was first engaged as a fiddler for the musical show "Veillées du bon vieux temps" in 1927. Her recording career also began at this time, accompanying the singer Ovila Légaré. Travers was encouraged to sing for the first time for the musical review, and initial success led her to compose La Cuisinière. Though she was scarcely known, her recordings of La Cuisinière and La Servante, issued on 78-rpm discs by the Starr label, sold an unprecedented 12,000 copies in Quebec. Within a short time she became known far and wide throughout the province, and was universally referred to as "La Bolduc."

During the 1930s, Travers recorded 85 of her songs for Starr. They were written in colloquial French and concerned mundane events, expressing the joys and miseries of the common people during those difficult times. Most of all, they made people laugh about the very things that were most distressing to them.

The evolution of the chanson in Quebec was greatly influenced by La Bolduc, and her songs enjoy a special place in Quebec's musical legacy. According to the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (Toronto, 1992), "Though she has had many imitators, she has had no equals."

Benoît, Réal. -- La Bolduc. -- Montréal : Éditions de l'Homme, c1959. -- 123 p.

Lonergan, David. -- La Bolduc : la vie de Mary Travers, 1894-1941. -- Bic (Québec) : Issac-Dion Éditeur, [1992]. -- 212 p.

Kathleen Parlow
(1890-1963)
Violinist

Violin virtuoso Kathleen Parlow was born in Calgary in 1890. As a child she studied in San Francisco and in St. Petersburg, giving her first recital at the age of six. By the age of 15, she was performing for the British Royal Family. She made her professional debut in 1907 in Berlin and thereafter toured internationally, based initially in Europe and then in the United States.

In 1941 she moved to Toronto to teach at the Toronto Conservatory of Music, and immediately assumed a leading position in the community as an active chamber musician and as a soloist with ensembles such as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. She performed with some of the most prominent Canadian artists of her time, including the pianists Sir Ernest MacMillan and Mario Bernardi and the cellist Zara Nelsova. The renowned Parlow String Quartet, which was active from 1943 to 1958, acquired an international reputation.

Godfrey Ridout wrote in the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (Toronto, 1992): "As a performer Parlow was very great indeed. She had a big, pure tone, a suave legato (‘as if she were playing with a nine-foot bow,' as one admirer put it) and effortless technique."

She died in 1963 of complications from a fall. Thanks to her recordings, scholarships in her name, and two generations of students, her influence continues to be felt throughout Canada and the world.

French, Maida Parlow. -- Kathleen Parlow : a portrait. -- Toronto : Ryerson Press, c1967. -- 167 p.

Hambleton, Ronald. -- "Tea with Kathleen Parlow". -- Fugue. -- Vol. 2, no. 6 (February 1978). -- ISSN 07028393. -- P. 12-15

Barbara Pentland
(born January 2, 1912)
Composer

Courtesy of Barbara Pentland

"The creative force has to be such that the laws necessary for its expression should be continually challenged. There is an element of daring in all great art." When Barbara Pentland wrote these words she was no doubt thinking of her own career. Composer, teacher, pianist and pioneer of Canadian music, Barbara Pentland was born in Winnipeg in 1912. Despite the opposition of her parents, who considered composition to be potentially too demanding for someone of fragile health, Pentland began to compose at the age of nine. She studied music first in Winnipeg, later at a boarding school in Montreal, and then in 1929 she began formal composition training in Paris. Her studies continued in Winnipeg and at the Julliard school in New York and, with Aaron Copland, at the Berkshire Music Center. In 1942 Pentland moved to Toronto. By 1945, with the première of her Violin Concerto, she had made a name for herself as one of the new generation of "radical" composers.

While her compositions have always continued to evolve, by the mid-1950s Barbara Pentland had reached her mature style "exploiting...sound combinations in a sensitive but unsensual and, certainly, unsentimental way" (Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, Toronto, 1992). By 1995 her list of compositions included more than 100 works for all combinations of instruments, voice and media, and a series of teaching materials designed to introduce young piano students to 20th-century techniques. Long a critic of what she believed to be Canada's colonial mentality, Barbara Pentland has been an outspoken advocate for Canadian music in general and women composers in particular.

In honour of her 75th birthday, the City of Vancouver declared September 27, 1987, as "Barbara Pentland Day." She was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 1989 and has received honorary degrees from the University of Manitoba and Simon Fraser University. She is a member of the Canadian League of Composers and an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre. Her papers have been deposited at the Music Division of the National Library of Canada.

Dixon, Gail. -- "The string quartets of Barbara Pentland". -- Canadian university music review. -- Vol. 11, no. 2 (1991). -- ISSN 07100353. -- P. 94-121

Eastman, Sheila and Timothy J. McGee. -- Barbara Pentland. -- Toronto : University of Toronto Press, c1983. -- 134 p. -- ISBN 0802055621

Ethel Stark
(born 1916?)
Conductor

Courtesy of Ethel Stark; Photo: William Notman & Son Ltd.

In 1940, the year in which Quebec women finally obtained the right to vote, one of their number, a musician by the name of Ethel Stark, also gave them access to the symphonic orchestral stage by founding the Montreal Women's Symphony. Having received her training under conductors Artur Rodzinski and Fritz Reiner at the Curtis Institute in Philadephia, Stark was a capable conductor of the 80-woman ensemble. On October 22, 1947, they performed at the renowned Carnegie Hall in New York-the first Canadian symphony orchestra to achieve this. Although denied even the most basic financial assistance, the Montreal Women's Symphony continued to perform until the late 1960s.

Ethel Stark's talent also attracted the attention of orchestras overseas. She has been guest conductor with, among others, Kol-Israel in Jerusalem (1952, 1962), Tokyo Asahi and Hoso Kyokai Nippon (1960), and Miami (1957, 1958, 1962).

A student of Lea Luboshutz and Carl Flesh, Ethel Stark matched her orchestral conducting with a brilliant career as a violinist. In 1934 she was the first Canadian woman to perform as soloist in a program broadcast in the United States, playing Tchaikovsky's Concerto with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Fritz Reiner. She also performed numerous Canadian works, including one dedicated to her, the Fantasy for Violin and Piano by Violet Archer.

Ethel Stark's interest in violin teaching methods led her to devote considerable time to research and teaching. Among the institutions where she has taught are the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. (1951), the Conservatoire de musique du Québec in Montreal (1952-1963) and Concordia University (1974-1975).

The many years of effort marking Ethel Stark's exceptional career have earned her several prizes and honours, including the Order of Canada (1979), an honorary doctorate from Concordia University (1980) and the Commemorative Medal for the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada (1992).

Kivi, Linda K. -- Canadian women making music. -- Toronto : Green Dragon Press, 1992. -- 134 p. -- ISBN 0969195583

Rooney, Frances. -- "The Montreal women's symphony". -- Atlantis. -- Vol. 5, no. 1 (1979). -- ISSN 07027818. -- P. 70-82