Music

The U.S. incarceration machine imprisons more people than in any other country. Music-Making in U.S. Prisons looks at the role music-making can play in achieving goals of accountability and healing that challenge the widespread assumption that prisons and punishment keep societies safe.

The book’s synthesis of historical research, contemporary practices, and pedagogies of music-making inside prisons reveals that, prior to the 1970s tough-on-crime era, choirs, instrumental ensembles, and radio shows bridged lives inside and outside prisons. Mass incarceration had a significant negative impact on music programs. Despite this setback, current programs testify to the potency of music education to support personal and social growth for people experiencing incarceration and deepen social awareness of the humanity found behind prison walls.

Cohen and Duncan argue that music-making creates opportunities to humanize the complexity of crime, sustain meaningful relationships between incarcerated individuals and their families, and build social awareness of the prison industrial complex. The authors combine scholarship and personal experience to guide music educators, music aficionados, and social activists to create restorative social practices through music-making.

Translated into English for the first time, Foundations of Modern Harmony, by composer and music theorist Karel Janec̆ek, addresses the analysis and composition of music not based on the tonal harmony that was common language until the early 20th century. Discussing this newer music requires a vocabulary in which all combinations of notes, or chords, can be named. Janec̆ek developed his theory of modern harmony over many years. In this book, he classifies chords according to their intervallic structure, their possible arrangements, and then based on their consonance and dissonance. His focus on what we hear leads to a discussion of “imaginary” pitches, those that are still heard after they are no longer sounding.

Dealing with such issues as harmonizing a melody, resolving dissonant chords, and the formation and extinction of a sense of the tonic, Janeček’s work is an exciting complement to the theories of Schoenberg and Hindemith. His discussion of harmonic motion leads to the consideration of harmonic function, of establishing the tonic, of modulation, of atonal composition, and of static and kinetic conceptions of harmony. First published in 1965, Janeček’s concerns are of continuing importance to music theorists and composers.

This Awareness of Beauty is the first book to consider the orchestral and wind band music of Canadian composer Healey Willan, who was known primarily for his choral work. A succinct biography accompanies historical, analytical, and critical investigations of Willan’s instrumental music, asserting Willan’s seminal place in Canadian music and the significance of his orchestral and wind band music both nationally and internationally.
Each composition is investigated in chronological order to illustrate the composer’s evolution as a creator of instrumental music from his early years in England to his later, and more notable, accomplishments in Canada. Willan’s orchestral music may be seen as both a reaction to and a stimulus for the significant improvement in Canadian orchestral performance during the 1930s and 40s, a factor in the creation of his large-scale compositions, including two symphonies and a piano concerto.
Although much has been written about Willan, most of it has centred on his choral work, with biography and/or musicology as the frame of reference; this project considers his instrumental music in terms of performance, provides historical context for many of the works included, and corrects errors that have crept into the literature.

Georg Tintner is best known to music lovers for his stunning interpretations of Bruckner's symphonies recorded by Naxos in the 1990s. He was a man who lived and breathed music. Blessed with perfect pitch, at the age of nine he was the first Jew to join the Vienna Boys' Choir. Later, he became immersed in the concert life of the city, rubbing shoulders with Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern, and observing the great conductors of the age. But by the late 1930s Tintner had to flee and he eventually landed in Auckland, New Zealand. There could  have been no greater contrast for this gifted young musician, yet he started a new life there before moving on to Australia and, much later, to Canada.

Tintner's third wife and widow, Tanya, has documented the life of this uncompromising man and the result is a revealing window on to the artistic temperament from the person closest to him. Out of Time is a must-read for everyone who believes in the discipline that excellence in the arts demands – and the pure joy it can bring.

Mapping Canada’s Music is a selection of writings by the late Canadian music librarian and historian Helmut Kallmann (1922–2012). Most of the essays deal with aspects of Canadian music, but some are also autobiographical, including one written during retirement in which Kallmann recalls growing up in a middle-class Jewish family in 1930s Berlin under the spectre of Nazism.
Of the seventeen selected writings by Kallmann, five have never before been published; many of the others are from difficult-to-locate sources. They include critical and research essays, reports, reflections, and memoirs. Each chapter is prefaced with an introduction by the editors. Two initial chapters offer a biography of Kallmann and an assessment of his contributions to Canadian music.
The variety, breadth, and scope of these writings confirm Kallmann’s pioneering role in Canadian music research and the importance of his legacy to the cultural life of his adopted country. In the current climate of cuts to archival collections and services, the publication of these essays by and about a pre-eminent collector and historian serves as a timely reminder of the importance of cultural memory.

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.

This innovative book explores religion through music, the only art form named after a divinity and one of the most universally recognized forms of human experience.

Music has been documented from prehistory to the present age in virtually all known cultures. For many, it is a vehicle for spiritual growth and community empowerment, whether it’s understood as a gift of the gods or simply a practice for achieving mental states conducive to enlightenment.

Traditionally, when religious scholars talk about music, it’s as a kind of aesthetic supplement to the important spiritual content of a religion, analogous to stained-glass windows or temple paintings. In contrast, Sacred Sound: Experiencing Music in World Religions acknowledges the critical role of musical activity in religious life. Music, including chant and vocal utterance, is not incidental in religious practice but a sacred treasure that is central to the growth and sustenance of religions throughout the world. Musical sound is sacred in most religions because it embodies the divine and can be shared by all participants, enduring among diverse communities of people despite theological differences.

Covering six of the major world religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism—forty selections of music and chant are available on the publisher's website. Contributors are respected scholars in religious studies and musicology and provide insight from both disciplines. The first book of its kind, Sacred Sound is a milestone in the growing cross-disciplinary study of religion and music.

Audio files available at https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/S/Sacred-Sound

This book examines the impact place and displacement can have on the composition and interpretation of Western art music, using as its primary objects of study the work of István Anhalt (1919–2012), György Kurtág (1926–), and Sándor Veress (1907–92). 

Although all three composers are of Hungarian origin, their careers followed radically different paths. Whereas, Kurtág remained in Budapest for most of his career, Anhalt and Veress left: the former in 1946 and immigrated to Canada and the latter in 1948 and settled in Switzerland. All three composers have had an extraordinary impact in the cultural environments within which their work took place.

In the first section, “Place and Displacement,” contributors examine what happens when composers and their music migrate in the culturally complex world of the late twentieth century. The past one hundred years produced record numbers of refugees, and this fact is now beginning to resonate in the study of music. As Anhalt himself forcefully asserts, however, not all composers who emigrate should be understood as exiles. The first chapters of this book explore some of the problems and questions surrounding this issue.

Essays in the second section, “Perspectives on Reception, Analysis, and Interpretation,” look at how performing acts of interpretation on music implies bringing the time, place, and identity of the musician, the analyst, and the teacher to bear on the object of study. Like Kodály, Kurtág considers his work to be “naturally” embedded in Hungarian culture, but he is also a quintessentially European artist. Much of his production—he is one of the twentieth century’s most prolific composers of vocal music—involves the setting of Hungarian texts, but in the late 1970s his cultural horizons expanded to include texts in Russian, German, French, English, and ancient Greek. The book explores how musicologists’ divergent cultural perspectives impinge on the interpretation of this work.

The final section, “The Presence of the Past and Memory in Contemporary Music,” examines the impact time and memory can have on notions of place and identity in music. All living art taps into the personal and collective past in one way or another. The final four chapters look at various aspects of this relationship.

This book examines the impact place and displacement can have on the composition and interpretation of Western art music, using as its primary objects of study the work of István Anhalt (1919–2012), György Kurtág (1926–), and Sándor Veress (1907–92). 

Although all three composers are of Hungarian origin, their careers followed radically different paths. Whereas, Kurtág remained in Budapest for most of his career, Anhalt and Veress left: the former in 1946 and immigrated to Canada and the latter in 1948 and settled in Switzerland. All three composers have had an extraordinary impact in the cultural environments within which their work took place.

In the first section, “Place and Displacement,” contributors examine what happens when composers and their music migrate in the culturally complex world of the late twentieth century. The past one hundred years produced record numbers of refugees, and this fact is now beginning to resonate in the study of music. As Anhalt himself forcefully asserts, however, not all composers who emigrate should be understood as exiles. The first chapters of this book explore some of the problems and questions surrounding this issue.

Essays in the second section, “Perspectives on Reception, Analysis, and Interpretation,” look at how performing acts of interpretation on music implies bringing the time, place, and identity of the musician, the analyst, and the teacher to bear on the object of study. Like Kodály, Kurtág considers his work to be “naturally” embedded in Hungarian culture, but he is also a quintessentially European artist. Much of his production—he is one of the twentieth century’s most prolific composers of vocal music—involves the setting of Hungarian texts, but in the late 1970s his cultural horizons expanded to include texts in Russian, German, French, English, and ancient Greek. The book explores how musicologists’ divergent cultural perspectives impinge on the interpretation of this work.

The final section, “The Presence of the Past and Memory in Contemporary Music,” examines the impact time and memory can have on notions of place and identity in music. All living art taps into the personal and collective past in one way or another. The final four chapters look at various aspects of this relationship.

Mapping Canada’s Music is a selection of writings by the late Canadian music librarian and historian Helmut Kallmann (1922–2012). Most of the essays deal with aspects of Canadian music, but some are also autobiographical, including one written during retirement in which Kallmann recalls growing up in a middle-class Jewish family in 1930s Berlin under the spectre of Nazism.
Of the seventeen selected writings by Kallmann, five have never before been published; many of the others are from difficult-to-locate sources. They include critical and research essays, reports, reflections, and memoirs. Each chapter is prefaced with an introduction by the editors. Two initial chapters offer a biography of Kallmann and an assessment of his contributions to Canadian music.
The variety, breadth, and scope of these writings confirm Kallmann’s pioneering role in Canadian music research and the importance of his legacy to the cultural life of his adopted country. In the current climate of cuts to archival collections and services, the publication of these essays by and about a pre-eminent collector and historian serves as a timely reminder of the importance of cultural memory.

Arab Techno for the People analyses electronic music soundscapes as a field site to explore the lived experiences of cosmopolitan, Arab individuals living in Toronto and Montreal, Canada. This book seeks to move readers—and Canadians more broadly—to a more nuanced understanding of the misinterpellation, discrimination, and racism faced by those perceived as Arab and/or Muslim in Canada.

Despite the expectation that they will confirm to unified and reductive definitions of Arab and Muslim identities, Arab house and techno musicians who are understood as (or understand themselves as) Arab in Montreal and Toronto use their musical participation to define themselves in diverse ways contingent on their ethnic, religious, gender, and sexual identities. This book proposes that the Arab diaspora in multicultural Canada can be “sounded” by unveiling the experience of memory and nostalgia, presence and absence, racism and (mis)interpellation, and the various subtle realities that Arabs must consider when ethically navigating such cultural complexities.

This ethnography is a reflection of musical practices beyond the dancefloor as coping methods with systemic racism. Fulton-Melanson’s whiteness is vital to the conversation and reflection of decolonial and anti-racist methodology. The objective is that readers will recognize their own racist assumptions in the text and actively redress them.

Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts is a tribute to the ethnomusicologist Beverley Diamond in recognition of her outstanding scholarly accomplishments. The volume includes essays by leading ethnomusicologists and music scholars as well as a biographical introduction.
The book’s contributors engage many of the critical themes in Diamond’s work, including musical historiography, musical composition in historical and contemporary frameworks, performance in diverse contexts, gender issues, music and politics, and how music is nested in and relates to broader issues in society. The essays raise important themes about knowing and understanding musical traditions and music itself as an agent of social, cultural, and political change. Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts will appeal to music scholars and students, as well as to a general audience interested in learning about how music functions as social process as well as sound.

Audio Files located on Soundcloud Essential Song: Three Decades of Northern Cree Music, a study of subarctic Cree hunting songs, is the first detailed ethnomusicology of the northern Cree of Quebec and Manitoba. The result of more than two decades spent in the North learning from the Cree, Lynn Whidden’s account discusses the tradition of the hunting songs, their meanings and origins, and their importance to the hunt. She also examines women’s songs, and traces the impact of social change—including the introduction of hymns, Gospel tunes, and country music—on the song traditions of these communities.

The book also explores the introduction of powwow song into the subarctic and the Crees struggle to maintain their Aboriginal heritage—to find a kind of song that, like the hunting songs, can serve as a spiritual guide and force.

Including profiles of the hunters and their songs and accompanied (online) by original audio tracks of more than fifty Cree hunting songs, Essential Song makes an important contribution to ethnomusicology, social history, and Aboriginal studies.