JUG320S: The Canadian Wilderness

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JUG320S The Canadian Wilderness

• Week 5 Wilderness Sounds
• Professor Emily Gilbert
• http//individual.utoronto.ca/emilygilbert/

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Todays Themes

• I The Idea of North
• II Glenn Gould
• III R. Murray Schafer
• IV Rheostatics

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I The Idea of North

• There is a saying that after five years in the
  north every man is an expert after ten years, a
  novice. No man can hope or expect to absorb it
  all in a lifetime, and fifteen generations of
  explorers, whalers, fur traders, missionaries,
  scientists, policemen, trappers, prospectors,
  adventurers, and tourists have failed to solve
  its riddles. To me, as to most northerners, the
  country is still an unknown quantity, as elusive
  to me as the wolf, howling just beyond the rim of
  the hills. Perhaps that is why it holds the
  fascination. Pierre Berton, The Mysterious North
  (1956)
• I conclude, therefore, with a paradox. The
  ultimate and the comprehensive meaning of
  Canadian history is to be found where there has
  been no Canadian history, in the North.
• WL Morton, The North in Canadian
  Historiography (1960)

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• 1570s Martin Frobisher
• 1820-40s Sir John Franklin
• 1903-06 Roald Amundsen
• 1909 Robert Peary

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• KLONDIKE GOLD RUSH 18961898
• Immortalized by
• Jack London, eg The Call of the Wild and White
  Fang
• Robert Services poems, eg The Shooting of Dan
  McGrew, The Cremation of Stan McGee

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• Charlie Chaplin (1925) The Gold Rush
• Early twentieth century Hollywood movies about
  the North, Mounties

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Nelvana of the Northern Lights

• Created by Adrian Dingle and
• Franz Johnston (1941-47)

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• Sergeant Preston of the Yukon
• Radio series late 1940s-early 1950s
• Comic book hero
• Television program 1955-58

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War and the North

• 1942-43 trans-Alaska highway
• 1949 the Pinetree line
• 1957 mid-Canada line
• 1954 Distant Early Warning line

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John Diefenbaker (1895-1979)

• 12 February, 1958 election speech in Winnipeg
• We are fulfilling the vision and the dream of
  Canadas first prime ministerSir John A
  Macdonald. But Macdonald saw Canada from east to
  west. I see a new Canadaa Canada of the North.
  This is my vision
• Diefenbakers government elected with 208 seats
• Promise to build roads to resources and
  importance of Canadian sovereignty

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II Glenn Gould (1932-1982)

• From late 1950s most prominent classical
  musician in Canada
• Mid-1960s most talked about pianist anywhere
• Grew up in Toronto
• Taught by mother until 10
• 1943-52 studied at Toronto Conservatory of
  Music piano teacher was Alberto Guerrero

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• By 20 had appeared in Toronto, Hamilton, London,
  St. Catharines, Montreal, Vancouver, and Calgary
• Concert repertoire emphasized Bach, Beethoven and
  Schoenberg
• In 1964 retires from public performance

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• Began to make radio and TV documentaries
• Writing to a friend in early 1965 he wrote What
  I have in mind, believe it or not, is a trip to
  the Arctic. I have an enormous compulsion to look
  upon the Polar seas and I find that this is
  growing apace each year, so that I really must
  get it out of my system somehow
• As a child went as far north as a cottage on Lake
  Simcoe
• Inspiration for Idea of North were maps of NWT
  and reproductions of Group of Seven on his school
  walls

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• June, 1965 took the Muskeg Express from Winnipeg
  to s-w shore of Hudsons Baythe end of the tree
  line (but 161km south of 60th parallel)
• Idea of North commissioned as centennial project
  for CBC Ideas first broadcast on December 28,
  1967
• TV documentary made in 1970

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• Ive long been intrigued by that incredible
  tapestry of tundra and taiga which constitutes
  the Arctic and sub-Arctic of our country. Ive
  read about it, written about it occasionally, and
  even pulled up my parka once and gone there. Yet
  like all but a very few Canadians, Ive had no
  real experience of the North. Ive remained of
  necessity an outsider. And the North has remained
  for me a convenient place to dream about, spin
  tall tales about sometimes, and, in the end,
  avoid (Glenn Goulds introductory comments in
  The Idea of North)

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• Contrapuntal orchestrationa new kind of
  listening
• Includes an enthusiast, a cynic, a government
  budget-watcher, as well as someone who could
  represent that limitless expectation and
  limitless capacity for disillusionment which
  inevitably affects the questing spirit of those
  who go north seeking their future
• Wally Maclean narrator
• Marianne Schroeder Northern nurse
• Frank Vallee Sociology professor from Ottawa
• Robert Phillips ex-Department of Northern
  Affairs official
• James Lotz British anthropologist and geographer

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III R. Murray Schafer (1933-)

• International acclaim and awards for musical
  compositions and educational theories
• first Glenn Gould triennial prize (1987) Molson
  Prize (1993) Walter Carsen Prize (2005)
• Created World Soundscape Project while at SFU
  (1965-75) documenting environmental sound
• 1975 retreats to abandoned farm near Algonquin
  Park

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• 1973 the idea of the North is at the core
  of Canadian identity. The North is a place of
  austerity, of spaciousness and loneliness the
  North is pure the North is temptationless. These
  qualities are forged into the mind of a
  Northerner his temperament is synonymous with
  them The idea of North is a Canadian myth.
  Without a myth a nation dies (from the program
  notes to North/White)
• 1977 The basic argument in Music from the Cold
  is that culture is shaped by climate and
  geography, that as the product of a northern
  territory Canadian art has a wildness and vigour
  not evident in the hot-house effusions of more
  civilized centres (Waterman 142)
• The narrator ends with I will build a new
  culture a culture of the North The art of
  the North is the art of restraint whereas The
  art of the South is the art of excess the
  soft art of the dancing girls and of the
  slobber

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• 1984 of Canadian climate and geography as
  various as this is, it is our best unifier,
  transcending ethnic extraction or allegiance of
  any other kind. We are all Northerners, sharing a
  million acres of wildness in the imagination.
  That is our only uncounterfeit resource, and we
  should seek to draw more directly from it (On
  Canadian Music)
• Canadians are about to be deprived of the idea
  of the North, which is at the core of the
  Canadian identity. The North is a place of
  austerity, of spaciousness and loneliness, the
  North is pure, the North is temptationless. These
  qualities are forged into the mind of the
  Northerner his temperament is synonymous with
  them (63)

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• PATRIA (1966)
• 12 cycles of music dramas
• My idea was that two principal characters, a man
  and a woman, would engage in a search for one
  another through a labyrinth of different cultures
  and social twistings almost as if they
  represented the split halves of the same
  being...They might return with various guises and
  different names but the quest for unity and the
  homeland they were seeking would always be the
  same
• in Patria The Complete Cycle I am constantly
  amazed at the inability of Canadians to prize the
  one distinguishing feature they still possess in
  this crazed world, and that is the pristine
  wilderness (256)

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• PROLOGUE PRINCESS TO THE STARS North American
  Wilderness
• 1 WOLFMAN 20th Century North America
• 2 REQUIEMS FOR THE PARTY GIRL 20th Century
  North America
• 3 THE GREATEST SHOW 20th Century North America
• 4 THE BLACK THEATRE OF HERMES TRISMEGISTOS
  exotic lands, travelling back in time
• 5 THE CROWN OF ARIADNE exotic lands,
  travelling back in time
• 6 RA exotic lands, travelling back in time
• 7 ASTERION interior voyage, search for self
• 8 CINNABAR PHEONIX mythical times, in natural
  settings
• 9 ENCHANTED FOREST mythical times, in natural
  settings
• 10 SPIRIT GARDEN mythical times, in natural
  settings
• EPILOGUE AND WOLF SHALL INHERIT THE MOON
  return to North American wilderness

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• Epilogue And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon
• Since 1988 performed annually at the Haliburton
  Forest and Wildlife Reserve in August
• Ritual performance that lasts 8 days, ending with
  final pageant
• Same participants return each year to camp in 8
  clans (fox, loon, deer, turtle, crow, bear,
  beaver, squirrel) at 4 campsites
• March 2005 permanent home established, with
  plans for 800-seat amphitheatre
• Schafer on Patria From this lake, Wolf will go
  out in search of the Princess, seeking her
  forgiveness and compassion. If he can find her,
  he will also find himself. Then she will at last
  return to the heavens, and he, redeemed, will
  also rise to inherit the moon. Wolfs wanderings
  will take him to many distant lands and he will
  visit many historical periods before he will
  return to find the Princess in the same natural
  environment he deserted at the close of the
  Prologue

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IV Rheostatics

• Formed in c.1980 at Martingrove Collegiate
• 1995 music inspired by the Group of Seven
  commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada
  part of the Oh! Canada Project
• largely instrumental work, with spoken word
  clips
• hockey player Newsie LaLonde
• Diefenbaker reading poem about WWI fighter pilots
• Narrator Winchell Price, artist, vegetarian,
  lightning strike survivor

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• "In music there's always a, well, there's a key
  in which the composition is set. It could be like
  A minor, E flat, B flat or E major or whatever it
  is. Well, in painting, there's another color that
  goes through all. It may be major or minor in
  tone and it's the key note, it holds the picture
  together, it binds it together, it has that
  underneath! You might call it the signature of
  the painting." Winchell Price