In May 1972, the Italian newspaper Il Paese Sera chronicled what was announced as the first performance of Canadian art music in Italy:Footnote 1 ‘What do we know about Canadian music? Nothing, or very little. We are, so to say, like the singers in Rossini’s “Cambiale di matrimonie” . . . who chirp forth “Canada, Canada” with an amused expression, just as if they were speaking about a continent on the moon, more bewildering than a fairy-tale’.Footnote 2 An event funded by the Canadian Federal Government’s Department of External Affairs (DEA) in collaboration with the Canadian Cultural Institute in Rome and the Italian new music organization, Nuova Consonanza, this quotation aptly summarizes the global perception of Canadian art music during the twentieth century: that it was largely a fairytale, and that Canada was not known to be a centre of musical innovation.
In a letter addressed to Freeman M. Tovell, director of the DEA’s Cultural Affairs Division, Canadian composer Harry Somers stresses the significance of this event in championing the cause of Canada’s contemporary composers: ‘the Nuova Consonanza people said, “But there are no Canadian composers”. Now they know, and that is a step. Now the problem is follow-up’.Footnote 3 The musical performances funded by the DEA’s Cultural Affairs Division thus occurred at a crucial juncture in the development not only of Canadian contemporary music, but of Canadian culture as a whole.Footnote 4 The need to not only cultivate a distinct and unified Canadian culture domestically, but to also project this image transatlantically, became a crucial goal in Canadian foreign policy efforts by the 1970s.
Through an archival analysis of documentation pertaining to the planning activities of the DEA and its Cultural Affairs Division, this article focuses on two all-Canadian musical events funded by the division: the 1972 performance of Canadian contemporary music in Rome, and the 1977 two-week-long festival of Canadian contemporary music, Musicanada, hosted in London and Paris. As this article will argue, these two events act as useful case studies to demonstrate how the works of Canadian contemporary composers were used for strategic soft-power purposes by the DEA’s Cultural Affairs Division. By featuring Canadian contemporary repertoire as part of these exchanges, the DEA fulfilled its transatlantic diplomatic aims of projecting an image of Canadian culture which was both distinct from the United States and would appeal to European cultural elites at the height of the Cold War.Footnote 5 This article thus contributes to the small, yet growing body of literature concerned with Canadian transatlantic cultural and Cold War diplomacy of the twentieth century by focusing on the crucial musical encounters located at the heart of Canada’s cultural diplomatic exchanges during the 1970s.Footnote 6
The rise of Canadian cultural diplomacy during the mid-twentieth century
Published in 1951, the final report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences warned of an unhealthy reliance upon the United States by Canada, both financially and culturally.Footnote 7 Of particular concern was the prevalence of American content in Canada by way of radio, film, and television; as continental neighbours, the availability of U.S. popular entertainment in Canada was easily accessible, particularly for those Canadian cities located at the border. In addition to expressing concerns over an unhealthy cultural attachment to the United States, the report expressed a lack of international recognition, noting that it was ‘not unnatural that Canada has been frequently called “the unknown country”’.Footnote 8 The report continues by emphasizing the importance of disseminating and sharing information about Canada, stressing that ‘exchanges with other nations in the fields of arts and letters will help [Canada] to make a reasonable contribution to civilized life’.Footnote 9 By engaging in more meaningful exchanges with Canada’s ‘distant’ international neighbours, the report notes, Canada would lean less heavily on the resources of the United States which it relied upon for financial and cultural assistance.Footnote 10
While the Massey Report affirmed the importance of protecting and supporting cultural production domestically, it also acted as a catalyst in advocating for the crucial role of culture in managing Canada’s foreign diplomatic relations.Footnote 11 More significantly, it demonstrated the need for Canada to engage in cultural exchanges abroad as a means of strengthening and asserting its cultural distinctiveness, one that had otherwise been ‘impaired in the past by too frequent recourse to one wealthy source’.Footnote 12
While concerns of American encroachment and Canada’s lack of international recognition informed foreign policy directions by the late 1960s, growing separatist sentiment in the Canadian province of Québec also greatly threatened Canada’s sense of national unity and cultural identity, fostering strained relations between English- and French-speaking Canada in the decade to follow.Footnote 13 Early efforts to quell rising tensions by the government came under the guise of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism from 1963 to 1969 to ‘enhan[ce] the position of French Canada at the federal level’ and to make ‘the Québécois feel more included in the federal framework’.Footnote 14 As Eva Mackey aptly summarizes, Canadian identity of the latter half of the twentieth century was thus ‘defined through the state management of many forms of difference: a concern with defining Canada’s difference from the United States and attempts to define the role of differences within Canada in terms of Québec’.Footnote 15 This also applied to Canada’s Indigenous communities and ethnic minorities living in Canada; differences, Mackey explains, that had to be ‘managed’.Footnote 16
American cultural imperialism and managing existing tensions between English and French Canada were not simply a matter of national policy, but a matter of Canadian transatlantic foreign policy by the latter half of the twentieth century. A document entitled Foreign Policy for Canadians (1970), published under the authority of the Secretary of State for the DEA, Mitchell Sharp, outlines some of the department’s policy priorities concerning international relations. Notably, this publication makes clear that the aims of Canadian foreign policy aligned themselves with the basic nationalizing aims of the Government, including prioritizing ‘national sovereignty, unity, and security’, as well as ‘national identity, bilingualism, and multicultural expression’, among others.Footnote 17 In another DEA publication entitled Europe – Foreign Policy for Canadians (1970), connections are drawn between Canada and Western Europe regarding American imperialism: ‘The maintenance of an adequate measure of economic and political independence in the face of American power and influence is a problem Canada shares with the European nations, and in dealing with this problem there is at once an identity of interest and an opportunity for fruitful co-operation.’Footnote 18 Of culture specifically, the publication stresses the importance of cultivating cultural relations with Britain and France, as well as other countries that comprise Canada’s ethnic fabric.Footnote 19
Commenting on the significance of these relations, it is emphasized that the Canadian government ‘recognizes that information and cultural relations have become an important element in Canada’s foreign policy and that Europe is the most important area for the intensification of those relations’.Footnote 20 As part of these efforts, the DEA established cultural programmes with French-speaking countries, notably France, Belgium, and Switzerland, in 1964.Footnote 21 These programmes were built upon ‘the principle of reciprocity’ as well as biculturalism, bilingualism, and diversity – facets of Canadian culture that appealed to Canada’s French diplomatic connections.Footnote 22
The Cultural Affairs Division, soft power, and transatlantic cultural–musical diplomacy
The establishment of the DEA’s Cultural Affairs Division in 1966 thus proved an important step in bolstering Canadian culture abroad by the latter half of the twentieth century.Footnote 23 As a branch of the DEA, the Cultural Affairs Division engaged in acts of cultural diplomacy by way of ‘promoting Canadian culture abroad and facilitating access by Canadians to international cultural developments’.Footnote 24 By the 1970s, there was increased momentum on the part of the Cultural Affairs Division to fund instances of musical exchange with European cultural centres such as Rome, London, and Paris to help promote a culturally elevated image of Canada, one that was culturally distinct from its southern neighbour, and one that was culturally aligned – if not on equal footing – with Europe.
As Don Schrank explains, the establishment of the Cultural Affairs Division was ‘a reflection of the new-recognized importance of Canadian culture and of the government’s desire to use culture as a tool to gain closer relations with other countries’.Footnote 25 It is apparent that Canada’s musical community placed significant responsibility upon the DEA to champion the works of Canadian composers abroad during a time when Canadian repertoire received little international recognition. This stance was made evident in an article entitled ‘A Push is Needed’ published in The Canadian Composer magazine, which stressed that while the ‘Canadian creative community has achieved a “break-through” in recent years . . . a recent visit overseas . . . makes it equally clear that the news has not yet got through to the top international market places’.Footnote 26 It concludes that ‘a push is needed and no one has greater responsibility or better opportunity to give it that push than our own Department of External Affairs’.Footnote 27
A survey of archival documentation including DEA annual reports, press releases, and bulletins from the late 1960s onwards, not only sheds light on the kinds of transatlantic musical exchanges the DEA’s Cultural Affairs Division funded, but also the political and aesthetic choices that informed these exchanges. From the mid-1960s onwards, the Cultural Affairs Division established formal cultural exchange programmes with several European countries, including France (1965), Belgium (1966), Switzerland (1964–1965), Italy (1954), Germany (1975), and the Netherlands (1968).Footnote 28 These programmes, explains Schrank, were implemented in two ways: ‘by the awarding of fellowships from these countries and by funding Canadian cultural activities there’.Footnote 29 As such, prominent Canadian musical ensembles such as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Orford Quartet, and individual artists such as contralto opera singer Maureen Forrester, were funded by the division to perform in France and Belgium, among other European countries.Footnote 30
As part of the funding of these musical exchanges abroad, it appears that the DEA’s Cultural Affairs Division did attempt to make it mandatory for all artists or ensembles receiving their financial support to perform a piece of Canadian music as part of their programmes.Footnote 31 However, archival documentation also suggests that the DEA upheld certain aesthetic priorities in the funding of these opportunities. For instance, exchanges with Ann Summers Dossena, a prominent Canadian impresario, reveal that the DEA ‘preferred to integrate one piece of contemporary Canadian music in each concert’ it sponsored financially.Footnote 32 Exchanges between the DEA and Canada’s London Embassy further attest to the aesthetic choices that governed some of these transatlantic exchanges. In a letter from Canada’s London Embassy in 1969, the Embassy expressed concern over a recent grant refusal by the Canada Council for the funding of contemporary Canadian composer, Alan Detweiler, and the performance of his pageant-oratorio David and Goliath at the Camden Festival in London.Footnote 33 This performance, the letter explains, would act as an ‘opportunity to boost contemporary Canadian music in the context of a prestigious festival being organized’ and that ‘it provided an excellent opportunity for modest publicity for a Canadian musical event’.Footnote 34 Another letter from the London Embassy reconfirms this aesthetic inclination, in which the Embassy suggests that concerts under its patronage should offer to programme a piece of contemporary Canadian music.Footnote 35
Such insight into the programming decisions made by the DEA reveals a great deal about how the DEA’s Cultural Affairs Division participated in broader Cold War soft-power gamesmanship in the planning of its transatlantic musical exchanges. Coined by Joseph Nye, the term soft power refers to a form of ‘co-optive’ power occurring ‘when one country gets other countries to want what it wants’, as opposed to hard power which utilizes force, or violence, to achieve its political goals.Footnote 36 More specifically, soft power ‘arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies’.Footnote 37 As chronicled by Danielle Fosler-Lussier and Emily Abrams Ansari, music became a vital tool in managing American diplomatic relations during the Cold War vis-à-vis the American National Theatre and the Academy’s (ANTA) Cultural Presentations Programme. Music as deployed in the contexts of this programme, notes Abrams Ansari, was understood as a ‘psychological tool that could counteract the stereotypical perception of Americans’ and ultimately, was used as a ‘secret weapon’ in achieving its broader diplomatic aims. As such, music was viewed as a means of presenting ‘the most attractive elements of the United States and thereby build “respect and prestige”’.Footnote 38
The Cultural Presentations Programme was responsible for the planning of strategic cross-cultural programmes between the United States and other countries. As facilitated by ANTA’s Music Advisory Panel, American musical diplomatic exchanges of this time not only prioritized the touring of American classical ensembles, but the performance of American art music as well.Footnote 39 High art music – avant-garde music in particular – was thus viewed as a means of demonstrating one’s familiarity and alignment with European elite culture.Footnote 40 By curating and presenting programmes which featured this kind of music, explains Fosler-Lussier, the Cultural Presentations Programme sought to improve the image of the United States in the eyes of the foreign public, particularly in Europe.Footnote 41 As such, music was used as a tool of soft power in Cold War diplomacy by the United States not only to manage its international image but also to ‘pour American ideas and values into the minds of the foreign public’.Footnote 42 In this way, soft power plays a crucial role in legitimizing the policies, values, and belief systems of one nation in the eyes of another, and music was viewed as an effective means of doing so.
While the use of culture as soft power is generally understood in these terms, Ien Ang et al. also note that ‘cultural attractiveness per se is not soft power on its own’ – rather, it can only become a source of soft power if ‘it is deployed to achieve a clearly defined policy objective under a thought-out strategy’.Footnote 43 This understanding of soft power thus acts as a useful framework in understanding Canada’s own approach to soft-power gamesmanship during the Cold War era.Footnote 44 By targeting the planning of performances of Canadian contemporary music in European cultural centres such as Rome, Paris, and London, the DEA effectively deployed a policy framework that positioned Canada as a centre of cultural innovation and creativity in the eyes of those European countries with which it sought to strengthen diplomatic alliances. In doing so, it not only sought to curate an image of Canada as being culturally aligned with its European diplomatic allies, but it also sought to assert Canada’s cultural distinctiveness from its powerful continental neighbour.
Two events in particular shed a crucial light on how the division leveraged the performance of contemporary Canadian music abroad as a diplomatic tool of soft power in its transatlantic cultural exchanges: the first-ever performance of Canadian contemporary music in Italy (1972) and Musicanada, the first-ever festival of all-Canadian contemporary music to take place in Europe (1977). By hosting these instances of musical exchange in European cultural centres such as Rome, Paris, and London – many of which are considered innovators in the musical traditions of the European avant-garde – the DEA sought to elevate Canada’s cultural and musical prestige abroad.
Così come vuoi: bringing Canadian contemporary music to Italy 1972
Planning for the first-ever concert of Canadian music in Italy was started in 1970 by the Canadian Embassy to Rome, as evidenced by exchanges between the Cultural Affairs Division and the Embassy.Footnote 45 The concert, which would take place on 29 May 1972 at the Teatro Centrale in Rome and was presented as part of Nuova Conzonanza’s spring festival, was intended to pique the interests of Italian composers, music critics, and audiences attracted to contemporary idioms.Footnote 46 Planning for the performance received full endorsement from the DEA and its undersecretary of state of the time, Freeman M. Tovell. Speaking of the project in correspondence with the Embassy, Tovell enthusiastically writes: ‘The concert of contemporary Canadian music you suggested be held in Rome . . . strikes us as a most worthy initiative and we fully support it. We see it not only as something good in itself but a means to make the Institute something more tangible in Italian eyes’.Footnote 47
The concert featured a total of seven contemporary pieces by Canadian composers and featured a wide range of works engaging with avant-garde techniques and idioms.Footnote 48 Although reviews of the concert were mixed, it was generally well received by the local press, with critics noting that ‘the concert held at the Teatro Centrale had moments of great interest and charm’, specifically the works of Garant, Beecroft, and Somers which ‘gave [them] an opportunity of discovering the real essence of what contemporary music attempts to express in the effort of braking [sic] away from the traditional pattern and seeking new forms of interpretation in the human reality of the modern world’.Footnote 49
Drawing connections between Canada’s musical output and the Italian avant-garde appears to be a recurring theme in international press coverage of the Rome concert, suggesting that the concert was successful in its diplomatic aims of projecting a musical image of Canada that was similar, if not aligned, with that of Italy. In one article published in L’Unità, composer Goffredo Petrassi – one of Italy’s foremost influential composers of the twentieth century – is credited as seemingly being responsible for this ‘new orientation in Canadian music’: ‘the music of the new Canadian school which we heard on Monday evening in Rome . . . reveals nevertheless an autonomy and even, so to say, a peculiar character of its own in some parts where the Italian influence, and particularly that of Petrassi, can be felt’.Footnote 50 Indeed, the author references the pre-existing relationship between Petrassi and his pupil, Norma Beecroft, a prominent contemporary Canadian composer whose name was supposedly ‘very familiar to Roman circles’ and whose work Rasas (1969) was also featured as part of the concert programme.Footnote 51 More importantly, the author seems to suggest that Petrassi instilled the Italian influence in Beecroft during a specialization course while studying with the Italian composer in 1959, an influence she may subsequently have brought back to Canada.Footnote 52
This view of Canadian music – that it was somehow intimately tied to or even owed its creation to the European avant-garde tradition – sheds an important light on the European perception of Canadian contemporary music. For instance, connections are drawn between French–Canadian composer Gilles Tremblay and the French avant-garde; in discussing his piece Champs I, the press notes that Tremblay followed a specialization course with Edgard Varèse in Paris. While no direct musical influences are drawn between the two composers in the press, the mere mention of Tremblay’s tutelage with Varèse is noteworthy, as it suggests that his style and output can be partly credited to the French avant-garde tradition.
Similar connections were drawn between Harry Somers and the Italian avant-garde by music critic William Weaver for his vocal piece Così come vuoi, which Weaver likened to Luciano Berio’s Sequenza.Footnote 53 Unlike Beecroft and Tremblay, however, whose compositional styles are seemingly credited to their work with European mentors, Weaver deemed Somers’ composition as a lesser version of Berio’s piece, noting that it ‘lack[ed] Berio’s ingenuity and concision’.Footnote 54 Others similarly criticized Somers’ piece, stating that the ‘solo of sighs and screams’ was ‘too long and rather intolerable’.Footnote 55 In an article written by Charles Nopar, he laments:
Harry Somers left it to our discretion to judge whether his intentions were humorous or otherwise – his piece, after all, was called ‘Così come vuoi’ in which he came out in dead-pan fashion and pinned graph-like scores around the piano and on a number of music stands, then sat down to watch soprano Michiko Hirayama, snort, gargle, shriek, hum and shout into a variety of microphones. . . . If it was a joke, it was an in-joke, in no case very good and awfully long-winded.Footnote 56
While listed as Così come vuoi (1972) in the concert programme notes and sometimes referred to as ‘Just as you like’ in the press, surprisingly there is no evidence of such a piece title in Somers’ catalogue. Descriptions in press coverage of the piece – namely that it featured elements of pantomime, vocal ‘bravura’, and numerous extended vocal techniques – suggests that this piece may in fact be Somers’ earlier composition, Voiceplay.
Commissioned in 1971 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for acclaimed American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, Voiceplay was one of two pieces composed by Somers during a two-year fellowship with the Canadian Cultural Institute in Rome.Footnote 57 As with Così come vuoi, Voiceplay features a wide range of extended vocal techniques and sonic materials, while also incorporating theatrical elements.Footnote 58 Not unlike the array of sounds referred to by Nopar in his review of Così come vuoi, Voiceplay includes ‘the extremes of unvoiced and voiced sounds’ as well as the use of graphic notation.Footnote 59 Given these similarities, both in terms of compositional techniques, theatricalities, and notational style, it is highly plausible that Così come vuoi was either a re-worked version of Voiceplay, or simply, a renamed version of the same work.Footnote 60
While other piece titles were translated for the concert programme notes as direct translations, Somers’ Così come vuoi was presented as a new piece title entirely.Footnote 61 Even more perplexing is that Così come vuoi was not included as part of the originally proposed programme for the concert. Rather, it was Somers’ aria Kuyas from his opera Louis Riel (1967) that had been listed as part of the programme as late as 29 March 1972 – less than two months before the scheduled concert.Footnote 62 The initial selection of Kuyas for the Rome programme may have been an attempt to showcase ‘national’ Canadian music – albeit an egregious display of an appropriated ‘national’ Canadian sound – making its eventual omission on the original programme even more perplexing. Kuyas was collected by Canadian ethnographer Marius Barbeau in the 1930s and largely exemplifies early attempts to locate a ‘national Canadian sound’ through the appropriation of Indigenous music.Footnote 63 Based on a mourning song of the Nisga’a, Indigenous people of the Canadian province of British Columbia, Colette Simonot-Maiello explains that the performance of Kuyas, as originally intended, was strictly ‘meant to be sung only when a Nisga’a community member or chief dies’. Performing Kuyas outside of its intended context and without permission, explains Simonot-Maiello, is considered disrespectful and culturally inappropriate.Footnote 64
While there is no evidence suggesting that Somers conspired with the DEA’s Cultural Affairs Division on these programming matters, it is possible that these were strategic decisions made to evoke a musical affinity or connection with the local Italian musical community with the eventual selection of Così come vuoi. As he was intimately involved in the planning of the concert from the onset, Somers was in direct communication with the division director concerning the planning and financing of the concert, suggesting he exerted some level of administrative and aesthetic control over the overall planning.Footnote 65 By renaming Voiceplay as Così come vuoi for the purposes of the concert, it is possible that Somers sought to bridge a cultural and musical gap by ‘Italianizing’ his piece to appeal to the sought-after Italian audience he and the DEA hoped would attend the all-Canadian concert in Rome: Italian composers, musicians, and critics.
Diplomatically, the concert was considered a success, with nearly 120 audience members in attendance.Footnote 66 A letter written by the Canadian Ambassador to Italy summarizes the success of the event both in musical and diplomatic terms: ‘The concert achieved two things: it exposed an audience of knowledgeable Romans to the latest developments in Canadian music as performed by competent musicians under the guidance of a distinguished Canadian conductor, and, secondly, it enabled a number of prominent Canadian musicians and composers to extend and develop their contacts with Italians active in the same field’.Footnote 67 Following the concert, the Canadian Ambassador Residence hosted upwards of seventy people for a buffet supper, including members of Nuova Consonanza, critics, and composers. The supper, explains Somers, ‘certainly helped in establishing relations with our counterparts in Italy’.Footnote 68 As also detailed by Rogers, the dinner ‘provided further opportunity for the visitors to meet with their Italian confrères in a relaxed atmosphere’. ‘This’, he concluded, ‘added greatly to the impact of the whole operation’.Footnote 69
For Canada’s composers, this concert was significant in that it acted as a bridge between the Canadian contemporary music scene and the international avant-garde music scene.Footnote 70 As summarized by Somers in his letter to Tovell,
In my opinion all our objectives were realized, not the least being to get the concert on in the first place. . . . We made contact with Italian composers by having Nuova Consonanza as the organization under which we presented the concert, and made a favourable impression on them. . .All of the Italian composers I talked to completely endorsed the idea of exchanges.Footnote 71
Events such as the performance of Canadian contemporary music in Rome in 1972, therefore, not only acted as an important milieu of interaction for Canadian and Italian artists, but also served to strengthen diplomatic relations. By working with Canadian composers such as Somers to curate a programme that would appeal to local and specialized Italian audiences, the DEA was ultimately able to meet its policy goals of ‘presenting Canadian achievements on the international scene’, and ‘give Canadian artists . . . the opportunity to make or renew contacts with other countries’.Footnote 72 As such, we can understand this very first display of Canadian music in Italy as an example of how the DEA used the works of Canadian composers for strategic soft-power purposes to bolster its ‘excellent’ pre-existing ties with Italy and project an image of Canada with which Italy could relate on a cultural – and musical – basis.Footnote 73
Musicanada 1977 – a presentation of Canadian contemporary musicFootnote 74
In November 1977, the first-ever all-Canadian contemporary music festival, entitled ‘Musicanada’, took place in Europe.Footnote 75 Sponsored by the DEA under the guise of its cultural exchange programme, the festival was planned in collaboration with the Touring Office of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Canadian Music Centre (CMC), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, and Canada House in London.Footnote 76 Over the course of two weeks, the festival featured twelve concerts and the performance of thirty-two works by Canada’s leading contemporary composers.Footnote 77 In the spirit of musical exchange, concerts presented at the festival were performed by Canadian and European ensembles, and were also broadcast nationally by the BBC and Radio France.Footnote 78 The festival repertoire was selected in cooperation with a planning committee comprising of Canadian musicians and musicologists, as well as members from the aforementioned institutional collaborators and the DEA.Footnote 79 Collectively, the committee sought to select a festival programme that would ‘provid[e] a sound-picture of Canada which is varied, lively, and controversial, with works ranging from avant-garde atonal to commercially melodic’.Footnote 80
By financially sponsoring Musicanada, the DEA ‘hope[d] to broaden the audience for Canadian music in the U.K. and France to complement the growing interest in other fields of Canadian creativity in literature, the visual arts and theatre’.Footnote 81 In doing so, it similarly hoped to ‘reinforce interest in Canada’s contemporary music and her musical talents’.Footnote 82 More specifically, ‘each series was designed to bring music critics, concert agents and producers into direct contact with a representative sample of Canadian musical compositions, interpreted by outstanding Canadian performers’.Footnote 83 Diplomatically, the sponsoring of Musicanada was also strategic. As Minister of External Affairs Don Jamieson expressed, ‘Musicanada [was] an excellent illustration of the role of External Affairs plays in the promotion of Canadian culture abroad’ and how the Cultural Affairs programming in particular acted as ‘an overseas extension of the domestic arts’. ‘Music’, he continues, ‘therefore, is a vital element in the cultural complexion of Canada and an aspect of the country which the Department of External Affairs must endeavour to reflect abroad. Musicanada provides such a showcase’.Footnote 84
As with the Rome performance, Musicanada was thus conceived with the intent of bridging Canada’s contemporary music community with the international music scene in support of the DEA’s broader aims to project an image of Canada as achieving cultural and musical maturity in the eyes of the European cultural elite. Reviews of the festival offer some insight into the overall success – or, lack thereof – of Musicanada in London and Paris. In an article published by British musicologist John Shepherd, he describes how the festival left him with ‘mixed feelings’, giving ‘rise to a strong sense of cultural schizophrenia’.Footnote 85 A naturalized Canadian, Shepherd attended three of the twelve performances, and while he acknowledges that ‘there was some good music to be heard’, he notes that ‘there was much that was mediocre or just plain uninteresting’.Footnote 86 He continues, ‘although Canadian music has come a vast distance in the last twenty years . . . it has not yet reached the stage where a major incursion onto the international scene is warranted’.Footnote 87 Shepherd was not alone in critiquing the festival, with other local music critics left unimpressed by the two-week-long display of all-Canadian contemporary music, with most deeming the repertoire unimaginative, redundant, and with not ‘much to whet the appetite’.Footnote 88 Canadian performing ensembles, on the other hand, received much higher praises for their performances despite the ‘mediocre’ repertoire, with the Festival Singers praised for making an ‘indelible impression’ in London.Footnote 89
One common thread in reviews from the festival was the lack of an audible ‘Canadian’ sound throughout Musicanada, which may account for the lacklustre reception of the Canadian works featured.Footnote 90 Indeed, it appears that the desire to hear a discernibly unifying ‘Canadian’ musical sound is what initially drove audiences and critics to attend the festival.Footnote 91 In an article published in Le Monde, for instance, music critic Gérard Conde suggests that the main draw of attraction for this festival was the opportunity to ‘hear’ a specifically ‘Canadian musical sound’.Footnote 92 Commenting on the programming, Canadian music administrator Keith MacMillan acknowledges that audience members ‘must have been puzzled by the panorama and found it unfocused’.Footnote 93
In addition to lacking any discernible ‘Canadian’ sound, the festival was also deemed a failed governmental public relations stunt to improve Canada’s image in Europe.Footnote 94 Indeed, Shepherd argues that Musicanada’s ‘shape derived from a current fit of cultural chauvinism’, implying that its sole purpose was to act as an indulgent over-display of Canadian culture, rather than showcasing a carefully curated and cohesive programme of works by Canada’s representative contemporary composers.Footnote 95 Shepherd goes so far as to warn readers that the festival may hinder future promotional efforts of Canadian music, and that in their attempt ‘to throw off the remnants of a cultural inferiority complex’, ‘the powers that be. . .seem unable to distinguish between that which is Canadian and good, and that which is simply Canadian’.Footnote 96 Shepherd, here, not only seems to suggest that the festival programming committee did poorly in their selection of Canadian works, but that the focus was to programme as much ‘Canadian’ content as possible in their attempts to project an image of Canada as having a distinctive culture.Footnote 97
Whereas Musicanada received less than enthusiastic praise from European and Canadian press, from the perspective of the DEA and its planners, the festival succeeded in accomplishing its primary goals: that of broadening the audience base for Canadian music and that of strengthening those diplomatic alliances which it prioritized, such as those they shared with Britain. As revealed in the 1977 annual report of the DEA, ‘Britain retain[ed] importance for Canada in the exchange of people and ideas to a degree matched by few other countries’, which is strengthened in part by the ‘momentum of cultural exchanges’.Footnote 98 Musicanada, as stipulated in the report, supported the DEA’s diplomatic priorities by introducing British audiences to Canadian contemporary music.Footnote 99 Gilles Lefebvre, Director of the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, similarly praises the festival as it helped ‘show [that] Canada has “quality creators in the field of serious music”’ to local French audiences.Footnote 100
In consideration of these broader policy objectives, it is possible that these goals also informed the repertoire programming of Musicanada. As the financial backer for the project, the DEA likely sought to align the festival programme with its diplomatic aims, as evidenced in its bicultural repertoire selection and its bilingual marketing of Musicanada.Footnote 101 Indeed, reflections from the Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau attest to the desired diplomatic outcomes of the event: ‘The Musicanada concerts will be a dialogue of sorts, speaking to European audiences with the ideas and emotions of Canadian composers, interpreted by Canadian musicians. . . . The “language” of music which you hear in these pieces may be familiar as British or French idioms, for Canadian music naturally reflects the musical heritage of both founding nations.’Footnote 102
While the main complaint of critics was the festival’s perceivable lack of an audible ‘Canadian’ sound, they did, acknowledge the programme’s ‘internationalism’ and that it recalled ‘versions of familiar contemporary music trends’.Footnote 103 In his review of the BBC Symphony Orchestra performance as conducted by Canadian Mario Bernardi, The Times music critic Paul Griffiths also notes that the ensemble ‘was required to throw itself into many of the European avant-garde clichés with which it must now be familiar’, further suggesting that the repertoire performed was not only familiar, but reminiscent, of European avant-garde trends.Footnote 104 Not only did Griffiths suggest a familiarity with European traditions, he also notes that the repertoire ‘offered little suggestion of a national musical flavour, nor, strangely enough, of any kindship with the United States of America’.Footnote 105 In this way, the festival itself acted as vehicle of soft power in service for the DEA’s broader diplomatic goals, particularly in its efforts to distinguish Canada’s cultural image as being distinct from that of the United States, and to ensure that ‘Canadian foreign policy fully reflected Canada’s bilingual and multicultural nature’.Footnote 106
In a news article covering Musicanada, Canadian music critic Gilles Potvin writes, ‘it’s a dream come true to think that, for once, the Canadian government has decided to go all out for contemporary Canadian music. The question that remains is how do we assess the real impact of Canadian music in a relatively short period of time’.Footnote 107 While Potvin acknowledges the important interventions made by the DEA and its Cultural Affairs Division in funding and planning Musicanada, he questions the overall impact – and possibly intention – of the festival, and thus the motivations behind the DEA’s cultural exchanges more broadly. Indeed, while the DEA intended to promote contemporary Canadian music abroad via its cultural exchange programming, these intentions were motivated first and foremost by broader foreign policy aims.
Reflecting on the efforts of the DEA to project Canada’s cultural image abroad, the newly appointed cultural attaché to the Canadian Embassy to Rome, David Anido, remarked that ‘there is a symbiosis between the political objectives and the cultural objectives’ of the DEA. While he states that ‘it’s a far cry from propaganda’, he confesses that ‘it’s true that when the government sees something it likes which it thinks will further Canada’s image abroad, it will invite those artists to go aboard [sic]’.Footnote 108 As examples of these efforts, Anido lists Musicanada. As the sole DEA representative on the festival planning committee, Anido’s statement confirms that not only was the festival viewed as a significant cultural achievement, but that in the eyes of the DEA, Canadian contemporary music was deemed a useful tool of soft power in achieving its broader cultural diplomatic aims with Europe.
Conclusion
Despite achieving its policy aims in the funding of all-Canadian musical events such as the 1972 performance in Rome, and Musicanada (1977), concern over the DEA’s broader policy intentions was raised by the Canadian artistic community by the end of the decade. Representatives from the Advisory Arts Panel of the Canada Council for the Arts, for instance, complained that the role of the DEA in promoting Canadian culture abroad was a ‘farce’ and that ‘the goals of External Affairs. . .have nothing to do with the needs of artists or the enrichment that might accrue from cultural exchanges’.Footnote 109 In this way, they complained, artists were ‘used to promote trade, or goodwill, or some other non-artistic end’.Footnote 110 During a 1983 keynote address made by Ian Clark, Canada’s ambassador-designate to UNESCO, Clark similarly warned of a ‘creeping parochialism, a narrowness of view when we are part of a world culture’.Footnote 111 Here, Clark refers to complaints made by major touring arts companies who believed that the DEA prioritized its funding towards ‘cultural relations with countries with which it is trying to curry favor rather than recognize the need for Canadian artists to be in the mainstream of world cultural activity’.Footnote 112 Members of the music community also complained of the DEA’s efforts, notably MacMillan who felt that Musicanada might have better succeeded more effectively in championing Canadian composers had the planning committee selected ‘one prejudiced peson [sic], with first-class musical knowledge, make the [programming] decision [s]. Then you’d have some sort of consistency’.Footnote 113
Thus, while the DEA successfully met its policy aims by funding these instances of transatlantic cultural – and musical – exchange, their interventions were ultimately viewed as being politically motivated, and not necessarily in service of the interests and needs of Canada’s broader cultural community. Despite these criticisms, however, one should not disregard the significance of these musical events funded by the DEA. In promoting Canadian contemporary music transatlantically as a strategic tool of soft power, the DEA participated in a symbiotic relationship with the Canadian contemporary art music community. As such, while efforts could have certainly been made to curate a more representative display of Canadian music abroad, the DEA ultimately acted as an important agent in the dissemination of the works of Canadian contemporary composers to European cultural centres at a time when they received little, if any, international recognition.
Carolyne Sumner is an Assistant Professor and Cross-Cultural Programming Advisor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music and completed her PhD in Musicology from the same institution (2022). Her research interest includes Canadian cultural policy and contemporary Canadian art music, with a particular interest in how national cultural policies impacted the creation, dissemination, and performance of these works during the mid to late twentieth century. Sumner has presented her research at professional conferences including the American Musicological Society, the Canadian University Music Society, and the New York State-St. Lawrence Chapter of the American Musicological Society. Her work has been published in Les Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique (SQRM), Intersections, and American Music.
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