Musical Canada

Musical Canada.. Monthly journal founded in Toronto in 1906 by Edwin Parkhurst. The original name - The Violin- was changed in 1907 to Musical Canada. One of the longest-lived Canadian music magazines, it was owned until 1920 by Parkhurst, 1920-8 by A.L. Robertson (with Augustus Bridle, H. Cecil Fricker, and Robertson as successive editors), 1928-33 by C.F. Thiele, and briefly by Gordon V. Thompson. (It fell victim to the Depression in 1933 before Thompson was able to put out his first issue.) Though issues are held by the Toronto Public Library, the University of Toronto Faculty of Music library, the National Library of Canada, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, Hamilton Public Library, and Mount Allison University, no library owns a complete set, and certain volumes cannot be found in any. (The volume numbering continued from that of The Violin. It reached volume 16, no. 6, and then began anew in December 1920, with the first change of ownership. The final issue, February 1933, was volume 13 no. 9.)

During the Parkhurst era, Musical Canada was essentially a 'journal of musical news and comments' devoted to concert reports and news about performers. Later it became increasingly a combination of sections which served special-interest groups. In 1924 Robertson incorporated The Canadian Bandsman and Orchestra Journal(which he had edited previously as a house publication of R.S. Williams &Co) and in 1928 the CCO began to use Musical Canada as its bulletin, as did the music section of the Ontario Educators Association. When Thiele acquired the journal he moved its offices to Waterloo, Ont. Enlarging the format he inserted sheet music, much of it copyrighted by his Waterloo Music Co, into each issue. Composers included Frederick Egener, Ernest Dainty, Albert Ham, Clifford Higgin, A.W. Hughes, W.O. Forsyth, Leslie Grossmith (whose Air de Ballet won a Musical Canada contest and was printed in the June 1929 issue), Luigi von Kunits, Louis Waizman, and other Canadian and foreign composers. Of historical importance is a series (1928-33) of biographical essays by H.C. Hamilton on Canadian musicians.

The abbreviation MCan is used to designate this journal throughout EMC; Musical Canada is used in EMC to refer to Musical Canada: Words and Music Honouring Helmut Kallmann, ed John Beckwith and Frederick A. Hall (Toronto 1988). The title for this volume of essays was selected to recall the periodicals Musical Canada and Le Canada musical.

Author Helmut Kallmann

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