Musicanada. Periodical issued from May 1967 to December 1970 by the
Canadian Music Centre and from November 1976 to Winter 1988-9 by the
Canadian Music Council. In its first phase, edited by
Keith MacMillan and published in Toronto, separately in French and in English, it completed 29 issues of 15-20 pages each. It achieved a consistency and informational density possibly unprecedented in a Canadian musical periodical. A house organ of the centre, its essential concern was composers and their works. Each issue (no. 7 and 26 excepted) contained a short interview with a leading composer, giving him or her the opportunity to pronounce on fundamental aesthetic and technical matters. Interviewees, listed in order of appearance, were
Murray Adaskin,
Clermont Pépin, Jean
Papineau-Couture,
Harry Somers,
Srul Irving Glick,
John Beckwith,
Harry Freedman,
John Weinzweig,
Serge Garant,
Bruce Mather,
Godfrey Ridout,
Violet Archer,
R. Murray Schafer,
István Anhalt,
Roger Matton, Alexander
Brott,
Talivaldis Kenins,
Norma Beecroft, Otto
Joachim,
Barbara Pentland,
Udo Kasemets,
S.C. Eckhardt-Gramatté,
Gilles Tremblay,
Oskar Morawetz,
Jacques Hétu,
Lorne Betts, and
Robert Turner. Most issues also listed new scores received at the centre and contained a news section ('Here and There'). Some carried up-to-date lists of composition contests. Other special lists included Rachel
Cavalho's 'Canadian piano music for teaching' in issue 12; a survey of recordings of Canadian works in issue 26; and a comprehensive list of works written for the Canadian centenary in issue 7. Contributors to the first phase of
Musicanada included, in addition to the aforementioned, C.
Laughton Bird, Sister
Marcelle Corneille, Stephen Freygood,
Helmut Kallmann,
George Little,
Joseph Macerollo, and
Sir Ernest MacMillan.
Musicanada was discontinued in 1970 when the centre committed itself to the publication of a series of monographs on Canadian composers and felt unable to finance both projects.
Musicanada was revived - in title though not in format - with issue 30, published in Ottawa in November 1976 under new aegis: the CMCouncil. Guy Huot, the council's executive secretary, was appointed editor. He was succeeded from issue 59-60 (January 1988) to the final issue (62, Winter 1988-89) by Myra Grimley Dahl. This second phase, planned as a quarterly (though it produced only three issues in some years and none in 1987), offered its contents in French and English in the same issue and covered Canadian musical life more broadly than did its predecessor. It contained regional reports, festival news, book and record reviews, competition results, and a variety of short features. Some issues were built around a particular topic, eg, orchestras (no. 51), composition (no. 52), youth and music (no. 54), concert hall acoustics (no. 55), religious music (no. 56), and music in the electronic age (no. 57). The list of new compositions received at the CMCentre was a notable carry-over from the previous Musicanada but had to be dropped with issue 49 for financial reasons. Neither magazine described above should be confused with MusiCanada, which ran to three issues (October and December 1922 and February 1923) in French, or with Music Canada, a pop music journal published monthly in Toronto from September 1970 to December 1971 by J. Cee Productions, and its successor, Music Canada Quarterly (1972-6).
Author
Kenneth Winters
