MacMillan on Music: Essays by Sir Ernest MacMillan

By Ernest MacMillan

In addition to his activities as conductor, administrator, educator, composer, and organist, Sir Ernest MacMillan (1893-1973) found time to write more than one hundred essays and lectures on music. Always ready to use his enormous prestige to further the causes of music, MacMillan took every opportunity to admonish Canadians to develop our own composers, to honour our own performers, to educate our children musically, and to offer opportunities for all to hear, learn about, and enjoy great music.

This selection of twenty essays and lectures covers the period from 1928 to 1964, and ranges over the gamut of MacMillan’s life and interests: the cause of the Canadian composer; music education for adults as well as children; critical reviews; his early years as an organist; internment in a German prison camp during the First World War; Shakespeare and music; church music; and the lighter side in two humorous send-ups of academic lectures on Bach and Wagner. Here is a panorama of music over thirty-five years at mid-century, through the eyes of one of Canada’s most brilliant and all-embracing musicians.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Sep 1, 1997
• ISBN: 9781459714724

Ernest MacMillan

Sir Ernest Alexander Campbell MacMillan, CC was an internationally renowned Canadian orchestral conductor and composer, and Canada's only "Musical Knight".

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Introduction

Ernest MacMillan lived at least nine musical lives, several of them simultaneously: he was a choral and orchestral conductor, composer, church musician, virtuoso organist, educator, administrator, writer and critic, musical ambassador and éminence in Canada’s musical life. From the 1920s until the 1960s, MacMillan was very much the right man in the right place; he occupied a position of authority and influence unmatched by any musician in Canada before or since. Prodigiously talented and boundlessly energetic, he had a strong sense of duty and responsibility, and a complete commitment to the development of music in his native land. It might be argued that someone who possessed such extraordinary natural musical gifts squandered them by spreading them in so many directions, and doing so moreover in a country that through much of his lifetime offered little reward for them. With more concentration, MacMillan might have been a greater figure on the international stage, an idea that certainly had its attractions for him. But when all was said and done, it was Canada that claimed his interests and his devotion, and his rewards were in the development of a musical life in which he was not only a prime mover but a principal player.

Ernest MacMillan was born August 18, 1893, in Mimico, Ontario, a town just west of Toronto on Lake Ontario and long since absorbed by the larger city. His father, a Presbyterian minister, was a musician of note in his own right; Alexander MacMillan was a distinguished hymnist and editor of several important hymnaries. The young MacMillan showed his musical talent as a child. At about the age of seven he tried out the new organ in his father’s church, and at eight he was sent to study organ with Arthur Blakely, a local musician possessing equal amounts of talent and flamboyance. Thus began an association with the instrument on which he was to become a virtuoso, and which is the subject of one of the essays in this collection. When Alexander MacMillan’s obligations took the family to Scotland in 1905–08, Ernest asked his father to arrange an interview for him with Friederich Niecks, a distinguished German musician who was Reid Professor of Music at Edinburgh University. Niecks allowed the twelve-year-old boy to attend the University junior classes in history of music, harmony and counterpoint, only to advance him to the senior classes two weeks later. (Niecks, incidentally, was succeeded as Reid Professor by Donald Francis Tovey, after whose death the post was offered to MacMillan in 1942; but by then MacMillan was fully committed to music in Canada.) The young MacMillan also took advantage of his time in Scotland to complete the examinations to become in 1907 an Associate of the Royal College of Organists.

When the family returned to Toronto, Ernest took his first church position at the age of fifteen at Knox Presbyterian Church. In 1911 he entered the University of Toronto; while studying for a degree in modern history, he helped organize a musical club, contributed to a University hymn book, and often played the organ for University functions. He went to Paris in 1914 to undertake serious study of the piano, but a trip to Germany to the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth coincided with the outbreak of World War I and he was interned as an alien for the duration of the war. He spoke frequently about his years in the German prison camp at Ruhleben, which, unpleasant though they were, had the salubrious effect of directing the young man’s talents to organizing, arranging, conducting, composing, performing, and even to acting, all of them skills that he would use throughout his career.

His return to Toronto in 1919 was also the beginning of his extraordinary professional life. He became organist and choirmaster at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church and it was here that he initiated his performances of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion — they were to become legendary. He began teaching at the Canadian Academy of Music which subsequently amalgamated with the Toronto Conservatory, of which MacMillan became principal in 1926. The following year he was appointed dean of music at the University of Toronto, and in 1931, despite the fact he had almost no experience as an orchestral conductor, he was made conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, a post he held for twenty-five years. Royal titles were abolished in Canada in 1919, but the Conservative government of R.B. Bennett briefly allowed them again in 1934–35. A knighthood was given to Frederick Banting, one of the discoverers of insulin, and Bennett thought that there should be awards in the arts as well. They went to the writer Charles G.D. Roberts, to the painter Wyly Grier, and to MacMillan. He was loath to turn down the honour when it was offered, mainly because he saw it not as personal recognition so much as acknowledgement of the growing importance of music in public life. The fact that Roberts and Grier were in their seventies whereas he was only forty-one worried him a little. He feared that he would be burdened for the rest of his life with a title that he recognized was already seen to be anachronistic in Canada, and to some extent he may have been right, for the title probably has contributed to an exaggerated and erroneous view of MacMillan as a conservative, stolid and establishment figure. His own ambivalence about the honour was evident years later when in an unpublished biographical sketch he titled a chapter The Knight Has a Thousand Sighs.

For better or worse, the knighthood officially marked him as the pre-eminent musician in Canada. A Vancouver music teacher, Marjorie Agnew, founded the Sir Ernest MacMillan Fine Arts Clubs to promote music appreciation among young people in British Columbia towns. He added the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir to his directorial obligations in 1942 and with the end of war in 1945, Sir Ernest was everywhere: he conducted in Australia and Brazil (he had already made numerous appearances in the United States), was president of CAPAC, the performing rights organization, pianist in the Canadian Trio with violinist Kathleen Parlow and cellist Zara Nelsova, a member of the first Canada Council, president of the Canadian Music Centre, president of Jeunesses musicales du Canada. He lectured, wrote reports, and in general acted as consultant and agitator for government support of music. In the 1950s he even had a weekly classical music show on a Toronto radio station.

When MacMillan began his career, music in Canada was relatively immature. There were some music schools and fine choral societies but no orchestras or chamber ensembles. In Toronto and Montreal there were some musicians of ability and even of distinction but the range of their activity was limited and public acclamation was largely reserved for visiting artists. What was lacking were consistently high standards of performance, indigenous musical composition of scope and originality, and quality musical education from beginnings up to professional training. On behalf of these things MacMillan was an energetic and tireless propagandist. In Sir Ernest MacMillan: The Importance of Being Canadian (University of Toronto Press, 1994) Ezra Schabas listed about two hundred essays, articles and lectures by MacMillan. They appeared in magazines such as Chatelaine, Saturday Night, and Canadian Forum, in various newspapers, and in such journals as the University of Toronto Quarterly, Queen’s Quarterly and Dalhousie Review, he addressed the Music Teachers’ National Association in the USA, the Toronto Board of Trade, the Directors of the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, and the Institute of Inter-American Affairs at Columbia University. Many of the items were slight and directed to a popular audience, but repeatedly he urged the case for the Canadian composer, the need to recognize Canadian artists at home, and the fundamental need to provide educational resources at every level. Positive in his endorsement of what had been accomplished, he constantly pressed for improvements.

The essays in this book are a small sample from that list of some two hundred titles, but they represent the main points that MacMillan constantly reiterated, and provide as well some indications of the dimensions of the man. The first essays are biographical and, for want of a better word, philosophical. They touch on his earliest musical life, his critical writing, and his larger view of music as a universal art. In the essays that centre on Canada he takes up the cause of the composer, but these essays also demonstrate MacMillan the nationalist — not a narrow stiff-necked patriot, but a musician who wants music in Canada to be able to take its place confidently and with distinction in the world. There is MacMillan as humourist in two of his celebrated lectures for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s Christmas Box concerts. And finally there are three lectures that suggest why Edinburgh University thought of him to be Reid Professor. They are not scholarly in the conventional academic way, but they show a grasp of music history and repertoire that was not so evident in his life as conductor and administrator.

Much of what MacMillan urged has been realized and we have the schools, libraries and institutions that he promoted over so many years. Nevertheless, much of what he had to say is still distressingly appropriate, and at the end of the century we are in danger of weakening or undoing what he spent a lifetime encouraging.

Sir Ernest resigned as dean of music at the University in 1952, left the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1956, and the Mendelssohn Choir the year following. By the end of the 1960s he had completely retired from public life, and illness confined him to his home. A stroke in 1971 incapacitated him, and he died May 6, 1973.

For forty years MacMillan had dominated Canadian musical life. What that life is at the end of the century was to a large extent determined by his vision and ambition. The sheer extent and variety of music in Canada, as well as changes in the nature of the country, make it impossible that anyone should again occupy a position of such pre-eminence, but we can all be grateful that, when it was possible, the place was filled by Ernest MacMillan.

Man

and

Music

Man and Music

Among the great influences in MacMillan’s life, three stand out: his Presbyterian background, his internment in a German prison camp during the First World War, and the music of Bach, which he came to know through his virtuosic ability as an organist. The first essays deal in different ways with these three facets of MacMillan’s life and personality. The first is a simple statement of belief, not particularly Presbyterian, but of a spiritual kind that he was able to make without apology in a world where such declarations were becoming more and more rare. References to his life in Ruhleben prison camp turn up frequently, as in the remarks to the Alumni of University College, University of Toronto. Perhaps the best account of those years is the long digression in an address on Gilbert and Sullivan. In his recollections, however, MacMillan modestly omits to mention that it was during his internment that he composed a string quartet of remarkable confidence and originality for such a young and inexperienced composer, as well as England, a work for chorus, soloists, and orchestra. England was composed as the major exercise for the Mus.Doc. degree from Oxford University. Oxford excused him from writing the various formal examinations for the degree, and granted it in June 1918. The work was subsequently published by Novello. The essay on the organ tells much about the young MacMillan, and also provides a fine sketch of musicians and musical life in Toronto at the turn of the century. But the same modesty that kept him from pointing out his personal accomplishments at Ruhleben required him to skip over the fact that he was an organist of virtuoso ability and an active recitalist. He knew and performed from memory virtually all of the organ works of J.S. Bach.

The essay about musical events in Toronto in the fall of 1927 provides a glimpse of MacMillan’s interest in music and performances that were outside the popular concert life. In the period under review, it is significant that he has not a word to say about the the local recitals of the reigning divas of the day, Geraldine Farrar, Rosa Ponselle, Amelita Galli-Curci, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink. Instead he wrote about events that he saw as being distinctive and notable among musical events. While the city had an active musical life, orchestra concerts in Toronto in 1927 were not common, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra had only recently been re-formed after its demise during the First World War. Its concerts, and the concert of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, were worthy of special attention. Music of the Renaissance, so widely known in the 1990s, was an exotic curiosity in the 1920s and a concert of that repertoire had special status. And the appearance of a new opera was always an uncommon event. In his review of The King’s Henchman, it may be observed that MacMillan was not in the least intimidated by the extraordinary success that Deems Taylor’s new opera had enjoyed in the United States.

Among MacMillan’s personal successes were the many performances of Messiah that he conducted with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. During these years, the movement towards historical performance was beginning, a movement that would have found MacMillan’s version of Messiah wanting on several counts, particularly because of the size of the choir and orchestra, and certain features of the instrumental accompaniment. His review of a new edition of Messiah is a balanced consideration of the opposing demands of historical and traditional performance, open-minded and enthusiastic, but with frankly expressed reservations.

Finally, there are two essays born of the tragic events in Europe with the rise of Hitler and the outbreak of war. MacMillan pleaded for an acceptance of music untouched by the political associations that some try to surround it with. Typically, he saw the European struggle from the perspective of the American continent. For all of his British associations, MacMillan was always a Canadian in the New World.

This I Believe

(December 31, 1954)

I am one of two billion or more human beings clinging to a planet inconceivably tiny in relation to the universe. Small as it is, the earth may yet be the only place where the thing we call life has found a means of manifesting itself through matter. At any rate we have no knowledge of life elsewhere and, even here, life has not existed long in comparison with the planet’s age. Has my life then any ultimate significance? Has life in general any significance? A sense of proportion might well lead one to say no.

Yet all my instincts tell me that it has. Life, whether confined to this earth or not, seems to me infinitely more important than all the vastness of space with its countless suns and planets.

I think I can realize why scientists have practically given up their attempt to explain life in purely materialistic terms. Mathematical probabilities, I am told, are overwhelmingly against the accidental production of even primitive forms of life; the appearance of a Shakespeare, an Einstein or a Beethoven through a fortuitous combination of atoms seems to me an absurdity.

How life has come to manifest itself through matter, whether it can exist apart from matter, whether it is confined to this earth — these things one can guess but not actually know. Science, philosophy and human reason take us only so far: take us to a point where we may either stop unsatisfied or enter the realm of faith — the realm of religion. We look to religion to endow life with ultimate and enduring significance. For my part I find belief in a personal Creator easier than belief in a nebulous and impersonal Life Force. But the important thing is to believe that the thoughts and acts of humanity — which for present purposes means you and me — are not in the long run empty of meaning.

Brought up in a God-fearing Presbyterian household, I was taught at an early age that Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. To glorify God is primarily to accept the universe with glad affirmation: with gratitude, not only for life’s great experiences, but for many ordinary things that we hardly notice — fresh air, good food, a job to do and sleep after exercise. Good health and fortunate outward circumstances are not granted to everyone — but we have all known great sufferers who, whatever their handicaps, have found compensations and therefore a large measure of happiness. The Kingdom of Heaven is within. Glad acceptance of life is often far from easy; there is much misery in this world and the mere Pollyanna is a fool. But to look below the surface, to discern that there is an ultimate purpose in things, to strive to understand that purpose and then devote oneself to playing a part, however small, in fulfilling that purpose — this, whatever one’s conception of Deity may be, is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

Being a musician, I often think of life as an unfinished symphony. The score is exceedingly complex, the music by turns exciting, cacophonous, tranquil and uplifting. The material score however is not the music; it is only a means of communication by which I can try to interpret the intentions of the composer.

We listen to life’s symphony as players in the orchestra; it is hard, perhaps impossible, when struggling with one’s own part, to hear the music as a whole. But let us keep on trying and in doing so our own part takes on a new significance.

Perhaps some day the truth may be revealed to us — for now we see as in a glass darkly, but then face to face.

Ruhleben

(Address to University College Alumni, June 5, 1965)

In the summer of 1914 I took off for Paris with a view to concentrating on the piano, which I had hitherto grossly neglected. In this venture I was encouraged by an American lady, Mrs. J. K. Burgess, whom I had met during the previous summer when I played for the services in the little Protestant church at Murray Bay.¹ Arriving about the middle of June, I installed myself in a comfortable room in the rue de la Tour, hired a piano and arranged for lessons with Madame Therese Chaigneau, member of a well known musical family, wife of the American composer Walter Morse Rummel and associate of Harold Bauer. For six weeks I worked hard but not so hard as to neglect altogether the lighter side of Parisian life. Mrs. Burgess was in Paris with her daughter and very kindly invited me to go to the Bayreuth Festival as her guest. I was only too glad to accept.

Bayreuth was a revelation to me and quite blotted out the clouds of war which, after the Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination at Sarajevo, had been gathering so ominously. I had never heard any Wagner opera later than Lohengrin; to hear the Ring des Nibelungen in its own home was an exciting experience. I am afraid that I dozed during part of Das Rheingold, having spent the previous night in the train without sleep. The other portions of the Trilogy however found me alert and most receptive. I studied the scores intently and even endeavoured to work my way through some of Wagner’s Collected Writings. The style is none too easy for one whose German is very limited.

We also heard Der Fliegende Holländer and Parsifal—the last on August first, the day when Germany declared war on Russia. During one of the intermissions we were told of the momentous event by Karl Muck, whom Mrs. Burgess knew well, her home being in Boston where Muck was at that time Conductor. I am afraid that it never occurred to me, brought up in an age when wars were regarded, especially on the American Continent, as something in history books, that this event would have any personal bearing on me. Certainly I did not realize that the world I knew was passing, never to return. But things moved quickly and, by the following Monday, I was beginning to be worried. Overshadowing the war news for us was the illness of Mrs. Burgess’ daughter, Barbara, and the necessity of finding well-qualified doctors. However, on Monday, August 3rd, I undertook to go to Nuremberg, where were located the nearest British and American consulates, to check up on the situation. I found the British consulate already closed but interviewed the American consul. He was most reassuring. The American citizens, he said, would have no difficulty whatever, and the British subjects, if Great Britain declared war, would be shipped across the border to Holland in a few weeks. While I was eating my dinner in a restaurant, a soldier came in and demanded my papers. I had none: one could at that time travel in almost any European country except Russia without a passport. The waiter, who spoke excellent English, managed to satisfy the soldier that I was not a Russian. Afterwards he told me I was lucky: Eleven Russian spies, he said, have been shot in Nuremberg today. I returned to Bayreuth and reported on what I had learned. The next day Britain declared war on Germany and thereafter the borders were closed to me. I had been both too ill-informed and too trusting.

Well, the long and the short of it was, I missed my chance of getting out of Germany and, after a period of solitary confinement in Nuremberg gaol, I was taken to the internment camp for British civilians at Ruhleben, on the outskirts of Berlin. There I stayed with several thousand others until I was released shortly after the Armistice of November 1918. It was not the most pleasant of experiences but even the most disagreeable features of Ruhleben were nothing compared to the suffering of the men in the trenches. One thing gave me great pleasure — the University [of Toronto] granted me my B.A. degree in absentia, excusing me from attendance in my fourth year. Similar exemption was granted for a number of men serving in the forces. I knew that they had done infinitely more than I to deserve this honour, but I felt duly grateful. I have tried by extensive reading to make up for what I missed but probably with very imperfect success.

¹ La Malbaie (Murray Bay) is on the St. Lawrence River north of Quebec city. It was a popular summer resort.

Ruhleben

(Address to the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of Toronto. Saturday, October 1, 1966)

Ruhleben was a racetrack and most prisoners’ living quarters were located in horse-boxes — six men to a box. Still less comfortable were the lofts above. However, one accommodates oneself readily enough to physical discomforts and an outlet was found in various activities — sports,