Jean Coulthard: A Life in Music

By William Bruneau, David Gordon Duke, David Duke

Jean Coulthard demonstrated that a Canadian woman could be a successful professional composer, whose music was, and still is, played extensively in concert halls across Canada and internationally. Through her seven-decade career she composed in every genre of traditional classical music: opera, symphonies, concerti, chamber music, keyboard, voice, and choir. Coulthard's story was more than that of artist and teacher. She made a place for herself in a male-dominated university and, as a westerner, she fought for the artists of her community. As a traditionalist she upheld aesthetic values she believed important for her and for her audience. This insightful biography shows that behind the productivity and the contented family life, there were intriguing personal and professional friendships, international travel, and cultural politics. She knew and learned from Bart?k and Schoenberg, yet in the end, she went her own Canadian way. The Coulthard story is deeply interconnected with twentieth-century Canadian art, and with the rise of Vancouver from provincial outpost to Pacific Rim metropolis. The authors describe several compositions from each stage of Coulthard's life, giving context and assessments of harmonic idiom, form and overall style."Jean Coulthard's harmonies touched me personally and warmed my soul. She has her own musical language, partly West Coast, mostly from another golden universe. She was comfortable with herself, yet kept searching for a different shade of colour to start another canvas. She is a Canadian treasure." - Peter Togni, Composer and CBC Radio Host

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1553800230
• ISBN13: 9781553800231
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: Ronsdale Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A delight for music students and the general public

A warm and engaging portrait of one of Canada's best-loved composers, JEAN COULTHARD - A LIFE IN MUSIC, is a beautifully written and well-researched book. The text contains valuable biographical and historical information, as well as a critical and realistic assessment of her music, her contribution to Canadian culture and to music as a whole. The book includes some musical analysis, selected works and discography. The text is accompanied by a beautiful selection of photographs of the composer, her local and international collegues, and the architecture and nature that contributed to shaping her work. This is an essential resource for music teachers and their students, good reading for anyone interested in Canadian studies and music in general. I would also recommend the book for its very interesting commentary on the life of a major female, English-speaking artist whose life in Vancouver, Canada, spanned nearly all of the Twentieth Century. Her artistic successes are a tribute to her tenacity and intellegent managing of her life as much as to her talent. Highly recommended.