CHAPTER 5

“Name Dropping”

Encounters with Schoenberg, Varèse, Ives, Thomson, Sorabji, and Havergal Brian

Eldon once remarked that if he had written his autobiography, it might have been titled “Name Dropping.”1 “Name dropping?” I inquired, somewhat confused. Eldon was by no means a name dropper, certainly not in the conventional sense. On the contrary, according to all who had known and worked with him, Eldon was almost obsessively modest in conversation and comportment. With his characteristically mischievous humour and twinkling smile, he was clearly alluding to something else. Indeed, over time I came to understand that Eldon was keen to share reminiscences about how his work had brought him into close contact with three of the most important creative figures of his time: the visionary filmmaker Norman McLaren, the silent film legend Buster Keaton, and Arnold Schoenberg, the iconic twentieth-century Austrian American composer and music theorist. In order to attain his goal of meeting some of the other leading figures in twentieth-century music, however, more conscious strategies and effort were necessary. To the amusement of his colleagues and family, Eldon would devote a considerable portion of his summer vacation time to the pursuit of this singular goal. When he returned from one of these “field trips,” he would proudly recount how he had met and discussed musical matters with one or more of the contemporary icons he had sought out. He managed to have close encounters with them not so much out of sheer boldness – though pluck and chutzpah were certainly involved – as from a very human and common-sense instinct telling him that they might be willing to accept a visit from an aspiring young Canadian composer who was keen to absorb their wisdom and advice, and to learn from their experience. Invariably he was right. Throughout this book, anecdotes abound about Rathburn’s meetings and correspondence with the likes of Schoenberg, McLaren, Keaton, Ernst Krenek, Percy Grainger, Edgard Varèse, Charles Ives, Virgil Thompson, Kaikhosru Sorabji, Aaron Copland, Havergal Brian, Jack Shaindlin, Gavin Bryars, José Ray de la Torre, David Raksin, and Carice Irene Elgar Blake, Sir Edward and Lady Elgar’s only child.2 Toward the end of his life, Rathburn spoke of how these close encounters with some of the inhabitants of his personal pantheon were among his most cherished memories.

We therefore step out of our NFB-career chronology at this point in order to devote a chapter to these one-on-one encounters with some of the iconic composers whose work and thought had provided so much inspiration for Eldon. The same can be said of the way in which the following three chapters lift up some of Rathburn’s areas of passionate interest that extend beyond his career as a film composer: train music (chapter 6), rare and idiosyncratic instruments (chapter 7), and the chamber and concert music projects to which he dedicated his earliest efforts as a composer, and to which he returned after he retired from the NFB in 1976 (chapter 8). In this chapter, however, we will focus on Rathburn’s idiosyncratic notion of “name dropping” and the inspirational encounters to which it gave rise.

“All our new music seems to have its roots in Schoenberg”³

In chapter 1 we briefly discussed Rathburn’s pivotally important encounter with Schoenberg in 1945, when he travelled to Los Angeles to receive a prestigious L.A. Philharmonic Young Artists’ award for his Symphonette, and to hear the premiere performance of the work conducted by Alfred Wallenstein. In this chapter we take a closer look at this formative meeting with Schoenberg, the sage mentor whose kindness, dedication, and mastery of his craft were to become a lifelong inspiration for Rathburn. In March of 1945, together with Fred Bridgeo, a representative from the Saint John Junior Board of Trade, Eldon boarded a train in Saint John and travelled across the continent to L.A., where they booked themselves into the renowned Biltmore Hotel, a destination billed as “the host of the coast: the largest hotel in western America.” Eldon would remain in Los Angeles for three weeks, before returning to Saint John via Victoria, BC, where he visited with his sister Inez and her family, his head still spinning from his experience in L.A.

Figure 5.1 • Rathburn poses for a photograph in front of the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel (March 1945).

One month prior to his departure for L.A., Eldon wrote to Schoenberg requesting a lesson in composition when he was in California. On 14 February 1945, Schoenberg replied:

Dear Mr. Rathburn: If you think I can in one lesson be of any help to you, I am ready to do the best I can. I charge $25 for a single lesson. When you are here, telephone me in order to arrange the time … I would like to see you even if you would not take a lesson. It might interest you to hear that our [panel’s] decision was unanimous. I congratulate you cordially on your success in this contest, and I hope sincerely you will also be successful in the public performance. Very cordially yours, Arnold Schoenberg4

Following the premiere performance of Rathburn’s Symphonette by the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra on 23 March 1945, Schoenberg invited him back to his home for the promised lesson in composition. In a 2007 interview, Rathburn recalls the reception he received when he arrived at Schoenberg’s home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles:

I was already crazy about two of his pieces, Transfigured Night and Pierrot Lunaire, and I knew Schoenberg was supposed to be a fine teacher. It was exciting, and a bit frightening. While I was eager to meet him, I was really quite shy. But when I arrived in the taxi, he came out with a dazzling smile. He seemed dynamic. Right from the start, he made you feel well, talking with him.⁵

When Eldon arrived at Schoenberg’s Rockingham Avenue home, the composer showed him inside and directed him to the piano. As they passed a globe on the way, Schoenberg asked Eldon to locate faraway Saint John, New Brunswick, and he expressed an interest in knowing more about the Canadian maritime provinces.⁶ There, in the music room, surrounded by Schoenberg’s library, scores, and recordings, they spent several hours discussing Rathburn’s compositions and conversing on a variety of musical topics related to composition and contemporary music.⁷ “I played one of my piano pieces for him,” Eldon recalled in later years, and Schoenberg noted that he detected influences of one of the great piano composers of the nineteenth century: “Schumann, that’s not a bad model!” he exclaimed at one point.⁸ Schoenberg then proceeded to examine the Symphonette:

He pointed out problems with balance in the piece and certain things I’d written that would be hard to perform. These are secrets that I didn’t really master until I began doing my film work, a couple of years later … He also said that you should have a general idea of where you’re going, of the final shape of the piece, before you write a note – and you must keep that idea in mind all the time you’re writing. That’s how you achieve something that has a kind of organic and whole quality.⁹

Figure 5.2 • Arnold Schoenberg with his children Nuria (age thirteen), Lawrence (age four), and Ronald (age eight), in front of their family home (Pacific Palisades, L.A.). Photo taken by Rathburn when he visited the Schoenberg home in March 1945, and given to the author as a gift.

Rathburn noted that Schoenberg made no attempt to impose his twelve-tone technique in his composition teaching. On the contrary, he generally avoided discussing this aspect of his own approach to compositional language with his students, and focused on older classical models. “The teaching method he adopted in these sessions was to go back to the classics,” Eldon recounted in 1952. “He placed great emphasis on form, analyzed Mozart scores, and spent a great deal of time commenting on Brahms’ songs.”10 When it was time to leave, Schoenberg called a taxi and accompanied Eldon outside to wait for its arrival. The Schoenberg children – Nuria (age thirteen), Ronald (age eight), and Lawrence (age four) – were playing together in the front yard at the time, and their father called them together to say hello to his Canadian visitor. With his Brownie box camera in hand, Rathburn took a few photos in order to preserve the moment for posterity.¹¹ Years later, Rathburn wrote to Schoenberg’s student Dika Newlin to compliment her on the publication of her reminiscences, titled Schoenberg Remembered.12 In the letter, Rathburn described his visit with Schoenberg in 1945, and spoke warmly about the composer’s very “human side.” “He was very kind to me,” he wrote to Newlin. “He was aware of my self-consciousness.”¹³ In 1945 he could not have imagined that some sixty-two years later – and one year prior to his death in 2008 at the age of ninety-two – he would meet Schoenberg’s children again when they attended an international symposium hosted by Carleton University, titled “I Feel the Air of Another Planet: Schoenberg’s Chamber Music, Schoenberg’s World,” and a series of concerts featuring Schoenberg’s music (to which we will return in chapter 9).

During his time in L.A., Eldon also visited with a few other well-known Hollywood residents, including MGM film-industry mogul Louis B. Mayer and Walter Pidgeon, the marquee film star perhaps best known for his lead acting roles in films such as Mrs Miniver (1942), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), and Funny Girl (1968). It is perhaps not widely known in Canada that both Mayer and Pidgeon were raised in Saint John, New Brunswick. Born in 1884 in Minsk, Russia, Mayer moved with his parents and sisters to Rhode Island in 1887. Five years later the Mayer family moved to Saint John, where his father would establish J. Mayer and Son, a scrap metal business. Mayer graduated from Saint John High School, where he would have encountered Professor W.C. Bowden, Rathburn’s mentor and music teacher. Frustrated and discouraged by what he later described as an intolerable level of anti-Semitism in Saint John, the nineteen-year-old Mayer left for New England in 1904. After initially trying to run a junk metal yard in Boston, he sought other work when the business failed. In 1907, now married, Mayer opened his first Nickelodeon cinema in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Scarcely a decade later, having conquered the eastern US market (by 1918 he owned the largest chain of motion-picture theatres in New York and New England), he would move to Hollywood to create Louis B. Mayer Pictures and the Metro Pictures Corporation. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) was soon formed through a 1924 merger with Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, and Mayer became the CEO of the new film industry giant. Eldon treasured the photo taken in March 1945 in the commissary of MGM Studios, where he is seated with Louis B. Mayer, Fred Bridgeo, and Walter Pidgeon. He later reported that Clark Gable was seated at the table next to them.¹⁴

Figure 5.3 • In the MGM studio commissary, Hollywood, March 1945. From left to right: Eldon Rathburn, Louis B. Mayer, Fred Bridgeo, and Walter Pidgeon.

In this heady atmosphere, Eldon could hardly have resisted the temptation to dream about becoming a Hollywood film composer. He knew that Schoenberg’s works and teaching had had an important impact on a number of film composers, and he pointed to one prominent example in particular. “David Raksin, known by some as ‘the Grandfather of film music,’ studied with him,” he noted.15 He was also fascinated to learn that Schoenberg had had a brush with the film industry:

Schoenberg was approached to score The Good Earth, but for $50K and [a stipulation that] not one note could be changed. That’s the story I heard. He actually did write part of the film as an exercise, but that did not come out until after his death. The sketches are in the Library of Congress. He also wrote a piece called Music for an Imaginary Film in the 30s.¹⁶

Eldon later sent samples of some of his own music to Paramount Pictures, presumably to test the waters in the hope that he might be given an opportunity to score a Hollywood film at some point during his career.¹⁷ He seems not to have pursued his Hollywood aspirations further, however, after he became fully engaged as a staff composer at the NFB.

Following their meeting in 1945, Rathburn took every opportunity to defend Schoenberg’s legacy. In 1952, he told a reporter that “all our new music seems to have its roots in Schoenberg, [and many] have experimented in different ways with his twelve-tone system,”18 noting also that “as we go deeper and deeper into the twelve-tone system, it leads us back to tonality.”¹⁹ On 8 February 1973, he attended a performance at Montreal’s Salle Claude-Champagne of Pierrot Lunaire, op. 21 (1912), Schoenberg’s early masterwork, one that Stravinsky had hailed as both a “brilliant masterpiece” and “the solar plexus as well as the mind of early twentieth-century music.”²⁰ Eldon was deeply moved by the performance given by New Brunswick contralto Patricia Rideout and the ensemble of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec. However he was distressed to read a review the next day, by Montreal Star critic Eric McLean, in which Schoenberg’s Pierrot was described in unflattering terms. On 11 February 1973, Rathburn wrote to McLean:

I would like to fire a few shots in defence of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire … a fascinating work rich in details not yet made commonplace. Having given up hope of hearing the vocal part performed by [pop/country singer] Anne Murray, I was extremely pleased with Patricia Rideout’s rendition last Thursday evening. In my opinion, Pierrot Lunaire is the father of some notable contemporary works, including Boulez’s Improvisations sur Mallarmé. It is also the grandfather of at least one Canadian work. By the way, there is a poor man’s Pierrot Lunaire written by Max Kovalski (related to the killer?) and published by Simrock in 1913 … One wonders if that super-spoof, Nouvelles Aventures, will make it after sixty years of exposure. In a few years Pierrot Lunaire will reach its 65th birthday. Let us now pension it off. There’s lots of life in those old bones yet.²¹

A few years later, Patricia Rideout recorded Pierrot Lunaire at the CBC Studios in Toronto with Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, James Campbell (clarinet), Suzanne Shulman (flute), Adele Armin (violin), Coenraad Bloemendal (cello), and Peter Smith (bass clarinet).²²

In 1991, Eldon wrote his own tribute to the immortal Pierrot with a humorous and programmatic character piece for piano solo titled Schoenberg versus Gershwin: A Tennis Match. Schoenberg and Gershwin were regular tennis partners and valued friends, sufficiently close that Schoenberg delivered Gershwin’s eulogy after his untimely death in 1937.²³ Figure 5.4a shows the opening nineteen measures of Rathburn’s score, which represents the two composers embroiled in an invigorating tennis match, complete with volleys and returns represented by a rapid défilé of leitmotifs taken from their works: Gershwin’s American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue in particular, and Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night (op. 4), Chamber Symphony (op. 9), Three Piano Pieces (op. 11 no. 2), Pierrot Lunaire (op. 21), Suite for Piano (op. 25), and Piano Pieces (op. 33a). The composer’s son Lawrence recalls how Leonard Stein – the pianist, conductor, music educator, and Schoenberg scholar – called out all of Rathburn’s Schoenberg references instantly when he heard the piece.²⁴ In 1996, film composer and Schoenberg student David Raksin (1912–2004) wrote to Eldon about his musical evocation of a genteel L.A. tennis match between two of the great titans of twentieth-century music. Having just listened to Stéphane Lemelin’s recording of Schoenberg versus Gershwin,²⁵ Raksin wrote: “Fun and games with both. I think George would have understood it better than Arnold … Altogether fine music!”²⁶

Figure 5.4a • Rathburn’s Schoenberg versus Gershwin (1991), mm. 1–19.

Figure 5.4b • George Gershwin painting portrait of Arnold Schoenberg, ca. 1934. Gershwin’s original oil portrait of Schoenberg appears to have been lost.

Rathburn had learned a great deal from Schoenberg’s teaching and example, but he insisted that he did not want “to be like those people who had one lesson with Paderewski and forever afterwards proclaim themselves his pupil.”27 He described Schoenberg as “a world-class intellect” and, like Schoenberg’s children,²⁸ he insisted that the best way to understand Schoenberg and his music is to attend performances and listen to the finest recordings, rather than through arcane music-theoretical analyses or excessive preoccupations with the twelve-tone method and its implications.²⁹ He further insisted that one or two hearings of any of Schoenberg’s works is insufficient. “Eight or ten times may be necessary … It’s definitely worthwhile to make the effort. There is no other music quite like it.”³⁰

Edgard Varèse: “One of the great masters of modern music”

In the spring of 1952, during one of his annual vacation sojourns to the US, Eldon met with composer Edgard Varèse (1883–1965) in New York City. He later reported that his conversation with the great French-American proto-modernist was “most stimulating,”³¹ and that Varèse struck him as “a big pussy cat” in both presence and appearance.³² In a 1959 interview with Liberté magazine, Rathburn gave the following measure of the composer:

Here was a man who was completely aware of what was happening in the world of music. At the time, he was working on a new score called Déserts. Little scraps of music paper were scattered about the room like parts in a jigsaw puzzle. I noticed that these scraps contained only a few notes. I believe they may have been the “cells” of his Déserts. He deplored the fact that most composers do not understand acoustics. They are really not aware of what happens to their written notes in actual performance. Every composer who has considered writing a percussion piece must be aware of Ionisation. It remains the masterpiece of the percussion repertoire. In listening to a Varèse album recorded a few years ago, one is very much aware that this music (most of which was written in the twenties) has not dated in the least. There is no doubt that Edgard Varèse is one of the great masters of modern music.33

Apart from this account of their meeting, the precise nature and content of their discussions remain unclear. However we know that Eldon was surprised to discover that Varèse was fascinated – and perhaps even somewhat envious – to learn about Eldon’s full-time position as a staff composer with the NFB. The Film Board was growing, and the innovative work of its Unit B was beginning to garner international attention and reputation. The prospect of working full-time in such a heady creative atmosphere seemed ideal to Varèse, and he wanted to know more. Hoping that he might secure an invitation to collaborate on a documentary film project at some point, Varèse asked Eldon whether he might be willing to put in an inquiry on his behalf.³⁴ Eldon returned to Ottawa and told his superiors about Varèse’s availability, enthusiasm, and expression of interest. Unfortunately, having apparently not heard of Varèse – or perhaps out of suspicion for his avant garde credentials if they had – NFB management was neither flattered by the inquiry nor persuaded by Eldon’s entreaties. Dismayed and disappointed, Eldon pursued the matter no further. We can only speculate on the kind of experimental film collaboration that might have been fostered between Edgard Varèse and Norman McLaren, for example, had the NFB followed up on the inquiry Rathburn brought back from New York in the summer of 1952.

“There is a great man living in this country – His name is Ives”

In August of 1953, the summer following his visit with Varèse, Rathburn visited Charles Ives (1874–1954) and his wife Harmony in their home in Redding, Connecticut. Eldon admired Ives immensely, from the first time he had encountered his music in the 1940s. “He used everything,” Rathburn said in an interview with Canadian composer Victor Davies in 1996, noting that Ives had written a Jew’s harp part into the opening “Washington’s Birthday” movement of the New England Holidays Symphony. He marvelled at the way Ives wrote “common Sunday School-type music and very complex things … he had no inhibitions, he did not subscribe to any school.”³⁵ Ives’s aesthetic breadth and courage had a profound impact on Rathburn’s conception of his craft. “I believe that one should not be tied down to any system or theory, but that one should make use of all the sound around him,” Eldon wrote in a reflection on Ives. “I spent a memorable day with Charles Ives in 1953 and meeting this great man confirmed this belief.”³⁶

Figure 5.5 • Harmony and Charles Ives, West Redding, Connecticut, ca. 1946. Photo by Halley Erskine.

Ives’s uncertain stature among his contemporaries was a matter of little concern to him. Leonard Bernstein, Henry Cowell, and Lou Harrison were passionate advocates, whereas Elliot Carter, Virgil Thomson, and Aaron Copland were among his harshest critics.37 However Ives was touched by a letter he received from Gertrude Schoenberg in November of 1953. Enclosed was a short paragraph Schoenberg had written about him, something Schoenberg’s wife had discovered among her husband’s UCLA lecture notes after his death in 1951. Ives was moved to learn that his artistic integrity had been praised by one of the towering figures of twentieth-century music. “There is a great man living in this country – a composer,” Schoenberg wrote. “He has solved the problem [of] how to preserve one’s self-esteem. He responds to negligence by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives.”³⁸ It is clear that Eldon Rathburn was an enthusiastic proponent of this view of Ives’s legacy.

On 19 May 1954, eight months after Rathburn’s visit to his home, Ives died of a stroke. Knowing that he was privileged to have had access to the great composer during the last months of his life, Eldon wrote to Yale University, since Ives’s collected manuscripts, papers, and correspondence had been bequeathed to its library.39 He enclosed a three-page handwritten essay titled “A Visit with Charles Ives,” a reminiscence of the unforgettable summer day he had spent with Ives and his wife in August of 1953. Rathburn’s account of the visit paints a picture of a vigorous creative genius in full possession of his intellect and sense of humour, sharing reflections on his life and work with an earnest young composer who had arrived on his doorstep, unannounced, from Canada. At once charming, humorous, poignant, and revealing in its detail, it bears quoting in full:

My first acquaintance with the music of Charles Ives was in 1949 when I acquired the now vintage Polymusic recording, which included such works as Central Park in the Dark, The Unanswered Question, Over the Pavements and a few others. I became curious to know what kind of man would write such interesting music. I had read about his residing in Redding, Connecticut and during a holiday in New York in August, 1953, I impulsively decided that I must meet him.

I left Grand Central [Station] early in the morning, arriving at Bethel a couple of hours later. I then proceeded to walk back to Redding. (My train did not stop at Redding). After a long hot walk I arrived at the home of Charles Ives. I was directed to the road which led to Mr. Ives’ home by an employee at the local Post Office. The Ives mail box at the side of the road told me I had reached my destination. I made my way up a path to an old rambling barn house.

I was quite nervous when I approached the house, from the realization that I might not be welcome. I knocked at the door which was opened by a pleasant lady whom I assumed was Mme. Ives. I asked her if Mr. Ives was at home and explained that I did not want to bother him, but would like to meet him if possible, though I would not mind if I was refused for after all I had no invitation. She informed me that Mr. Ives was not in good health and that he could not see any visitors. As I turned to leave I heard a voice from within asking “who is down there?” I was asked to enter, and appearing at the head of the staircase was Charles Ives. He appeared taller than I imagined he would be. I remember him muttering that he wished he would fall downstairs, because he would arrive at the bottom sooner!

When he met me face to face he appeared a bit hostile. He wanted to know if I was a reporter. I assured him that I was not. I did not tell him that I was a film composer. I simply said that I was a musician. He then said “well I am not.” He then thrust his face closer to mine and asked me “do you play the bass drum with your right foot or left foot?” I do not remember my answer to that. Needless to say I was taken by surprise by his remarks. Later Mme. Ives told me that he was very thin skinned and that one should never tell him that something could not be done because he would then proceed to do it. By this time I did not know what to expect from him.

After he had some breakfast, Mr. Ives then took me to his music room which contained a small piano, a poster from Paris, an old cornet played by his father, and numerous posters and photographs. I remember pictures of his father and grandfather and a baseball team from Yale. On the floor near the piano was an early edition of Lincoln the Great Commoner. Mr. Ives then sat on the keyboard of the small piano. He asked me how I liked the chord he produced. By this time I was quite bewildered but at the same time fascinated by this man.

I remember other pictures in the Ives’ home, namely that of Carl Ruggles (who Ives said was the greatest composer), Thoreau, Mark Twain [close friend of the Rev. Joseph Twichell, Mrs Harmony Ives’s father], and the pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch [Mark Twain’s son-in-law and a student of Theodor Leschetikzy, the great Polish piano pedagogue].

Later we went outside and sat on the porch. He wore an old hat. I noticed that his pants were mended at the knee. At times he seemed to breathe with difficulty. Occasionally he burped. At times there was no conversation between us at all. He would just sit and stare into space.

He sang a song using the melody from the Andante of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. The words were his own – an attack on conductors and women’s committees of symphony orchestras. After he had finished the song he moved his face closer to mind as if to say “what do you think of that?”

Later I noticed the barn where many of his manuscripts were kept. Ives said he loved the surrounding country. He then made a reference to his Third Symphony and the surrounding country. I am not sure what he meant. After a while Mme. Ives joined us. She told me that he had not heard his music for a long time. He had never met Schoenberg or Stravinsky. Henry Cowell was a good friend.

He gave me permission to take a photograph which unfortunately did not turn out well. He then turned to his wife and said, “I like this fellow.” I was very pleased by this remark. He asked me for my name and address and suggested that I might visit him at his New York home that winter. Now knowing that Mr. Ives was not in good health I put aside any thoughts of visiting him. A couple of months later I received from Mercury Music Corporation copies of the Concord Sonata, the Third Symphony, several songs and piano pieces. I discovered later that this music was sent to me at his request.

As it was now getting late, Mme. Ives suggested that she drive me to the station to get the train back to New York. Mr. Ives wanted to come along, which he did. We drove to the station via the Putnam Camp caves, the old cannons, rock piles, fireplaces, etc. I remember an amusing incident. As we passed a cemetery, Mr. Ives waved and shouted “Hello.” Mrs. Ives admonished him for this and he replied: “It’s better to say ‘hello’ than ‘O hell.’” After arriving at the station they drove off with Mr. Ives waving goodbye.

Since that meeting with Charles Ives, I have heard most of the recordings of his works and it seems to me that his music reflects the man to a great degree. His manner was explosive and yet at times gentle. That afternoon I felt that I had met a great man.40

Ives’s admiration for Thoreau may also have had an impact on Rathburn. While we do not know whether reflections of a more spiritual nature may have entered into Rathburn’s conversation with Ives in the summer of 1953, nor what Rathburn might have thought of Ives’s transcendentalism and affinity with Thoreau, we know that Rathburn was interested enough in Thoreau to write a short piano prelude about a passing train intruding on the great transcendentalist’s quietude (Thoreau’s Train, 1988),41 and that he was a member in good standing of the International Thoreau Society from as early as 1973 (likely earlier).⁴²

On 20 October 1974, the centenary of Ives’s birth, the composer was remembered in worldwide celebrations as the first composer of a distinctly American art music. Rathburn attended both the New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s five-concert “Around Charles Ives” Festival (8–12 October 1974) and a five-day Charles Ives Festival-Conference, co-hosted by Brooklyn College and Yale University (17–21 October 1974).⁴³

Virgil Thomson, William Schuman, and Harold Knapik: “Teach Thyself, Musician”

Notwithstanding his remarkable creative accomplishments and compositional output, a consistent theme that emerges from Rathburn’s reflections and correspondence is his feeling that he was in need of further training in composition. Through the 1950s and early ’60s, Eldon’s determination to find a teacher of composition appears to have been fuelled in part by his strong tendency to look outward for models and inspiration. Perhaps also, to some extent, it may have reflected a typically Canadian inferiority complex. His preoccupation with furthering his studies was also reinforced by advice he received from some of the professional musicians he encountered early in his career. “Wallenstein gave me some advice,” he recalled, reflecting on his conversation with the conductor in L.A. in 1945. “You have some good ideas, but you should study with Walter Piston,” Wallenstein told the aspiring young composer.⁴⁴

On 23 October 1959, composer and Juilliard School of Music President William Schuman responded to a letter of inquiry he had received from Rathburn: “I want very much to be helpful to you, but I find it next to impossible to advise you. Normally speaking, a man of your mature accomplishments and experience does not request guidance from an even more experienced composer. If I knew precisely what kind of guidance you felt you needed, I might have some clue to go on.”⁴⁵

Eldon must have followed up with a more detailed account of his wishes and needs, as Schuman wrote again on 9 November 1959: “I have enjoyed very much reading your letter. It would seem to me from the descriptions of the shortcomings that you feel that you have that you need a good solid teacher of composition. Perhaps Vittorio Giannini, the opera and symphonic composer who teaches here at Juilliard, might take you on. Why don’t you write to him explaining your situation and stating that it was at my suggestion.”46

Somehow lessons with Giannini never materialized, undoubtedly due to Eldon’s heavy workload at the NFB. But a few years later he reached out again, this time to the celebrated American composer Virgil Thomson. Eldon had a profound admiration for Thomson, whose music for the film Louisiana Story (1948) he described as “one of the greatest film scores of all time.”⁴⁷ Although Thomson apparently declined Eldon’s request for lessons, he replied on 31 May 1965 with a recommendation: “I think I have found a perfect teacher for you. He is a man about your own age, a composer of considerable experience and an expert contrapuntalist. He is Harold Knapik, and his telephone number is UN 1-6771. I suggest that you write or phone him for an interview. You will usually find him at home evenings and on weekends. I sincerely hope this solution turns out to be a good one. If not, I shall look further.”⁴⁸

In addition to being a composer and pedagogue of note who had been a student of Darius Milhaud, Harold Knapik was also a reputed chef in New York, an art gallery owner and curator, and a close friend of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.⁴⁹ Eldon must have written to Knapik immediately upon receiving Thomson’s recommendation, as Knapik replied on 22 June 1965:

I would like to see you when you come to New York and I would also like to see your scores and hear your tapes. I have a soft spot for Canadians since I was born in Toronto, although of American parents, and I know Montreal and Toronto. What I would like to know before we meet is just what sort of music most appeals to you: tonal, chromatic, atonal, polytonal, dodecaphonic, etc., and the composers whose works best represent what you like. This information would orient me and save both of us a good deal of time … When you are in New York, give me a ring and we can arrange a time for the meeting.⁵⁰

As with Giannini, however, lessons with Knapik somehow never materialized. So far as we know, apart from his year of study with Healey Willan in Toronto in 1939, and his meeting with Schoenberg in 1945, Eldon never received further formal instruction in composition. He underwent a “trial by fire” of sorts during his early years as a young staff composer at the NFB, and throughout his career he continued to hone his craft by trusting his musical instincts, by seeking advice from the more experienced staff composers around him at the NFB, and by closely studying scores and recordings of the best models. In the end, he may have come to adopt the wisdom of Galileo and Socrates before him: “you cannot teach a student anything, you can only help him find it within himself.”51

Kaikhosru Sorabji: “Mind your own business!”

Although Eldon’s brief exchange of letters with Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892–1988) is relatively insubstantial it is nonetheless included here, anecdotally, both for its amusing content and for the way in which it reveals important aspects of the character of both composers. Eldon wrote to Marc-André Hamelin, the great Canadian virtuoso pianist, about Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum (1930), a technically demanding marathon work for piano solo. Though some of Sorabji’s subsequent works are even longer (the nine-hour Symphonic Variations for Piano, 1935–37, for example), at four hours duration the Opus Clavicembalisticum was the longest piano piece in existence when it was written in 1930. On 20 June 1994, Eldon wrote to Hamelin:

I would find it hard to part with Sorabji’s O.C. I like to plough through it occasionally. It’s a great stimulant. Years ago when I had a lot of nerve I wrote to Sorabji asking him why he did not consider scoring it for a transparent combination of instruments. He replied that he didn’t need any suggestions from me (in other words, mind my own business!). Needless to say, I treasure his letter.⁵²

Indeed, in a letter of 12 April 1970, Rathburn had sent the following inquiry to Sorabji in Dorset, England:

Dear Mr. Sorabji: I am studying your Opus Clavicembalisticum and find it extremely interesting although the crossings of the voices are sometimes hard to manage on the piano. Have you ever considered a transcription of this work? I have been wondering how it would come off in a transcription for fretted instruments plus vibraphone, harp, piano and glockenspiel. Another possibility is the Moog synthesizer. I think it is a great pity that this work is not better known and would like to see this condition changed. I would appreciate hearing from you and having your thoughts on this matter. Sincerely yours, Eldon Rathburn.53

Sorabji’s reply was characteristically brusque and unequivocal:

Thank you for your letter of April 12th. No nothing would INDUCE me to allow any such perversion of my OPUS CLAVICEMBALISTICUM as you suggest, which I regard with horror and desecration. Widespread diffusion and knowledge of my work means literally less than NOTHING to me. I know how my work is regarded by those who matter, and that is all that matters to me. [The] enclosed may be of some interest as underlying my point of view and my attitude. I am, dear Sir, yours very faithfully, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji.⁵⁴

We do not know what was enclosed, but clearly Sorabji’s “point of view and attitude” were expressed with sufficient clarity in this terse note. It is worth noting in this context that in the mid-1980s Eldon wrote the following reflection after listening to a newly released recording of Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum by pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge:

Some excellent stuff here but as I listen to Side 8, I think Sorabji has overdone it. If you ask me to sit down for four hours, you’d better be exciting. These big works all seem to have the same strained sound. The piano has limitations. You wouldn’t keep a full orchestra going for so long. I note a sound similar to some of Busoni, Neilsen and even Ives. After listening to this, I admire Debussy more and more. Those chords are still resonating for me. Sorabji seems stuck, he can’t end it. Well he did, and now comes the applause, probably as much for the physical feat as the music!⁵⁵

As Rathburn’s astute ear instinctively told him, there is considerable evidence that Sorabji was indeed enthralled with the music of Busoni at the time, particularly his Fantasia contrappuntistica (1910).⁵⁶ One wonders whether the abrupt rebuke Eldon had received directly from Sorabji in April of 1970 might have dampened his earlier enthusiasm for his music.

Havergal Brian: “I’d call your symphonies ‘healthy music’”

In July of 1972 Eldon visited with the British symphonist Havergal Brian (born William Brian, 1876–1972) at his seaside home in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex. He enjoyed a relaxed chat with the composer and his second wife, Hilda, and recorded the conversation with the aid of a small portable cassette recorder.57 Their conversation is oddly disjunctive, undoubtedly due to both Brian’s advanced age as well as his proclivity for moving rapidly from one idea to the next without transition (something that might be said about a good deal of his music). It is nonetheless a congenial encounter, and the two composers seemed to hit it off well. Only a small portion of the author’s transcription of the recorded conversation has been copied below (some of the recording is unintelligible, and less interesting conversational banalities and tributaries have been omitted):

ELDON RATHBURN [speaking into the cassette recorder as he rings the doorbell]: This is Atlantic Court, and I just found that Mr Havergal Brian lives here at number 11 [Atlantic Court, Ferry Road, Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, England]

ELDON [to Hilda Brian, who appears at the door]:⁵⁸ Hi there. I’m a visitor from Canada, here to see Mr Havergal Brian.

HILDA BRIAN: Yes, what is your name?

ELDON: My name is Rathburn, from Canada.

HILDA: Well you’d better come in.

ELDON: Can I see him for a minute? I won’t stay too much. I don’t want to tire.

HILDA: Yes.

HILDA [to Havergal Brian]: There’s a guest here to see you.

HAVERGAL BRIAN: Hello. Where are you from?

ELDON: Montreal, Canada.

HILDA: Are you in music?

ELDON: I’m a composer for films, documentary films, with the National Film Board of Canada. I have also written a few concert pieces, and I have a project I’m doing now, finishing an incomplete piece by Percy Grainger.

HAVERGAL: The last time I saw Percy Grainger I got in a train and I stepped into him.

ELDON: I met Mrs Grainger last Sunday, in London. She was with someone from their estate and they were up to the festival. I’m supposed to finish Grainger’s Train Music so they asked me to visit with them in the suburbs. I found out that he did some experiments in electronic music and nobody knew about it. They’re just looking into that now. But he was mostly a pianist I guess, very interested in folk music.

HAVERGAL: He was devoted to it. He did all sorts of things like Handel in the Strand. Very good. I mean, I don’t know about it being very good, but they’re smart.

ELDON: You mentioned that the Gothic Symphony is your favourite among all of your works.

HAVERGAL: Yes, but it’s so big … [Canadian musicologist Paul] Rapoport told me that when he asked Ozawa “why aren’t you doing this Gothic Symphony in Toronto,” Ozawa said that he thought it was over-scored [laughter] … Of course he’d never heard it.

ELDON: Your music is brilliant! Have you heard of an American composer named Charles Ives?

HAVERGAL: Yes, though I haven’t heard any of his music.

HILDA: My husband doesn’t have a clue about anything but writing music. Just writing music, not performances or anything; all he wanted to do throughout his life was to write music [laughs].

ELDON: In a way your music reminds me of Ives, in the sense that he won’t hesitate to use a big mass of work. He was not inhibited by anything at all.

HILDA: There is the cost in place of producing [large works]. That’s the trouble.

ELDON: I know, and I think a lot of composers write while thinking in that way, to their detriment too.

HILDA [to her husband]: What date are they doing the recordings of your music?

HAVERGAL: At the end of this month.

ELDON: I will be able to get them in Canada. I have two of your scores, the tenth and twelfth symphonies.

HAVERGAL: The big stuff.

ELDON: Yes. Number ten is so festive, lot of bells and things! I like your music … I’d call your symphonies “healthy music” – a lot of music today is neurotic.

HAVERGAL: How long are you over here?

ELDON: I’m leaving on Monday. I’m going to Paris and back. Well, thank you very much Sir. I’m very glad to meet you.

HAVERGAL: Bye. Please write sometime.

ELDON: Yes I will. Thank you very much sir. Goodbye.

Thus ended Eldon’s short encounter with the most prolific English symphonist of the twentieth century. Havergal Brian died on 28 November 1972, following a serious fall, only a few months before his ninety-seventh birthday and less than five months after his short visit with Rathburn. He knew that the BBC was committed to recording and broadcasting all of his thirty-two symphonies, but he died without having heard them. It is an extraordinary fact that after such a productive creative career, the first commercial recordings of Havergal Brian’s music did not appear until an LP of his tenth and twenty-first symphonies was released by Unicorn Records in 1973. Only his mammoth Symphony No. 1 (the “Gothic,” 1927) had been heard by the broader public, in a 1966 live recording in the Royal Albert Hall by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, under the baton of Sir Adrian Boult. This performance, the first-ever professional performance of Havergal Brian’s music, took place almost forty years after he composed the work.