NOTES

Introduction

    1  Mike Mullen, “Dean of Canadian Composers Got His Start in Saint John,” Saint John Telegraph-Journal, 12 September 2008, C3. Reproduced with permission in the Saint John High School newsletter, 12 September 2008, http://www.sjhigh.ca/news.php?newsid=2242.

    2  Charles Enman, “Stories of Schoenberg,” Ottawa Citizen, 27 July 2007, D3.

    3  McInnes and Walz, One Man’s Documentary, 172–3. McInnes’s amusing comments bear quoting in full: “There was hardly a composer of any note in those days who didn’t get assignments from the NFB. Barbara Pentland with her plangent arabesques; Bernard Naylor, who performed the impossible task of making a single phrase repeat itself crescendo for forty-eight bars, in the manner of Ravel’s Bolero; Maurice Blackburn (as he was French-speaking, it was Blagboorn), whose swinging romantic cadences conjured up the violent contrasts of the Canadian seasons; and John Weinzweig, whose bleak eloquent discords, verging at times on atonalism, drew from Grierson the gruff comment: ‘Why does he have to be so goddamned Byzantine?’ Finally Lou [Applebaum] was joined by Eldon Rathburn, a jolly, shaggy New Brunswicker out of whose round form came the most magically humorous themes and phrases much used by the animators.”

    4  See Bidd, The NFB Film Guide; Evans, In the National Interest; Leach and Sloniowski, Candid Eyes; McKay, History of the National Film Board of Canada; Moreau, “The National Film Board: Fifty Years of History.”

    5  Tom Perlmutter (fifteenth commissioner and chair of the National Film Board of Canada), A Memorial Tribute, https://www.nfb.ca/. This tribute was unfortunately removed from the NFB’s website shortly after Perlmutter stepped down as film commissioner in early 2014 rather than completing the second term of his appointment.

    6  Wright and Gillmor, Schoenberg’s Chamber Music, Schoenberg’s World.

Chapter One

    1  Rathbun-Rathbone-Rathburn family history obtained from family historian Robert Boehm Rathbun of Franklin, Tennessee (email correspondence with the author, 21 February 2012). Robert Rathbun has continued the historical research done by his father, Frank Hugo Rathbun of Fairfax, Virginia. “Articles of Incorporation” for the “Rathbun-Rathbone-Rathburn International Family Association” (RRRIFA), of which Robert Rathbun is a member, were filed and approved by the Secretary of State, State of Indiana, in 2010. Following the paternal line carrying the family name, Eldon Rathburn’s ancestors were Joseph Rathbun (1745–after 1800), Joseph (1794–1860s), Joseph (1819–1904), George-James (1864–1941), and Caleb Rathburn (1888–1944), Eldon’s father.

    2  Ibid.

    3  Joan Morris (née Rathburn, b. 1937), email message to the author, 29 December 2014. “The store was still operating in 1969, but was torn down sometime after the Lord Beaverbrook Arena was built nearby at 536 Main Street. My father was a very generous man and extended credit to many of his customers. His store was located in a very poor district and most of his customers were destitute. When he died, my mother hired an agent in an attempt to collect some money for her. Although he did help, I’m sure that she did not receive all that she was owed. She did, however, have a lot of good will from these people.”

    4  LAC ERF, MUS 100, R12642/1.1, autobiographical notes, undated.

    5  The Willis instrument is now housed in Joan Morris’s Mississauga, Ontario, home.

    6  Joan Morris, in conversation with the author, 29 December 2014. Morris also recounted this anecdote to Globe and Mail journalist Buzz Bourdon following Rathburn’s death in 2008. Bourdon, “Eldon Rathburn: Dean of Canadian Composers.”

    7  LAC ERF, R12642/1.1, autobiographical notes, undated.

    8  Ibid. He added that “she may have been French because she counted ‘one, two, tree, four.’”

    9  Rathburn, in conversation with the author, 20 February 2007. Eldon made similar comments in an undated video-recorded interview with Louis Hone (LHT, ca. 1993).

  10  Bertin, Don Messer: The Man behind the Music, 50.

  11  Etude Magazine, October 1927, 773.

  12  This was family lore according to Morris. Joan Morris, email message to the author, 29 December 2014.

  13  Somers, Saint John Vocational School: In Retrospect. Saint John painter Jack Weldon Humphrey is widely viewed as the most significant eastern Canadian painter of his generation. See J. Russell Harper, “Jack Humphrey,” in The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada, 1985–, 3 September 2007, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/jack-humphrey/.

  14  In the late 1940s and early 1950s, “Stompin’ Tom” Connors and other fellow students posed for several of SJVS alumnus Fred Ross’s large murals, paintings that have decorated the corridors of Saint John Vocational School ever since. Ross later studied with Pablo O’Higgins in Mexico, where he met Diego Rivera in 1949. He returned to Saint John and served as Supervisor of Art at SJVS from the 1950s to 1970. In 2002 he was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada, as Rathburn had been three years earlier.

  15  The 1911 Canadian census shows William C. Bowden (age 33) living with wife Kathleen (age 30) at 74 Sydney Street, Saint John, NB.

  16  William C. Bowden, Two Easy and Instructive String Quartets: “Madrigal” and “Scherzo in A minor” (Boston: O. Ditson & Co., 1914).

  17  William C. Bowden, “What Is Meant by Equal Temperament?” 715.

  18  Davies, “Interview with Eldon Rathburn,” 4–7, 11.

  19  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398 (concert program for Hamlet, presented by the students of Saint John Vocational School, 25–26 May 1933).

  20  LAC ERF, R12642/3.14 (commencement exercises of the Saint John Vocational School, 29 June 1933).

  21  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Bowden to Rathburn, 18 May 1948, 25 July 1956, and 5 January 1958; R12642/1.16, Bowden to Rathburn, undated letter ca. 1954.

  22  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Bowden to Rathburn, 18 May 1948.

  23  “Old Conductor Has Retired,” St. John’s (NL) Daily News, 24 July 1956.

  24  Goss, “That’s Show Biz.”

  25  Altman, Silent Film Sound, 206. The vaudevillian aspect of the experience had not been entirely lost, as songs were also performed by live musicians between the films.

  26  Jacob Martin, “Imperial Theatre,” New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia, coordinated by Tony Trembley and St Thomas University, http://w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/nble/i/imperial_theatre.html.

  27  See Eyman, Lion of Hollywood. Lazar Meir (later Louis B. Mayer) was born in 1884 to a Jewish family in Minsk, Russia. His family immigrated to Rhode Island in 1887, and moved to Saint John, New Brunswick in 1892, where his father established a scrap metal business, Jacob Mayer and Son. In 1904, the nineteen-year-old Mayer moved from Saint John to Boston. Three years later he opened a small nickelodeon in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Within a decade he owned the largest chain of motion-picture theatres in New England. To create more films for his theatres, he moved to Hollywood in 1918 and opened Louis B. Mayer Pictures and the Metro Pictures Corporation. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) was later formed when the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation merged with Mayer’s companies, leaving him as CEO of the new conglomerate.

  28  Pidgeon’s best-known films include Mrs. Miniver (1942), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), and Funny Girl (1968).

  29  Sutherland has starred in a long list of Oscar-winning feature films including The Dirty Dozen (1967), Kelly’s Heroes (1970), M*A*S*H (1970), Ordinary People (1980), Six Degrees of Separation (1993), and more recently The Hunger Games (2012).

  30  Martin, “Imperial Theatre.”

  31  Hone, Koenig, and Merritt, Eldon Rathburn: They Shoot … He Scores (video interview).

  32  LHT, Rathburn interview by Louis Hone, 5 February 1993.

  33  LAC ERF, R12642/1.1, autobiographical notes, undated.

  34  Ibid.

  35  Eric Thomas Rollinson (1911–63), F.RC.O. 1931, BMus 1943 (University of Toronto), Toronto Conservatory of Music faculty member from 1942 to 1963. Rollinson published a number of important music theoretical texts with the Frederick Harris Co., including Elementary Harmony and Counterpoint (Oakville, ON: Frederick Harris, 1953), Free and Double Counterpoint (Oakville, ON: Frederick Harris, 1959), and Musical Notation (Oakville, ON: Frederick Harris, 1960).

  36  CBC Times, 11–17 April 1964. See also Richard Green, “Don Messer.” According to Green, “Messer, who began playing the violin at five, learned fiddle tunes from local players – his uncle Jim Messer, Bowman Little, Charlie Bell, and others – and Scottish and Irish songs from his mother.”

  37  Rosenberg, “Don Messer’s Modern Canadian Fiddle Canon,” 23–35. According to Rosenberg, it seems unlikely that this photo was taken in 1929, the year indicated by Messer in his scrapbook (Eldon would have been a mere thirteen years of age): “The 1929 date is conjectural as Messer’s personal papers and scrapbooks indicate his Saint John broadcasts began in 1929, 1930, and 1931” (fn 5). In 1934 the band began a radio show for the CRBC, broadcasting from CHSJ Saint John.

  38  Green, “Don Messer,” 2007. According to Green, after 1929 “a local merchant subsequently sponsored regular programs by Messer’s small band.”

  39  Rosenberg, “Don Messer’s Modern Canadian Fiddle Canon,” 24–5.

  40  Joan Morris, email correspondence with the author, 21 March 2016.

  41  LHT, Rathburn interview by Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  42  Rosenberg, “Don Messer’s Modern Canadian Fiddle Canon,” 24–5.

  43  Ibid.

  44  Ibid.

  45  LAC ERF, R12642/1.16, Rathburn to Cohen, undated Christmas card.

  46  Bertin, Don Messer: The Man behind the Music, 61.

  47  Rosenberg, “Don Messer’s Modern Canadian Fiddle Canon,” 24–5.

  48  Davies, “Interview with Eldon Rathburn.”

  49  LAC ERF, R12642/1.2, McGill University Fall Convocation Program, 6 October 1937. The licentiate was granted to Rathburn “in absentia” by Professor Douglas Clarke, Dean of the Faculty of Music, at convocation ceremonies held at McGill’s Moyse Hall.

  50  “N.B. Man Wins Musical Award,” Winnipeg Tribune, 16 April 1938. Silhouette was later rearranged and scored for piano and orchestra.

  51  “To Receive Musicians at Government House,” Ottawa Journal, 2 May 1938.

  52  Wolters-Fredlund, “A ‘League against Willan’?” 445–80. Wolters-Fredlund recounts how the minutes from the first meeting of the CLC report that attendance was “by invitation only,” and these invitations were extended only to the younger generation of composers, including Kenneth Peacock, Eldon Rathburn, Alexander Brott, Jean Papineau-Couture, Godfrey Ridout, and Oscar Morowetz. Invitations were later sent also to Jean Coulthard, Walter Kaufmann, Barbara Pentland, François Morel, and Clermont Pépin.

  53  LAC ERF, R12642/1.2, Royal College of Organists to Rathburn, 11 February 1939.

  54  LAC ERF, R12642/1.4, Royal Canadian Air Force to Rathburn, 4 March 1943.

  55  Joan Morris, email correspondence with the author, 16 March 2016.

  56  “Bruce Holder,” in the Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada 1985–, 7 February 2006, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/bruce-holder-emc.

  57  Ibid.

  58  The year following Bowden’s retirement in 1956, Holder joined the staff of Saint John Vocational School and taught there until 1973.

  59  Delong, The Mighty Music Box.

  60  Following the war, Captain Bruce Holder founded the Third New Brunswick Anti-Aircraft Regimental Band, an ensemble he directed for sixteen years until the position was taken over by his son, trumpeter Bruce E. Holder Jr, from 1964 to 1987. Rathburn’s Bicentennial Fanfare (1993) was written for Bruce Holder Jr’s Regimental Band.

  61  LAC ERF, R12642/1.1, autobiographical notes, undated.

  62  Bruce Holder Jr’s personal collection of audio recordings from his father’s CBC radio program Music Styled for Strings (obtained from the CBC Radio Archives).

  63  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993). Eldon says this in reference to Don Messer’s band, but the scenario would have been similar with Bruce Holder’s Orchestra, since they played regular Saturday night dances at the Admiral Beatty Hotel ballroom. See also Somers, Saint John Vocations School, 96.

  64  Mike Mullen, “Dean of Canadian Composers Got His Start in Saint John,” Saint John Telegraph-Journal, 12 September 2008. Reproduced with permission in the Saint John High School newsletter, 12 September 2008, http://www.sjhigh.ca/news.php?newsid=2242.

  65  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Assistant Secretary of the Canadian Performing Rights Society to Rathburn, 20 February 1940.

  66  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Assistant Secretary of the Canadian Performing Rights Society to Rathburn, 27 February 1940.

  67  Ibid.

  68  Cullen, Vaudeville: Old and New, 722. On 30 September 1941, Rathburn, Holder, and lyricist Dave Marion Jr filed copyright notice with Gordon V. Thompson Ltd of Toronto. Marion was the son of Dave Marion Sr (1875–1934), best known for his stuttering character “Snuffy the Cabman,” who had achieved widespread fame with a touring burlesque comedy troupe, “Dave Marion and his Famous Dreamland Burlesquers.” According to a Toronto newspaper article of 1913, “there is no more popular actor-manager in the field of popular priced burlesque than Mr. Marion.” Toronto Sunday World, 9 March 1913.

  69  Dave Marion (lyricist), Eldon Rathburn and Bruce Holder (composers), “Mr. Churchill. Our Hats Are Off to You” (Toronto: Gordon V. Thompson, 1941).

  70  After a long run as CBC Radio’s most popular variety show, The Happy Gang was cancelled in 1959 when all remnants of its wartime raison d’être were behind it. See “The Happy Gang,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada 1985–, 7 February 2006, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-happy-gang-emc/.

  71  Pearl, The Happy Gang Book of War Songs.

  72  RRRIFA.

  73  Inez Roxana Rathburn (1914–1988) married William Thomas Cooper (1910–1975). The Coopers had six children: William, Robert, Roxana (d. 1959), Thomas, John, and Benjamin (d. 2003). Eldon’s nephew William practised law in Moncton, New Brunswick, until his retirement in the 1990s. He contributed significantly to sorting out Rathburn’s affairs following his death in 2008.

  74  LHT, Rathburn interview by Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  75  Charles Enman, “Stories of Schoenberg: Eldon Rathburn Fondly Remembers Meeting Composer and His Family,” Ottawa Citizen, 27 July 2007.

  76  LAC ERF, Rathburn interview by Canadian Broadcasting Corportation Radio One station in Ottawa, 6 March 1994, accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 416319, audio recording, 48 minutes.

  77  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, script for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra Young Artists Competition concert, 24 March 1945.

  78  Arnold Schoenberg Center, Vienna, SatColl L10, rl.2, fr.577, Letter from Schoenberg to Kanitz.

  79  “Anna Neagle the Last Straw,” Ottawa Journal, 10 June 1942.

  80  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, clipped article, “Persistent Composer Hits Jackpot,” undated (likely from the Saint John Telegraph-Journal). While the newspaper clipping in the NBPA ERF is cropped such that it does not include the author, date, or name of publication, it is clearly an edited version of the draft article Elizabeth V. Munro sent to Rathburn, included in the LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Munro to Rathburn, 26 April 1944.

  81  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Munro to Rathburn, 26 April 1944.

  82  Ibid.

  83  Ibid.

  84  Greene (1927–2010) would go on to pursue a successful career as a recording and concert artist. She became widely known as an interpreter of Beethoven, performing concerti under celebrated conductors including Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Leopold Stokowski, and Efrem Kurtz, among others. Greene’s obituary is posted at http://www.tributes.com/obituary/show/Gloria-Greene-102629141.

  85  Mildred Norton, Los Angeles Daily News, 24 March 1945.

Chapter Two

    1  Ohayon, “Propaganda Cinema at the NFB”; Goetz, “The Canadian Wartime Documentary.”

    2  LHT, Rathburn interview by Hone, 5 February 1993.

    3  NFBA, To the Ladies production file, order for services document, 20 December 1945.

    4  Ibid. Ridder’s orchestra comprised fewer than twenty musicians.

    5  LAC ERF, R12642/1.23, listening journal, undated.

    6  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

    7  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Newman to Rathburn, 5 January 1946.

    8  Ibid., Applebaum to Rathburn, 1 March 1946.

    9  Joan Morris, email correspondence with the author, 12 October 2015.

  10  NFBA, To the Ladies production file, newspaper clipping advertising the film in the Evening Times-Globe (Saint John), 1 February 1946.

  11  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993). See also LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, New York School of the Deaf to Rathburn, 1 December 1947. Eldon regularly sought help from medical experts throughout the US and Canada in the hope that his mother’s condition might be improved.

  12  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 29 March 1991.

  13  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Rathburn to Schoenberg, 22 May 1947. In celebration of her eighty-fourth birthday on 11 August 1946, Carrie Jacobs Bond – the legendary American songwriter who published a few hundred hit songs during the Tin Pan Alley era – was honoured by the establishment of a full-tuition, four-year scholarship in her name at the University of Southern California School of Music. She died four months later on 28 December 1946. Given his telegrammed inquiry to Schoenberg, Eldon must have received news of the existence of this new and prestigious award in the spring of 1947.

  14  Schoenberg’s letter to Ernst Kanitz is archived at the Arnold Schoenberg Center (ASC), Vienna, SatColl L10, rl.2, fr.577. Kanitz was a former student of the Austrian composer Franz Schreker. Like Schoenberg, he had sought exile from Hitler’s Austria, and escaped to L.A. in the 1930s. See Bahr, Weimar on the Pacific; Taylor, Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Émigrés, 1933–1950.

  15  ASC, SatColl L10, rl.2, fr.577.

  16  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Willan to Rathburn, 24 May 1947. Willan wrote to Eldon: “Dear Eldon, I have mailed a letter to Kanitz this morning by air mail. All the best and good luck to you. Sincerely, Healey Willan. P.S. – the Variations sound horribly funny. Did you come to the end of a perfect day [a reference to Jacobs-Bond’s well-known song ‘A Perfect Day’]? Or what? I shall be interested to hear.”

  17  Joan Morris, email correspondence with the author, 9 March 2016.

  18  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Kash to Rathburn, 5 June 1947: “We will be happy to have you join us August first.”

  19  Rathburn’s contract of employment (NFBA, human resources file, viewed 15 May 2015).

  20  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on Who Will Teach Your Child, undated.

  21  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Rathburn to Bowden, 18 May 1948.

  22  Pitman, Louis Applebaum, 35–6.

  23  Ibid., 55–73.

  24  Solenn Hellégouarch’s valuable essay, “La pensée de Maurice Blackburn, compositeur de l’ONF,” is posted on the website of La création sonore: http://www.creationsonore.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/travaux_solenn-hellegouarch_maurice-blackburn-compositeur-de-lonf.pdf.

  25  Louise Cloutier and Denis Allaire, “Maurice Blackburn,” Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada 1985–, 22 August 2006, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/maurice-blackburn/.

  26  Barclay McMillan and Elaine Keillor. “Robert Fleming,” Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada 1985–, 12 June 2008, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/robert-fleming/.

  27  Kash had played and studied under Otto Klemperer, Pierre Monteux, and Igor Markevitch. See Betty Nygaard King and Ian Grant. “Eugene Kash,” Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada, 1985–, 29 June 2009, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/eugene-kash-emc/).

  28  Children’s Concert (1949) is an educational film that describes and demonstrates both the various instrumental sections of the orchestra and the elements of musical form and structure.

  29  Wise, Take One’s Essential Guide to Canadian Film.

  30  Terrence Macartney-Filgate, The Magical Eye (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1989), film, 46 min.

  31  Applebaum, “The NFB in the 1940s.”

  32  LHT, Rathburn interview by Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  33  Pitman, Louis Applebaum, 47.

  34  Ibid., 48.

  35  Berkeley Fleming, “NFB Memories,” Memoirs of a Musical Bystander blog, 20 December 2013, https://theflemings2012.wordpress.com/2013/12/20/nfb-memories. Berkeley Fleming is the eldest son of NFB composer Robert Fleming, Rathburn’s contemporary and colleague.

  36  LHT, Rathburn interview by Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  37  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score Down to Earth, undated.

  38  LHT, Rathburn interview by Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  39  LHT, Rathburn interview by Louis Hone, 29 March 1991; NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score Down to Earth, undated.

  40  LHT, Rathburn interview by Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  41  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score Our Town in the World, undated.

  42  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score Saint John River Valley, undated.

  43  See chapter 3 (“Mickey Mousing Reconsidered”) of Lea Jacobs, Film Rhythm after Sound Technology, Music, and Performance (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014). In place of the pejorative term “mickey mousing” for this film music technique, it might be preferable to call it “scene painting,” by analogy with the technique of “word painting” in texted music.

  44  LAC ERF, R12642/1.23, and NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score for To the Ladies, undated.

  45  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score for Indian Canoemen, undated; NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on NFB personnel (Stephen Greenlees), undated.

  46  NFBA, Indian Canoemen production file, Greenlees to Assistant Director of the Water Safety Service for the American National Red Cross.

  47  LHT, Rathburn interview by Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  48  In a personal conversation with the author (13 August 2006), Eldon cited Composing for the Films as an important influence on his thinking during his early years at the Film Board. It is interesting to note that Eisler’s masterful chamber-scale documentary film score, Fourteen Ways of Describing the Rain, Op. 70 (1941), for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, violincello, and piano, was dedicated to Arnold Schoenberg.

  49  Tom Daly, “Hungry Minds,” cited in Bidd, The NFB Film Guide.

  50  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score Hungry Minds, undated.

  51  Ibid.

  52  Much of Rathburn’s chromaticism in this film seems to bear a family resemblance to that of the dreamy “Juliet theme” from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliette (1940), for example.

  53  Davies, “Interview with Eldon Rathburn.”

  54  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 29 March, 1991.

  55  Ibid.

  56  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score Hungry Minds, undated.

  57  “Mary Pickford Acclaimed at Elgin Theatre Appearance,” Ottawa Journal, 13 January 1948.

  58  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score Land in Trust, undated.

  59  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score The Gentle Art of Film Projection, undated.

  60  Ibid.

  61  Douglas Tunstell, Thunder in the East (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1950), film, 11 minutes.

  62  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score Thunder in the East, undated. By Rathburn’s account, it is actually a full dance band layered above the orchestra. In the final mix, however, while the saxophone can be easily heard, the rest of the band is inaudible.

  63  Saïd, Orientalism.

  64  Extensive application of this idea can be found in Colin Low’s City of Gold (1957) and Robert Verrall’s A Is for Architecture (1959).

Chapter Three

    1  Evans, In the National Interest, 34.

    2  Studio F has been occasionally referred to as “Unit F,” erroneously. Recruited in 1945 by John Grierson, Roger Blais was one of the few francophone directors at the NFB during the early years. Blais argued passionately for a fully fledged, independent French-language unit. In 1954 he was appointed executive producer of Studio F, which was given a mandate to develop French-language production. See Denys Desjardins, Making Movie History: Rogers Blais (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 2014), film, 6 min, https://www.nfb.ca/film/making_movie_history_roger_blais/.

    3  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on NFB personnel (“the committee”), undated.

    4  Ibid.

    5  Hassannia, “Colin Low, Don Owen and How the NFB’s Unit B Changed Canadian Cinema.” The Romance of Transportation in Canada lost the 1953 Oscar (animated short film category) to Johann Mouse, an MGM Hanna-Barbera film about a waltzing mouse living in the home of Johann Strauss.

    6  Robert Verrall, interviewed by James Wright and Allyson Rogers in Montreal, 8 May 2015. Verrall recalls that in the early 1950s, members of the Unit B animation team were particularly inspired by the work of a group of US animators at United Productions of America studios (UPA), a studio that was founded following the Disney animators’ strike of 1941, and consisted largely of ex-Disney staff members who were unhappy with the ultra-realistic animation style advocated by Disney. This led to fruitful dialogue and mutual admiration between NFB and UPA animators that continued for many years. According to Verrall, UPA animators were particularly impressed with the NFB’s animated short film Teeth Are to Keep (1949), scored by Rathburn.

    7  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

    8  McLaren’s early Boogie Doodle (1941) also engages boogie-woogie piano music by Albert Ammon.

    9  Corner, “Sounds Real: Music and Documentary,” 362.

  10  NFBA, The Romance of Transportation in Canada production file, Tom McLaughlin to W.S. Jobbins, 31 August 1953.

  11  Ibid.

  12  Evans, In the National Interest, 26.

  13  Ibid. Other awards for The Romance of Transportation in Canada include the prestigious British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award (1953).

  14  The Happy Gang was cancelled in 1959. See “The Happy Gang,” Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada 1985–, 7 February 2006, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-happy-gang-emc/.

  15  Pearl, The Happy Gang Book of War Songs, 1941.

  16  Robert Verrall, interview with James Wright and Allyson Rogers, 8 May 2015.

  17  Rathburn, interview with Mathieu Lavoie in Ottawa, undated (ca. 2007).

  18  Pratley, “The Romance of Transportation in Canada,” 15–16.

  19  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  20  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on his film score for The Romance of Transportation in Canada, undated.

  21  LAC ERF, tribute to Eldon Rathburn upon his retirement from the NFB, 17 March 1977, accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 416027, audio recording, 70 minutes.

  22  Matthew Dicker, “Every Oscar Ever: One Man’s Attempt to Watch Every Movie Ever Nominated for an Oscar in Every Category in Every Year,” Every Oscar Ever blog, 30 May 2013, http://everyoscarever.blogspot.ca/2013/05/?m=1.

  23  Pratley, “The Romance of Transportation in Canada,” 15–16.

  24  NFBA, Tom McLaughlin to W.S. Jobbins, 31 August 1953.

  25  NBPA ERF, personal notes on his film score for The Romance of Transportation in Canada, undated.

  26  Hassannia, “Colin Low, Don Owen and How the NFB’s Unit B Changed Canadian Cinema.”

  27  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  28  Shaindlin, “Don’t Shoot the Piano Player,” 25–8.

  29  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 5 February 1993.

  30  Evans, In the National Interest, 38.

  31  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score Corral, undated.

  32  Jones, Movies and Memoranda, 64.

  33  White, Git Along, Little Dogies, 143–5.

  34  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 29 March 1991.

  35  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 5 February 1993.

  36  Corner, “Sounds Real,” 359–60.

  37  Ibid.

  38  See Holly Rogers, “The Musical Script.” See also Melançon, “Begone Dull Care.”

  39  Druick, Projecting Canada, 65–71; Druick, “Documenting Government: Reexamining the 1950s National Film Board Films about Citizenship.”

  40  McLaren, Technical Notes by Norman McLaren, 54.

  41  LAC ERF, R12642/1.23, personal notes on film scores. Buff Estes, a former member of the Benny Goodman orchestra, was also featured on Rathburn’s scores for The Safety Supervisor (1951) and It’s the Fashion (1951).

  42  Norman McLaren, Short and Suite (Montreal: National Film Board, 1959), film, 5 mins, https://www.nfb.ca/film/short_and_suite/.

  43  Rathburn later arranged a tune titled “Blue Cat” based on thematic material from Short and Suite. On a break during a recording session for the IMAX film Momentum (1992), Louis Hone recorded it with a combo of musicians (including Eldon at the piano). Copies of the recording are held in Hone’s personal collection (and the author’s).

  44  Rathburn, in conversation with the author, 30 April 2006.

  45  LAC ERF, tribute to Eldon Rathburn upon his retirement from the NFB, 17 March 1977, accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 416027, audio recording, 70 minutes.

  46  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score Fish Spoilage Control (1956), undated.

  47  Vause, “Capturing the American Experience”; Thelen, “The Movie Maker as Historian”; Tibbetts, “All That Glitters.”

  48  LAC ERF, recording of CBC program Music for the Films hosted by Frank Herbert with commentary by Eldon Rathburn, undated (ca. 1960), accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 415912, audio recording, 33 minutes.

  49  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Berton to McCann, 3 February 1978.

  50  LAC ERF, tribute to Eldon Rathburn upon his retirement from the NFB, recorded 17 March 1977, accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 416027, audio recording, 70 minutes.

  51  LAC ERF, R12642/1.13, Rathburn to Blades, 18 December 1978.

  52  Tibbetts, “All That Glitters,” 54.

  53  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on his film score City of Gold, undated.

  54  See for example Earl Robinson, “The Dirty Miner,” on Songs of the Old Chisholm Trail, Mercury Records, MG 20008, 1952.

  55  See Winstock, Songs and Music of the Redcoats, 67–8. Sung to the tune of “The Girl I Left behind Me,” the song dates back to the Seven Years War of 1756–63.

  56  LAC ERF, recording of CBC program Music for the Films hosted by Frank Herbert with commentary by Eldon Rathburn, undated (ca. 1960), accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 415912, audio recording, 33 minutes.

  57  National Film Board of Canada, “NFB History: The 1950s,” accessed 2 December 2015, https://www.nfb.ca/history/1950-1959/.

  58  Tibbetts, “All That Glitters,” 55.

  59  Government of Canada, National Film Board of Canada, “City of Gold,” last modified 18 November 2015, http://onf-nfb.gc.ca/en/our-collection/?idfilm=10659.

  60  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on NFB personnel (Stephen Greenlees), undated.

  61  Antonio, “Film Noir in Sound.”

  62  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film score It’s a Crime, undated.

  63  Ibid.

  64  NFBA, It’s a Crime production file, Tom Daly to Jack Gleeson, 6 March 1956.

  65  NFBA, It’s a Crime production file, Tom Johnson to Margaret MacDonald, 9 July 1957.

  66  John Corcelli, “The NFB’s Candid Eye,” CBC radio, February 2005, http://www.broadcasting-history.ca/index3.html?url=http%3A//www.broadcasting-history.ca/programming/television/programming_popup.php%3Fid%3D709; Ian Aitken, “Direct Cinema.”

  67  Markham Cook, “Terence Macartney-Filgate: Doc Pioneer,” Point of View Magazine: Documentary Culture, issue 82 (Summer 2011), http://povmagazine.com/articles/view/terence-macartney-filgate-doc-pioneer. Macartney-Filgate’s cinéma vérité films include Police (1958), Blood and Fire (1958), The Back-Breaking Leaf (1959), and The Days before Christmas (1958).

  68  NFBA, Police production file, memorandum from Tom Daly to Grant McLean, 11 December 1958.

  69  Caplin, Classical Form.

  70  “Crime Jazz” is a genre that is defined more functionally than stylistically. For other examples by Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini, David Amram, Pete Rugolo, Count Basie, Laurie Johnson, et al. see the early 1960s compilation Crime Jazz: Music in the First Degree, Rhino Records, R2 72912 / BMG, DRC1 1669.

  71  Jardin, “Crime Jazz.”

  72  It should be noted that the collection of tunes released in 1957 by Davis on Birth of the Cool had been recorded almost ten years earlier, in 1949 and 1950.

  73  LAC ERF, R12642/2.8, listening journal, undated (ca. 1996–98). About Coltrane’s “I’m Old-Fashioned” from Blue Train (1958), for example, he writes “a relief from the so-called classics – another view of music.” In another note, about Ellington’s ambitious Black, Brown and Beige Suite (1958) he writes that “it’s too bad that [he] didn’t have that sense of form that Gershwin had … He was too episodic but the colour is very attractive” (LAC ERF, R12642/2.5, listening journal, undated, ca. early 1990s).

  74  Petr Cancura (saxophones), Kevin Turcotte (trumpet, flugelhorn), Marianne Trudel (piano), Adrian Vedady (bass), and Jim Doxas (drums).

  75  The Romance of Improvisation in Canada is one of the last recordings made in the Chester Beachell Studio of the NFB’s expansive headquarters in Ville St-Laurent. The facility opened in 1956 when NFB staff were moved from the modest Ottawa facilities they had occupied since 1939. It will close in 2019, when NFB staff will move to their new downtown facility, beside Place des Arts, home to the Montreal Symphony and the city’s most central concert hall.

  76  The Romance of Improvisation in Canada (Montreal: Justin Time Records, 2018).

  77  “Man Believed Lost in Reversing Falls,” Saint John Telegraph Journal, 31 March 1959.

  78  The contents and details in this paragraph are based on the author’s email correspondence with Roberta Morris, 30 July 2017.

  79  Ibid.

  80  Albert Ohayon, “The 1960s: An Explosion of Creativity,” NFB Playlists, undated, https://www.nfb.ca/playlists/albert_ohayon/1960s-explosion-creativity.

  81  Thistle, “Adaptable Is Probably the Best Word to Describe Ken Campbell, Ottawa Composer and Arranger.”

  82  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on his film score Fields of Sacrifice, undated.

  83  LHT, Rathburn interview by Hone, 29 March 1991.

  84  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on his film score for The Ride, undated.

  85  Roman Kroitor and Colin Low, Universe (Montreal: National Film Board, 1960), film, 27 mins, https://www.nfb.ca/film/universe/.

  86  “Colin Low Recollections from a Distinguished Career,” NFB Playlists, undated, https://www.nfb.ca/playlists/low-colin/colin-low-recollections-distinguished-career. Berthold Bartosch (1893–1968) is known for his work on early cartoons such as Animated Cards (1919), Occupation of the Rhineland (1925), and The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) with Lotte Reiniger, the pioneering silhouette animator. He experimented with animated film techniques in the 1930s, and is perhaps best known for his revolutionary and symbolic short animated film L’idée (1932).

  87  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  88  Rathburn, “Writing for Movies,” 3.

  89  Ibid.

  90  From Holst’s original 1914–16 arrangement for two pianos.

  91  Universe (NFB, 1960), film timestamp 7'50" to 8'40", https://www.nfb.ca/film/universe/.

  92  LHT, Rathburn interview with Hone, 29 March 1991.

  93  Sydney Goldsmith, Satellites of the Sun (Montreal: National Film Board, 1974), film, 12 minutes, https://www.nfb.ca/film/satellites_of_the_sun.

  94  Universe (NFB, 1960), film timestamp 11'45"–13'00", https://www.nfb.ca/film/universe/.

  95  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on his film score for Universe, undated.

  96  Bernard, “Voice Leading as a Spatial Function in the Music of Ligeti.”

  97  Quoted in Varnai, Ligeti in Conversation, 14–15.

  98  Ibid.

  99  Ibid.

100  NFBA, Labyrinth production file, Raymond Lovejoy to Colin Low, 31 March 1965. Raymond Lovejoy was Kubrick’s asssistant and music editor.

101  Lobrutto, Stanley Kubrick, 273. See also Liam Lacey “Colin Low: A Gentleman Genius of Documentary Cinema,” Globe and Mail, 11 March 2016.

102  “Take One Talks with Wally Gentleman,” Take One 1, no. 11 (May–June 1968): 18–21. Gentleman does not speak positively about his experience working for Kubrick, and contrary to popular opinion he ultimately considers 2001 to be a disappointing film. See also Ron Miller, “The Movie that Inspired 2001,” Gizmodo, 3 May 2013, http://io9.gizmodo.com/5988780/the-movie-that-inspired-2001.

103  Paulus, “Stanley Kubrick’s Revolution in the Usage of Film Music.”

104  Paul Byrnes, “Kubrick Knew the Score, and He Used It, Opening the Door for Modern Directors Whose Style Relies on Existing Music Rather than Original Scores,” Sydney Morning Herald, 15 January 2013, http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/kubrick-knew-the-score-and-he-used-it-20130114-2cpnb.html.

105  Roman Kroitor and Colin Low, Universe (Montreal: National Film Board, 1960), film, 28 mins, https://www.nfb.ca/film/universe.

106  Norman F. Jackson’s sketches and paintings hang in the Neil Armstrong Museum, the Baseball Hall of Fame, the John F. Kennedy Library, and Florida’s Astronaut Hall of Fame.

107  LAC ERF, R12642/1.13, card from Jackson to Rathburn, 1976.

108  Time-lapse photography was demonstrated for the first time in Georges Méliès’s feature film Carrefour de l’Opéra (1897), and the technique was first employed in F. Percy Smith’s nature film The Birth of a Flower (1910). However it was not truly engaged for artistic purposes before the 1960s.

109  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on personnel (John Feeney), undated.

110  NFBA, Sky production file, Grant McLean to G. Noble, 1 February 1963.

111  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

112  Burmester, “Short Films Revisited,” 66–7.

113  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

114  Ibid.

115  James McDuff, “Sky,” IMDb, 29 May 2010, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0224132/reviews?ref_=tt_ov_rt.

116  Brégent-Heald, “All Aboard!”

117  Morrone and Morrone, “Planes, Trains and Buster.”

118  NFBA, The Railrodder production file, Guy Roberge to John Smith, 13 January 1965.

119  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 29 March 1991.

120  Morrone and Morrone, “Planes, Trains and Buster,” 110.

121  Stephen Low, in conversation with the author, 11 July 2015.

122  Morrone and Morrone, “Planes, Trains and Buster,” 110.

123  Tibbetts, “The Hole in the Doughnut,” 85.

124  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on his film score for The Railrodder, undated.

125  NFBA, The Railrodder production file, Potterton to MacKinnon, 15 April 1966. In reply to an inquiry from a Mr Ian MacKinnon, Gerald Potterton provided this complete list of the instrumentalists who recorded the score under Rathburn’s and Shaindlin’s direction.

126  After Eric Weissberg and banjo duo partner Steve Mandell recorded Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith’s “Feudin’ Banjos” (a.k.a. “Dueling Banjos,” 1955) for a scene in John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), it immediately became a number-one hit on radio stations across Canada and the United States. Rathburn would turn to Weissberg again in the recording of his concert work The Rise and Fall of the Steam Railroad (1982). See Rathburn, “The Rise and Fall of the Steam Railroad.”

127  Gerald Potterton, interview with James Wright and Allyson Rogers at Potterton’s home in Cowansville, Quebec, 15 February 2015.

128  Tibbetts, “Railroad Man,” 5.

129  Cited by Gerald Potterton at http://geraldpotterton.com/filmlist.html.

130  Morrone and Morrone, “Planes, Trains and Buster,” 111.

131  Cited by Gerald Potterton at http://geraldpotterton.com/filmlist.html.

132  Hassannia, “Colin Low, Don Owen and How the NFB’s Unit B Changed Canadian Cinema.”

133  Evans, In the National Interest, 91.

134  Harcourt, “The Innocent Eye,” 21.

135  Ibid. See also Evans, In the National Interest, 68–9; Jones, The Best Butler in the Business: Tom Daly of the National Film Board of Canada.

Chapter Four

    1  Siskind, Expo ’67 Films; Joel, “A Film Revolution to Blitz Man’s Mind”; Whitney, “Labyrinth”; Shatnoff, “Expo 67,” 2; Gagnon and Marchessault, Reimagining Cinema at Expo 67; Marchessault, “Citérama”; Marchessault, “Multi-Screens and Future Cinema”; Fulford, Remember Expo.

    2  Aitken, “NFB’s Labyrinth.” See also Glassman and Wise, “Interview with Colin Low Part 1.” In 1979, the NFB reissued the film of Labyrinth’s third chamber, with its five screens arranged in a cruciform pattern and featuring Rathburn’s score, in a single-screen format. See Roman Kroitor, Colin Low, and Hugh O’Connor, In the Labyrinth (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1967), film, 21 minutes, https://www.nfb.ca/film/in_the_labyrinth/.

    3  Kroitor, Low, and O’Connor, In the Labyrinth.

    4  Rathburn, “My Most Successful Work,” 8.

    5  Marchessault, “Multi-Screens and Future Cinema,” 38.

    6  Stanton, “Experimental Multi-Screen Cinema,” https://www.westland.net/expo67/map-docs/cinema.htm.

    7  Joel, “Cinema: Magic in Montreal: The Films of Expo.”

    8  Aitken, “Roman Kroitor,” 748.

    9  Marchessault, “Multi-Screens and Future Cinema.”

  10  Ibid., 34.

  11  Stanton, “Experimental Multi-Screen Cinema.”

  12  Rathburn, “My Most Successful Work,” 8.

  13  Ibid.

  14  Stanton, “Experimental Multi-Screen Cinema.”

  15  Joel, “Cinema: Magic in Montreal: The Films of Expo.”

  16  Ibid.

  17  Eldon Rathburn, Labyrinth, liner notes, National Film Board; Canadian Association of Broadcasters; Composers, Authors and Publishers Association of Canada, LAB-650S, 1967, vinyl LP.

  18  Ibid.

  19  Joel, “Cinema: Magic in Montreal: The Films of Expo.”

  20  Rathburn, Labyrinth, liner notes.

  21  Ibid.

  22  Stanton, “Experimental Multi-Screen Cinema.”

  23  Ibid.

  24  Rathburn, Labyrinth, liner notes.

  25  See for example Colin Low’s documentary Circle of the Sun (Montreal: National Film Board, 1960), film, 29 minutes.

  26  Rathburn, Labyrinth, liner notes.

  27  Ibid.

  28  Ibid.

  29  A photo of Canadian cowboy songwriter Russ Gurr and his group The Western Union signing a contract with the NFB for the use of Gurr’s song “The Threshermen’s Ball” in Labyrinth is published in the Winnipeg Free Press, 24 July 1967. See also Kaye Rowe, “Farmer-Entertainer Gurr and Western Union Group Busy,” Brandon Sun, 1967, cited at “The Country Gentlemen Make 10,950 Appearances at Expo ’67, Montreal,” http://www.hillmanweb.com/h201a.html, and http://www.angelfire.com/trek/hillmans4/hillm102.html.

  30  LAC ERF, R12642/3.10, personal notes on Labyrinth album, undated.

  31  Ibid.

  32  Rathburn, Labyrinth, liner notes.

  33  Rathburn, “My Most Successful Work: Labyrinth.”

  34  Rathburn, Labyrinth, liner notes.

  35  Joel, “Cinema: Magic in Montreal: The Films of Expo.”

  36  Rugrat, “Basement Rug: Music Reviews, Podcasts, Compilations, Rare Vinyl,” The Basement Rug, 7 November 2008, http://basementrug.com/715.

  37  Clyde Gilmour, “Labyrinth for the Home,” Toronto Telegram, 24 August 1967.

  38  Bouyed by the successful completion of Labyrinth, O’Connor drove to Appalachia that summer with the hope that he might be able to make a documentary film with a social justice message about poverty in the region. He wanted to highlight the impoverished living conditions there during a period when Lyndon Johnson’s administration had declared war on poverty. While he was interviewing a Kentucky coal miner in his rented home in Jeremiah, Kentucky, property owner Hobart Ison arrived and told O’Connor and his crew to leave, as he was offended by what he viewed as facile stereotyping and criticism by outsiders, as well as the journalistic tendency to show only the poor side of Appalachia. After a brief heated exchange, Hobart shot and killed O’Connor on the spot. The first trial ended with a hung jury. On 24 March 1969, Hobert Ison was sentenced to ten years in prison on a charge of voluntary manslaughter to which he had pleaded guilty. He successfully lobbied for early parole and ultimately served only a single year of the sentence. When Ison died in 1978, he remained unrepentant for his crime. See Megan Rosenfeld, “Killing in Kentucky: Out-of-Focus ‘Camera,’” Washington Post, 11 July 2000; “Kentuckian Gets 10 Years in Jail for Killing Canada Filmmaker,” New York Times, 25 March 1969; “Jury Split in Death of Film Producer; Mistrial Declared,” New York Times, 1 June 1968; Ian Morfitt, “The Violent Poetry of Appalachia,” Globe and Mail, 3 August 2003.

  39  Dolores Parent (1932–2018), a close friend of Margot Rathburn, in conversation with the author, 30 June 2017.

  40  LAC ERF, R12642/1.1, autobiographical notes, undated.

  41  The 1921 census shows Georges Payette (age 31), Georgiana Payette (age 31), and Marguerite Payette (age 7), living at 3½ Pinard Street, Ottawa, Lowertown District, near St Patrick Street and Augusta Street.

  42  Margot recounted the story of her early years at the National Film Board to her niece Roberta Morris, the only child of Eldon’s sister Joan and John Morris. Roberta Morris, email correspondence with the author, 20 October 2016.

  43  IMDb, “Marguerite Payette,” http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0668216/.

  44  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  45  Feeney’s Fountains of the Sun (1969) was funded by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture.

  46  Eldon and Margot stayed with Joan and John Morris and their daughter Roberta (Eldon’s niece), who were living in London at the time.

  47  Roberta Morris, email correspondence with the author, 23 October 2016.

  48  Eldon also attended numerous boxing matches at Montreal’s Maurice Richard arena during the 1950s and 1960s. Joan Morris, in conversation with the author, 29 December 2014.

  49  Dusty Vineberg, “ … of Many People – Much Work,” Montreal Star, 29 June 1970.

  50  Louis Hone, interview with Allyson Rogers, 23 April 2015.

  51  LAC ERF, R12642/1.23, listening journal, undated.

  52  Ibid.

  53  Frank Morriss, “Show Beat,” Winnipeg Tribune, 19 August 1970.

  54  LAC ERF, CBC radio broadcast recording of Three Ironies, Images of Childhood and short interview with Rathburn, accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 415875, audio recording.

  55  LAC ERF, R12642/3.12, Smithsonian Institution press release for It All Depends, 28 March 1974.

  56  Ibid.

  57  Ibid.

  58  Ibid.

  59  LAC ERF, CBC radio broadcast of interview and excerpts from Rathburn’s film music for Bush Doctor (1955) and It All Depends (1974), accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 416052, audio recording.

  60  For a published review of the documentary, see Jed Stuart, “Nearer to God in Lover’s Lane,” Winnipeg Free Press, 6 September 1975, 44. About Rathburn’s music, Stuart writes only that “an orchestra of 22 musicians performs the film’s original music score, composed by Eldon Rathburn of the National Film Board.”

  61  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, notes on The Road to Green Gables, undated.

  62  LHT, Rathburn interview by Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  63  LAC ERF, R12642/1.13, Rathburn to Applebaum, 30 June 1976.

  64  LAC ERF, tribute to Eldon Rathburn upon his retirement from the NFB, 17 March 1977, accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 416027, audio recording, 70 minutes.

  65  NFBA, University of Ottawa teaching evaluation.

  66  LAC ERF, R12642/1.20. teaching notes, undated.

  67  LAC ERF R12642, box 1.13, Rathburn to Todd Montague (Graham, Washington, USA), 21 March 1984.

  68  LAC ERF, R12642/1.1, personal notebook, undated.

  69  Crane, “The Trump in the Movies up to 1997.”

  70  Roedy Green, “Reviews and Ratings for Who Has Seen the Wind,” IMDb, 12 January 2009, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076919/reviews?ref_=tt_ov_rt.

  71  Early examples of film mockumentary include the African film The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980), Woody Allen’s Zelig (1983), and Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap (1984).

  72  Carolyne Weldon, “Jets, Floatplanes and Bombers: 15 NFB Films about Planes,” NFB/Blog, 12 June 2012, http://blog.nfb.ca/blog/2012/06/12/15-nfb-films-about-planes.

  73  Mackenzie, The Battle of Britain on Screen, 91. Hamilton’s The Battle of Britain (1969) should not be confused with the classic wartime propaganda film Why We Fight: The Battle of Britain (1943), directed by Frank Capra and Anthony Veiller, with cinematography by Robert Flaherty.

  74  Albert Ohayon, “How to Build a Fighter Airplane for $25,000 or Is This Guy Crazy?” NFB/Blog, 27 July 2009, http://blog.nfb.ca/blog/2009/07/27/how-to-fighter-airplane-defender-bob-diemert/.

  75  LAC ERF, R12642/1.23, personal notebook, undated. In his notebooks, Rathburn mentions plans to use Second World War songs such as “Frenesi” (Spanish: “frenzy”), a tune written in 1940 by Alberto Dominguez that became famous during the war years in recordings by Leonard Whitcup, Artie Shaw, and others.

  76  Caplin, Classical Form.

  77  LAC ERF, R12642/1.23, personal notebook, undated.

  78  Ohayon, “How to Build a Fighter Airplane for $25,000 or Is This Guy Crazy?” Low told Ohayon that he “still receives emails about the film from people who saw it on Channel 4 [in the UK] where it was a huge hit.”

  79  Wise, “IMAX at 30: An Interview with Graeme Ferguson.”

  80  “Robert Kerr was a Founder of IMAX Movies and a Cambridge Political Leader,” Waterloo Region Record, 4 May 2010.

  81  “His Talents Made IMAX Possible,” National Post, 10 September 2002.

  82  Green, Eavesdroppings, 173–6.

  83  Kerr would later serve a two-year term (1974–76) as mayor of the newly amalgamated city of Cambridge, Ontario.

  84  Sandra Martin, “For Wolf Koenig, It Was about Framing That Decisive Moment,” Globe and Mail, 24 August 2014.

  85  Wise, “IMAX at 30: An Interview with Graeme Ferguson.”

  86  “IMAX Corporation Reports: Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2015 Financial Results,” IMAX Corporation, press release, 24 February 2016, https://www.imax.com/press-releases.

  87  “William Shaw,” Mississauga Heritage, 2009, http://www.heritagemississauga.com/page/William-Shaw. One of Shaw’s most cherished honours was the Leonardo da Vinci Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

  88  Gagnon and Marchessault, Reimagining Cinema. See also Shatnoff, “Expo 67: A Multiple Vision,” 3.

  89  Bateman, “Rocky Mountain Express.”

  90  LAC ERF, R12642/1.12, Kroitor to Rathburn, 11 July 1972.

  91  Irvin Feld was also the founder of Feld Entertainment and is credited with the discovery of Canadian-born pop music icon Paul Anka in the late 1950s.

  92  Vicki Vaughan, “Circus World Sold and Closed: Park’s Theme Will Be Changed,” Orlando Sentinel, 14 May 1986.

  93  Unfortunately, Circus World is not among the scores held in the LAC ERF or NBPA ERF.

  94  Jerry Digney, Buckles Blog, 9 April 2008, http://bucklesw.blogspot.ca/2008/04/circus-world-from-jerry-digney.html.

  95  Dick Flint, Buckles Blog, 11 March 2009, http://bucklesw.blogspot.ca/2009/03/circus-world-1974-1.html.

  96  Mike Naughton, Buckles Blog, 10 March 2009, http://bucklesw.blogspot.ca/2009/03/circus-world-1974-1.html.

  97  Barry Lubin, Buckles Blog, 11 March 2009, http://bucklesw.blogspot.ca/2009/03/circus-world-1974-1.html.

  98  “Skyward,” The Stephen Low Company, http://www.stephenlow.com/project/skyward/.

  99  Ibid.

100  Ibid.

101  Ibid.

102  LAC ERF, R12642/1.23, personal notebook, undated.

103  Stephen Low, interview with James Wright and Allyson Rogers, 21 August 2015.

104  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Rathburn to Whiteside, 24 September 1984.

105  Roberta Morris, in discussion with the author, 31 October 2016.

106  Ibid.

107  Hartley, “Imaging Expo ’86.”

108  Colin Low and Ray Ianzelo, liner notes, Transitions (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1986), 21 minutes, DVD.

109  Walsh, “Magical Movie Moments.”

110  Stephen Low, in discussion with the author, 28 March 2017.

111  “Beavers,” Stephen Low Company, http://www.stephenlow.com/project/beavers/.

112  LAC ERF, R12642/1.20, teaching notes, undated.

113  Ibid.

114  “The Last Buffalo,” The Stephen Low Company, http://www.stephenlow.com/project/the-last-buffalo/.

115  Ibid.

116  Wise, “IMAX at 30: An Interview with Graeme Ferguson”; Arthur, “In the Realm of the Senses: IMAX 3D and the Myth of Total Cinema,” 78.

117  Bateman, “Rocky Mountain Express – An Interview with IMAX Filmmaker Stephen Low.”

118  Duiker, World History: Volume I (to 1800), 78.

119  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 29 March 1991.

120  Schwartzberg, “IMAX: Oscar Nominated Canadian Company on the Leading Edge of Technology.” See also Reed, “Lighting the Mysteries of the Abyss.”

121  Walsh, “Something Rich, Strange.”

122  Roger Ebert, “Reviews: Titanica,” Roger Ebert, 14 April 1995, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/titanica-1995.

123  Howard Baer, email correspondence with the author, 20 November 2016.

124  NFB website. See also Marc St-Pierre, “The NFB and World Fairs, Part IV: Seville and Expo ’92,” NFB/Blog, 23 July 2010, http://blog.nfb.ca/blog/2010/07/16/the-nfb-and-world-fairs-pt-3-vancouver-and-expo-86.

125  Louis Hone, interview with Allyson Rogers, 23 April 2015.

126  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

127  Ibid.

128  Edith Fowke, Folk Songs of Ontario, liner notes (Folkways Records, FW04005/FM4005, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, 1958).

129  Peacock, Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, 155–7.

130  As sung by Mrs Geraldine Sullivan, Lakefield, Ontario, and recorded by Edith Fowke on Folk Songs of Ontario (Folkways Records, FW04005/FM4005, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, 1958).

131  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

132  LAC ERF, R12642/1.20, personal notes, undated.

133  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

134  Louis Hone, interview with Allyson Rogers, 23 April 2015.

135  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

136  Louis Hone, interview Louis Allyson Rogers, 23 April 2015.

137  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

Chapter Five

    1  Rathburn, in conversation with the author, 23 April 2006.

    2  “Carice” Irene Elgar Blake (1890–1950) was Elgar’s only child (her first name is a conflation of Lady Elgar’s first and middle names, Carolyn Alice).

    3  Thistle, “More on Schoenberg.”

    4  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Schoenberg to Rathburn, 14 February 1945.

    5  Enman, “Stories of Schoenberg.” Enman interviewed Rathburn when he attended an international symposium in Ottawa titled “Schoenberg’s Chamber Music, Schoenberg’s World” (Carleton University, 26–9 July 2007).

    6  Eldon Rathburn, Lawrence Schoenberg, and Ronald Schoenberg, interview with Adrian Harewood, CBC All in a Day, 27 July 2007, https://carleton.ca/music/wp-content/uploads/04%20Track%204.mp3.

    7  Enman, “Stories of Schoenberg.”

    8  LAC ERF, Rathburn interview by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio One station in Ottawa, 6 March 1994, accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 416319, audio recording, 48 minutes. Rathburn also recounted this anecdote to radio host Adrian Harewood (CBC All in a Day, 27 July 2007), who interviewed him together with Lawrence Schoenberg and Ronald Schoenberg when they attended an international symposium in Ottawa titled “Schoenberg’s Chamber Music, Schoenberg’s World” (Carleton University, 26–29 July 2007), https://carleton.ca/music/wp-content/uploads/04%20Track%204.mp3.

    9  Bourdon, “Eldon Rathburn: Dean of Canadian Composers.” A similar account is given in Enman, “Stories of Schoenberg.”

  10  Thistle, “More on Schoenberg.” See also Krones and Meyer, eds, Mozart und Schönberg: Wiener Klassik und Wiener Schule.

  11  Enman, “Stories of Schoenberg.”

  12  Newlin, Schoenberg Remembered.

  13  LAC ERF, R12642/1.13, Rathburn to Dika Newlin, 13 March 1989. On 1 March 2015 the author sent a copy of this letter to Nuria Schoenberg-Nono in Venice, Italy, and to her brothers Ronald and Lawrence Schoenberg in Los Angeles. On 2 March 2015, Ms Schoenberg-Nono kindly replied and shared the following sentiment: “Thank you for sharing Mr. Rathburn’s letter with all of us. It is always a pleasure to see our own personal memory of our father as a generous, kind person reinforced by recollections or documents concerning other people with whom he interacted.”

  14  Joan Morris, in conversation with the author, 14 February 2016.

  15  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  16  Ibid. See for example Feisst, “Arnold Schoenberg and the Cinematic Art” and Neumeyer, “Schoenberg at the Movies.” Neumeyer’s essay focuses on Schoenberg’s Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene, op. 34 (1930).

  17  LAC ERF, selected pieces sent to Paramount Pictures in Hollywood, accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 416075, 1955 or 1965, audio recording, 33 minutes.

  18  Thistle, “More on Schoenberg.”

  19  Ibid.

  20  Cited in White, Stravinsky, the Composer and His Works, 41. White references two collections of interviews edited by Robert Craft: Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (New York: Faber and Faber, 2009) and Dialogues and a Diary (New York: Doubleday, 1963). In December of 1912, Stravinsky met Arnold Schoenberg for the first time in Berlin and attended a performance of Pierrot lunaire. Not generally an admirer of Schoenberg’s music and approach, Stravinsky took years to admit its impact. More than four decades later, after Schoenberg had died, he called the encounter with Schoenberg’s Pierrot “the most prescient confrontation in my life” (Dialogues and a Diary, 1963).

  21  LAC ERF, R12642/1.12, Rathburn to McLean, 11 February 1973. Rathburn’s parenthetical remark, “related to the killer?” is in reference to Walter “Killer” Kowalski (1926–2008), a well-known Polish-Canadian professional wrestler from Windsor, Ontario.

  22  The recording was later released as Glenn Gould Plays Schoenberg, Sony Classical, G010001016574Y, 1994.

  23  See Wright, “Schoenberg, Mozart, and the Viennese Spieltrieb.” In 1937, Gershwin shot a silent home movie of house guests in the tennis court of his Beverley Hills Roxbury Drive home, including Schoenberg and his wife Gertrud, Gertrud’s brother Rudolph Kolisch, and Doris Vidor, the daughter of Warner Brothers Pictures founder Harry Warner and wife of Hungarian-American director Charles (Károly) Vidor. The film, largely shot by Gershwin himself (though he appears in a few frames), has been posted online by pianist and composer Jack Gibbons at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cn1L_cgHPY, under a Youtube Standard Licence. See also http://www.jackgibbons.com/gershwin.htm.

  24  Lawrence Schoenberg, email correspondence with the author, 25 March 2018.

  25  Eldon Rathburn, Mostly Railroad Music, Crystal Records, CD520, 1994.

  26  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Raksin to Rathburn, 6 July 1996. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania who later studied with Schoenberg, Raksin was renowned for his work in film and television, and had over 100 film scores and 300 television scores to his credit. Like Schoenberg, he taught at both USC and UCLA. Raksin is known for promoting the view that a film composer must walk a fine line between too much emotional involvement with the story of the film, “which can hurt the creative process,” and too little emotional involvement, “which prevents empathizing with the characters and their situation.” See D’Lynn Waldron, “David Raksin: Composer of Music for the Movies,” 2006, http://dlwaldron.com/DavidRaksin.html. See also David Raksin, “Schoenberg as Teacher, Part II,” Newsletter of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute (USC School of Music) 3, no. 1 (1989): 5.

  27  Thistle, “More on Schoenberg.”

  28  See Lawrence Schoenberg, preface to Wright and Gillmor, Schoenberg’s Chamber Music, Schoenberg’s World.

  29  Enman, “Stories of Schoenberg.”

  30  Thistle, “More on Schoenberg.”

  31  Archer et al., “Témoignages,” 309.

  32  LAC ERF, R12642/2.7, listening journal, undated (ca. 1994). Commenting in his notebook on a recently released recording of Varèse’s Arcana, Rathburn wrote: “I like the sounds. It’s the direction of the music that bothers me. It’s like King Kong. He is after all a big pussy cat.”

  33  Archer et al., “Témoignages,” 309.

  34  Rathburn, in conversation with the author, August 2006.

  35  Davies, “Interview with Eldon Rathburn,” 4–7, 11.

  36  LAC, Eldon Rathburn Fonds, R12642/1,1, personal notes, undated.

  37  Paul, Charles Ives in the Mirror, 70–1.

  38  Ross, The Rest Is Noise, 132. In 1944 Arnold Schoenberg wrote these words about Ives in a note that was found among his private papers after his death.

  39  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Rathburn to Yale University Music Library, 5 November 1964; Brooks Shepard Jr (librarian, Yale University Music Library) to Rathburn, 9 November 1964.

  40  LAC ERF, R12642/1.20, “A Visit with Ives,” undated (from the Yale University Ives Collection, MSS 14, box 67, folder 17, “A Visit with Ives” by Eldon Rathburn). The package of scores Rathburn received at Ives’s request is referenced in a letter from Lockrem Johnson, Educational Director, Mercury Music (NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Lockrem Johnson to Rathburn, 5 October 1953).

  41  Eldon Rathburn, Mostly Railroad Music, liner notes, Crystal Records, CD520, 1994.

  42  The Thoreau Society Bulletin, no. 122 (Winter 1973): 4.

  43  LAC ERF R12642/3.13, Rathburn to Frederick Crane, 15 April 1983. In his letter to Crane, Rathburn mentions attending the 1974 Ives Centenary events in New York. See also Hitchcock, Charles Ives Centennial Festival-Conference.

  44  LAC ERF, Rathburn interview by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio One station in Ottawa, 6 March 1994, accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 416319, audio recording, 48 minutes.

  45  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Schuman to Rathburn, 23 October 1959.

  46  Ibid., 9 November 1959.

  47  LAC ERF, R12642/2.5, listening journal, undated (ca. early 1990s).

  48  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Thomson to Rathburn, 31 May 1965.

  49  Janet Malcolm, “Gertrude Stein’s War: The Years in Occupied France,” New Yorker, 2 June 2003, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/06/02/gertrude-steinswar. Malcolm deals with the relationship between Stein, Toklas, and Harold and Virginia Knapik. See also “This Day in Letters: Alice B. Toklas to Harold and Virginia Knapik,” American Reader, http://theamericanreader.com/16-october-1958-alice-b-toklas-to-harold-and-virginia-knapik/.

  50  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Knapik to Rathburn, 22 June 1965.

  51  Although possibly misattributed to Galileo, this quotation is cited widely (by Dale Carnegie, among others). See for example Jeffrey Bennett, “Galileo Put Us in Our Place,” Los Angeles Times, 8 February 2009, http://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-oe-bennett8-2009feb08-story.html.

  52  LAC ERF, R12642/1.14, Rathburn to Hamelin, 20 June 1994.

  53  LAC ERF, R12642/1.12, Rathburn to Sorabji, 12 April 1970.

  54  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Sorabji to Rathburn, undated. Unfortunately we do not know what Sorabji had enclosed with his letter.

  55  LAC ERF, R12642/2.3, listening journal, 22 January 1984. Rathburn is referring to the four-LP live recording of a performance of Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum given in Utrecht on 11 June 1982 by pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge. See Geoffrey Douglas Madge, Opus Clavicembalisticum (Toronto: Keytone Records, Royal Conservatory Series, RCS4-800, 1983).

  56  See Roberge, “Producing Evidence for the Beatification of a Composer.”

  57  LAC ERF, Rathburn interview with Havergal Brian, July 1972, accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 416029, audio recording, 36 minutes.

  58  Hilda Mary Brian (née Hayward), Havergal Brian’s second wife. In 1913, Brian’s affair with Hilda, the family servant, led to the collapse of his first marriage to Isabel Priestley, with whom he had five children. Brian had another five children with Hilda. See Eastaugh, Havergal Brian.

Chapter Six

    1  Ridout, A Concert Goer’s Companion to Music, 495.

    2  Eric McLean, “A Centennial Salute to a Distinguished Pianist, Composer,” Montreal Gazette, 18 December 1982.

    3  See Philip L. Scowcroft, “Railways in Music, parts 1 and 2,” Classical Music on the Web, http://www.musicweb-international.com/railways_in_music.htm (part 1) and http://www.musicweb.uk.net/railways_in_music2.htm (part 2). Part 1 of his “Railways in Music” appeared in FRMS [Federation of Recorded Music Societies] Bulletin, no. 134 (Spring 2001): 12–14. Part 2 was to have followed in a subsequent issue but was never published. Scowcroft has published a musicological monograph, British Light Music (London: Dance Books, 1997), as well as journal articles on a wide range of topics including the law, music, transport history, military history, cricket, and detective fiction.

    4  Ibid.

    5  Freud, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, 131. It should be noted that Freud’s student Karl Abraham remarked further that “this joy found its repressed counterpart in the fear experienced … in the face of accelerating or uncontrolled motion as the fear of their own impulses going out of control.” Abraham, Pscyhoanalytische Studien, 102.

    6  Schafer, The Soundscape, 81.

    7  Terence Macartney-Filgate, End of the Line (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1959), film, 29 minutes.

    8  LAC ERF, R12642/1.14, Rathburn to Hugh Trueman (1920–2004), 14 January 1995. Born in Ingleside, New Brunswick (near Saint John), Trueman was Rathburn’s childhood friend and a pioneer of early Canadian radio. First heard on the air in 1931 at the age of twelve, he hosted a well-known children’s radio talent showcase, “Uncle Bill and His Junior Radio Stars,” that was broadcast throughout the Maritimes for twenty-six years. Trueman later managed radio station CFBC in Saint John before moving his family to Florida, where he worked for WTVJ-TV in Miami. He later settled in southern Ontario where, following a short period with Hamilton’s CHCH-TV, he joined the retail sales division of the CFRB radio station in Toronto, where he remained for the next twenty-five years. Among other broadcasting projects during his later years, Trueman hosted a syndicated daily radio feature known as Hugh Trueman: The Old Bachelor.

    9  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 5 February 1993.

  10  Ibid.

  11  Ibid.

  12  See Schafer, The Soundscape, 81: “By comparison with the sounds of modern transportation, those of the train were rich and characteristic: the whistle, the bell, the slow chuffing of the engine at the start, accelerating suddenly as the wheels slipped, then slowing again, the sudden explosions of escaping steam, the squeaking of the wheels, the rattling of the coaches, the clatter of the tracks, the thwack against the window as another train passed in the opposite direction – these were all memorable noises.”

  13  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 5 February 1993.

  14  Bruce Holder Jr, in conversation with the author, Saint John, 17 July 2015.

  15  See Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey.

  16  Jesse Feith, “More Charges Laid in Lac-Mégantic Train Derailment Tragedy,” Montreal Gazette, 22 June 2015, http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/more-charges-laid-in-lac-megantic-train-derailment-tragedy.

  17  According to Lovena May Knight, one of Schoenberg’s students in Boston during the 1930s: “One part of our modern civilization appeared to hold a special fascination for Schoenberg was aeroplanes. Several times, [during composition classes] upon hearing a plane roar overhead, he would drop what he was doing and hurry to the window” (Knight, “Classes with Schoenberg,” 156). In an essay written in 1926, Schoenberg pointed to a potential analogy between his music and aircraft: “[The necessity of tonality] can be refuted if one recalls that just as tones pull toward triads, and triads toward tonality, gravity pulls us down toward the earth. Yet an airplane carries us up away from it. A product can be apparently artificial without being unnatural, for it is based on the laws of nature to just the same degree as are those that seem primary” (Schoenberg, “Opinion or Insight,” 262). In a 1930 essay he invoked a similar argument, employing what seems to have become one of his favourite analogies: “I read somewhere of a device by which airplanes refuel over the sea without standing firm anywhere. If that is possible, why should one not do it? Similarly, surely one can understand sound-combinations even if they hang forever in the air and never settle down; if they never gain a firm footing” (Schoenberg, “New Music: My Music,” 101).

  18  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 5 February 1993.

  19  Eldon Rathburn, Mostly Railroad Music, liner notes.

  20  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 5 February 1993.

  21  Carolyne Weldon, “On Track: NFB Train Films in Pictures,” NFB/Blog, 21 October 2013, http://blog.nfb.ca/blog/2013/10/21/on-track-nfb-train-films-in-pictures/.

  22  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 5 February 1993.

  23  Percy Aldridge Grainger, Charging Irishrey (1901), orchestration by Eldon Rathburn, Bardic Editions Music Publisher, 1981.

  24  Marc St-Pierre, “The NFB and World Fairs, Part 3: Vancouver and Expo 86,” NFB/Blog, 16 July 2010, http://blog.nfb.ca/blog/2010/07/16/the-nfb-and-world-fairs-pt-3-vancouver-and-expo-86/.

  25  Terence Macartney-Filgate, End of the Line (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1959), film, 29 minutes.

  26  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  27  Eldon Rathburn, Mostly Railroad Music, liner notes.

  28  Ibid. In a handwritten note on a copy of the score that was deposited in the NBPA ERF (file MC3421, box 58391, score for Turbo, 1978), Rathburn wrote: “Bars 95–126 reflect the feelings of a frustrated crew after a breakdown. Bars 126–184 represent the Turbo’s recovery and triumphant arrival, 2 hours and 13 minutes late!”

  29  Rathburn, “The Rise and Fall of the Steam Railroad.”

  30  Letter to David Price, LAC Fonds.

  31  Christopher Mayo, “The Rise and Fall of the Steam Railroad” – Eldon Rathburn,” Canadian Music Centre, 15 September 2015, https://www.musiccentre.ca/node/136107.

  32  Rathburn, “The Rise and Fall of the Steam Railroad.”

  33  Ibid.

  34  Review of Rathburn’s “Mostly Railroad Music,” Canadian Rail 442 (September–October 1994): 195, http://www.exporail.org/can_rail/Canadian%20Rail_no442_1994.pdf.

  35  Rathburn, “The Rise and Fall of the Steam Railroad.”

  36  Ibid.

  37  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  38  Eldon Rathburn, Mostly Railroad Music, liner notes.

  39  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  40  Ibid.

  41  The Great Little Trains of Wales, http://www.greatlittletrainsofwales.co.uk/.

  42  Joan Morris and Roberta Morris, email correpondance with the author, 17 August 2016.

  43  Stall, 100  Cats Who Changed Civilization, 136–37.

  44  The tragic accident is described in MacDonald, Celebrated Pets, 43–4. When Jumbo was struck by the train, “the huge animal cried out in pain as he was hurled into the rear of the circus train. The impact, witnesses said, was like two trains colliding, and the force was great enough to derail the oncoming locomotive and two cars.” See also Carole Bos, “Jumbo the Circus Elephant and His Tragic Death,” Awesome Stories, https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Jumbo-the-Circus-Elephant-and-His-Tragic-Death1.

  45  “That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks. Where is the country’s champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest” (Thoreau, Walden, 208).

  46  Eldon Rathburn, Mostly Railroad Music, liner notes.

  47  Rathburn’s longtime CRHA membership is mentioned in the review of “Mostly Railroad Music,” Canadian Rail, 194.

  48  Eldon Rathburn, Mostly Railroad Music, liner notes.

  49  Ibid.

  50  Rathburn was also keen to engage in dialogue about the railway with his filmmaking colleagues and collaborators at the NFB and elsewhere. For example, in 1994 he told Louis Hone that “Stephen Low is a railroad buff, he knows about the mechanics” (LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 5 February 1993).

  51  Gordon Lightfoot’s Railroad Trilogy (1967), describing the late nineteenth-century construction of the trans-Canada CPR railroad, for example.

  52  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, 5 February 1993.

  53  Ibid.

  54  Eldon Rathburn, Mostly Railroad Music, liner notes. Rathburn is referring to Lumbye’s Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop, and Gungl’s Eisenbahn Steam Train Galop, op. 5. See also Carter, “Train Music”; Mahling, “Musik und Eisenbahn”; Rubio, La musica del tren; Scowcroft, “Railways and British Music.”

  55  LAC ERF, R12642/1.21, notes about railway music, undated.

  56  Eldon Rathburn, Mostly Railroad Music, liner notes.

  57  Bateman, “The Ten Best Pieces Inspired by Trains.”

  58  Dvořák is quoted in Hughes, Dvořák, 193. See also Clapham, Dvořák, 196.

  59  Eldon Rathburn, Mostly Railroad Music, liner notes.

  60  LAC ERF, R12642/2.6, listening journal, 1990. He recorded this thought in his notebook after listening to Honegger’s Symphony No. 2.

  61  Honneger, I Am a Composer. This remark is also cited in an article on Honegger’s Pacific 231 published in Brooklyn Life, 15 November 1924, 17.

  62  Ernst Krenek, Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen, Reinhard Schmiedel (tenor) and Markus Köhler (piano). Georgsmarienhütte: Classic Produktion Osnabrück, CPO 999203-2, 1993.

  63  Author’s translation of the German original (“Mit der Bergbahn geht’s elektrisch immer höher, immer höher durch den Wald, über die frühlingsbunten Wiesen. Hart am Abhang schleicht sie hin, so still und reinlich, als wär’ sie selbst ein Stück Natur und nicht hingesetzt von Menschen.”).

  64  LAC ERF, R12642/1.12, Ernst Krenek to Eldon Rathburn, 4 February 1968.

  65  “Bluff” is discussed in Stewart, Ernst Krenek, 58.

  66  LAC ERF, R12642/1.12, Ernst Krenek to Eldon Rathburn, 4 February 1968.

  67  Bacon’s Our Musical Idiom is a forerunner of the late twentieth-century post tonal pitch-class-set theory of Allen Forte and others. Bacon studied composition for two years with Karl Weigl in Vienna.

  68  LAC ERF, R12642/1.13, Ernst Bacon to Eldon Rathburn, 7 July 1978.

  69  “Carice” Irene Elgar Blake (1890–1950) was Elgar’s only child. Her first name was a conflation of Lady Elgar’s first and middle names (Carolyn Alice).

  70  LAC ERF, R12642/1.12, Carice Elgar Blake to Rathburn, 25 February 1970. The Starlight Express is a children’s play published by Violet Pearn in 1916, with songs and incidental music written by Edward Elgar. It is based on a novel by Algernon Blackwood titled A Prisoner in Fairyland.

  71  Beezley and Lorey, Viva Mexico! Viva la Independencia! Celebrations of September 16, 134; Maya, “La verdadera locomotora de la ‘Sinfonía vapor’ de Melesio Morales”; Yanes, “El compositor Melesio Morales y su obra La Locomotiva”; Prieberg, Musica ex machina.

  72  LAC ERF, R12642/1.13, Rathburn to National Conservatory of Music in Mexico, 20 April 1977.

  73  Simon, Percy Grainger, 2–3.

  74  Scott, “Percy Grainger: The Music and the Man,” 427.

  75  Dreyfus, The Farthest North of Humanness; Fairfax, “Orchestral Music,” 221–8.

  76  Philipe Pacey, “Music and Railways: A Chronological, Annotated List of Pieces of Music Influenced by Railways,” http://www.philpacey.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/musrail.html.

  77  Percy Grainger, The Complete Piano Music, Nimbus NI1767, 1997.

  78  LAC ERF, R12642/2.2, listening journal, 5 May 1986. Commenting on Cyril Scott’s Piano Sonata No. 1 op. 66, Rathburn wrote: “Percy Grainger told me to get this piece in 1935 at a reception in the salon of the Admiral Beatty Hotel [in Saint John]. It has taken this long.”

  79  http://www.percygrainger.org.uk/.

  80  Eric McLean, “A Centennial Salute to a Distinguished Pianist, Composer,” Montreal Gazette, 18 December 1982.

  81  Gavin Bryars, email correspondence with the author, 17 January 2016.

  82  City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, performance of “In a Nutshell,” conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, EMI Angel Records 7243-5-56412, 1997.

  83  NBPA ERF, file MC3421, box 58391, Barry Ould to Rathburn, 9 October 1997.

  84  Rogers, “Canada’s Musical Group of Seven.” In 2007, together with folksinger Barry Luft, Rogers released a CD entitled Songs of the Iron Rail, Sefel Records SEF831T01, 1983.

  85  Rogers, “Canada’s Musical Group of Seven.”

  86  Ibid. Henderson, “While There Is Still Time”; Kines, “Chief Man-of-Many-Sides”; McNaughton, “A Study of the CPR Sponsored Quebec Folk Song and Handicraft Festivals”; McNaughton, “John Murray Gibbon and the Inter-War Festivals.”

  87  Rogers, “Canada’s Musical Group of Seven.”

  88  Ibid.

Chapter Seven

    1  Rathburn, “Writing for Movies,” 3.

    2  Marquis, “The Folk Music of Anglophone New Brunswick: Old-Time and Country Music in the Twentieth Century.”

    3  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

    4  Reminiscences of Dan Hill (a logger from Bruce Mines, Ontario) cited in MacKay, The Lumberjacks, 240.

    5  Photograph description courtesy of Josh Green, Acting Photo Archivist, Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, Fredericton, 2015. Note that the “sheet music” is a newspaper, the raft is fixed in place with a logging peavey, a woman is standing in the canoe in the background, and the photographer and posed subjects must have waited patiently for the proper conditions (note the river’s glassy mirror-image stillness). One of the men on the raft is thought to be Fred Edgecomb, from the prominent Fredericton family known for their carriage manufacture and sales.

    6  Siemerling, Black Canadian Writing, Cultural History, and the Presence of the Past, 37.

    7  Berger, Broadsides and Bayonets, fn 185.

    8  Bell, “Slavery and the Judges of Loyalist New Brunswick”; Cahill, “The Black Loyalist Myth in Atlantic Canada”; Walker, “Myth, History and Revisionism”; “Black Loyalists in New Brunswick, 1783–1854.”

    9  Ibid.

  10  A sketch of an early four-string gourd banjo (or Creole bania) appears in an illustration titled “Musical Instruments of the African Negroes of Suriname,” in Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolting Negroes of Suriname. Stedman brought back a Creole Bania when he returned to Holland in 1777. Housed in the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde (National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, Holland), it is the world’s oldest banjo. See Shlomo Pestcoe, “Exploring the Banjo’s Early History, Its Origins in the African Diaspora of the New World and Its Roots in West Africa,” Banjoroots, 5 May 2011, http://banjoroots.blogspot.ca/.

  11  See Epstein, “The Folk Banjo: A Documentary History.”

  12  Lotz, “Black Music prior to the First World War,” 76. See also Ellis, “The Five-String Banjo in the Ozarks”; Linn, That Half-Barbaric Twang; Conway, African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia.

  13  Lotz, “The Bohee Brothers,” 135.

  14  James and George Bohee owned the Gardenia Club on Leicester Square from about 1883. See Lotz, “The Bohee Brothers: The 19th Century World Wide Odyssey.”

  15  Green, Samuel Taylor-Coleridge, 87. See also Allert, “James Bohee”; “Black Music and Musicians in Canada”; Rosenberg, “Ethnicity and Class”; Hill, The Freedom-Seekers.

  16  du Maurier, English Society, 61. See also Scott, The Singing Bourgeois.

  17  Lotz, “The Bohee Brothers,” 135.

  18  Stewart, “The Banjo World,” 20. Whetsel’s contribution to banjo performance and recording is also mentioned in Heier and Lotz, The Banjo on Record.

  19  Stewart, “The Banjo World,” 20.

  20  “City and Elsewhere,” Saint John Daily Sun, 23 November 1898. An account of Whetsel’s teaching and touring is also given in Fawcett and Rosenberg, Whistling Banjoman.

  21  Fawcett and Rosenberg, Whistling Banjoman.

  22  Cusack, “Whistling Banjoman: George Hector.”

  23  Fawcett and Rosenberg, Whistling Banjoman.

  24  Rayburn, Geographical Names of New Brunswick, 101.

  25  Rathburn, “The Rise and Fall of the Steam Railroad.”

  26  Ibid.

  27  LHT, Rathburn interview by Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  28  Huckvale, James Bernard, Composer to Count Dracula, 76.

  29  LHT, Rathburn interview by Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  30  John Rodby and Eldon Rathburn, Concerto for 29/The Metamorphic Ten, Crystal Records S504, 1977. See also Marjorie Hale, “William Kuinka.” Hale tells us that Kuinka “played double-bass in several Canadian orchestras (CBC Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Pro Arte Orchestra, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra) and played mandolin solos with the Ivan Romanoff orchestra on radio, TV, and recordings and in concert.”

  31  “Strummin’ up a Banjo Boon: The Discarded Instrument Plinks and Plunks Its Way Back to Favor,” LIFE, August 1955, 105–8.

  32  LAC ERF, R12642/1.14, Bauer to Rathburn, 1 June 1991.

  33  Armour, Eldon Rathburn Works, liner notes. Other works for banjo and string quartet have appeared more recently, including Roger Bourland’s “Emily” (after Emily Dickinson) and “Night Flight over Water” by Béla Fleck.

  34  Roddy Ellias, in conversation with the author, 5 June 2016.

  35  David Lewis, “Review of Eldon Rathburn Works, Chamber Players of Canada,” All Music, http://www.allmusic.com/album/eldon-rathburn-chamber-works-mw0001554127.

  36  Ibid.

  37  Arthur Kaptainis, “Arthur Kaptainis Reveals His Top 10 Classical CD Favourites,” Montreal Gazette, 26 December 2006. The recording also received a solid endorsement from the American Record Guide. See Kilpatrick, “Review of Eldon Rathburn Works,” 151.

  38  American Heritage Dictionary, s.v. “Underground Railroad,” http://www.dictionary.com/browse/underground-railroad.

  39  Eldon Rathburn, The Underground Railway (2001), for flute, clarinet, trumpet, horn, trombone, banjo (or optional guitar), tuba, and percussion. NBPA ERF, MC3421, 58392, manuscript for The Underground Railway, 2001.

  40  Rathburn, “The Rise and Fall of the Steam Railroad,” liner notes.

  41  LAC ERF, R12642/2.6, listening journal, undated (ca. 1988–91).

  42  LAC ERF, R12642/2.8, listening journal, 1996–98.

  43  Ibid.

  44  LAC ERF, R12642/2.6, listening journal, undated (ca. 1988–91).

  45  Ibid.

  46  MacKay, The Lumberjacks, 240.

  47  Courlander, Negro Folk Music, 216. A first-hand description of the Jew’s harp in Afro-American music appears in the following late nineteenth-century account: “In the Mind’s Eye,” Musical Courier: A Weekly Journal Devoted to Music and the Music Trades 30, no. 18 (New York, 24 April 1895): 26.

  48  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Rathburn to Crane, 30 December 1982.

  49  Bakx, “The Thousand Names of the Jew’s Harp.”

  50  Gohring, “History of the Jew’s Harp.”

  51  LAC ERF, R12642/2.5, listening journal, undated (ca. early 1990s). In his notebooks, Rathburn comments on how he found Beethoven’s music dull. Nonetheless Rathburn’s Reverie: After a Beethoven Sketch (1998, discussed in chapter 8) for string quartet was written “as part of a project where twelve different composers wrote variations on an original Beethoven canon that resides in Canada’s National Archives” (Armour, Eldon Rathburn Works, liner notes).

  52  LAC ERF, R12642/2.5, listening journal, undated (ca. early 1990s). He wrote to Fred Crane asking him where he could acquire the score of the Albrechtsberger Jew’s harp concerto. He also mentioned that the liner notes accompanying his own recording of the Albrechsberger concerto were printed in Japanese only, and he wondered whether Crane might have access to an English-language version.

  53  Kirkpatrick, Charles E. Ives Memos, 96. See also Markov, “Jew’s Harp Notation System.”

  54  Ibid.

  55  The number 24 may have a double meaning here, referring also to the packaged set of twenty-four Jew’s harps in a full case.

  56  Fox, The Jew’s Harp: A Comprehensive Anthology, 33. About Rathburn, Fox writes, “Although most of his work has not been commercially recorded, the Canadian composer Eldon Rathburn has produced several compositions which include the Jew’s harp, such as The Rise and Fall of the Steam Railroad, Junction, and Ode to Eulenstein.” He does not mention the use of the Jew’s harp in Rathburn’s film music.

  57  Mike Seeger is the son of pioneering ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger and composer Ruth Crawford Seeger, and half-brother of American folksinger and social activist Pete Seeger.

  58  Phons Bakx is a Dutch musicologist. See Eugene Chadbourne, “Artist Biography: Phons Bakx,” All Music, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/phons-bakx-mn0001842457.

  59  Svein Westad, John Wright, and Tran Quang Hai, The Jew’s Harp World, Kongsberg, Norway, Etnisk Musikklubb, 1999, CD.

  60  Fred Crane, “Letter to the Editor,” Bulletin of the Sonneck Society for American Music 24, no. 2 (Summer 1998).

  61  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Rathburn to Crane, 30 December 1982.

  62  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Crane to Rathburn, 29 January 1983.

  63  Gysin, “The Unloveable Jew’s Harp”; Monson, “Musicians Gather in Iowa to Harp about Favorite Instrument.”

  64  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Rathburn to Crane, 15 April 1983.

  65  Ibid., Rathburn to Crane, 24 September 1984.

  66  Rathburn Fonds, R12642/3.13, International Jew’s Harp Conference program, 14–15 September 1984. See also Gysin, “The Unloveable Jew’s Harp”; Monson, “Musicians Gather in Iowa to Harp about Favorite Instrument”; Voland, “For One, Brief, Shining Weekend, Jew’s Harpsters Become a Family.”

  67  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Rathburn to Crane, 27 April 1984.

  68  Ibid., Crane to Eldon Rathburn, 26 October 1984.

  69  Ibid., John Wright to Rathburn, 23 October 1984.

  70  Voland, “For One, Brief, Shining Weekend, Jew’s Harpsters Become a Family.”

  71  Bilyeu’s passion for the Jew’s harp is described in Les Blumenthal, “Jew’s Harp Nonpareil on Hand,” Spokesman Review, Spokane, Washington, 26 August 1975.

  72  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Rathburn to Crane, 28 September 1984. Eldon had previously sent the limerick to Congress participant Dale Whiteside (folklorist and ethnomusicologist and Jew’s harps enthusiast from Moline, Illinois) in a letter dated 24 September 1984 (ibid., Rathburn to Whiteside).

  73  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Crane to Rathburn, 26 October 1984.

  74  LAC ERF, R12642/1.15, Christmas card from Crane to Eldon and Margot, 2002.

  75  Crane, “The Trump in the Movies up to 1997.”

  76  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Rathburn to Crane, 28 September 1984.

  77  Crane, “The Trump in the Movies up to 1997.”

  78  “Woking to Clapham Junction,” Great British Railway Journeys, series 4, episode 7, BBC2, 15 January 2013.

  79  Rathburn, Mostly Railroad Music, liner notes.

  80  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Rathburn to Wright, 27 September 1984.

  81  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Rathburn to Crane, 28 September 1984.

  82  “Blue” Gene Tyranny, “Review of Eldon Rathburn: Mostly Railroad Music,” AllMusic, http://www.allmusic.com/album/eldon-rathburn-mostly-railroad-music-mw0000934481.

  83  LAC ERF, R12642/1.13, McLaren to Rathburn, 24 August 1980.

  84  Comment by an anonymous reviewer from Miami, Florida, under the pseudonym “Gustav Mahler,” posted at https://www.amazon.ca/Mostly-Railroad-Music-Rathburn/dp/B000003J50.

  85  Crane, “Trump CDs & Books.”

  86  Kerner, Werke, 194–5.

  87  Dieter Kirsch, “Review of Johann Georg Albrechtsberge. Concertos for Jew’s Harp, Mandora and Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Hans Stadlmair,” Emily’s Music Dump, 1 February 2013, http://mankabros.com/blogs/emily/2013/02/01/johann-georg-albrechtsberger-concertos-for-jews-harp-mandora-and-orchestra/.

  88  Eulenstein, “My Musical Career.”

  89  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Rathburn to Crane, 27 April 1984.

  90  LAC ERF, R12642/3.13, Rathburn to Crane, 28 September 1984.

  91  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Peter Christ (Crystal Records) to Rathburn, 11 June 1995. This is Christ’s reply to Eldon’s letter of inquiry of 22 April 1995 (ibid.).

  92  Das, All about Hand Percussion, 27. See also Peinkofer and Tannigel, Handbook of Percussion Instruments, 75.

  93  LAC ERF, R12642/2.7, listening journal, undated (ca. 1994).

  94  LAC ERF, R12642/1.12, Krenek to Rathburn, 4 February 1968. Krenek’s “Bluff” is discussed in Stewart, Ernst Krenek, 58.

  95  Chapin and Kramer, Musical Meaning and Human Values, 174.

  96  Eldon Rathburn, handwritten notebook, LAC ERF.

  97  See “‘Honky-Tonk’ Origin Told,” Los Angeles Times, 28 July 1929.

  98  Mitchell, Virtuosi, 129.

  99  The original French title is “Charlot présente le ballet mécanique” where “Charlot” refers to Charlie Chaplin’s “little tramp” character, as caricaturized by Léger’s cubist-style paper puppet.

100  In 1953, Antheil wrote a shorter and more practical version for four pianos, four xylophones, two electric bells, propellers, timpani, glockenspiel, and percussion.

101  LAC ERF, R12642/1.12, Rathburn to George Antheil’s wife, Elizabeth Böske Antheil (1902–1978), 27 August 1973.

102  Joshua C. Stoddard, Apparatus for producing music by steam or compressed air, US Patent No. 13,668, issued 9 October 1855. See Bopp, “Whistling by the Numbers: A Survey of the Calliope in the U.S. Patents.”

103  See Ovid, Metamorphoses, 294–340, 662–78.

104  LAC ERF, R12642/1.14, Sweetland to Rathburn, 22 June 1995.

105  Lewisohn, The Beatles Recording Sessions.

106  LAC ERF, R12642/1.12, Rathburn to Dean, 29 July 1973. Mr S.C. Dean of Durham, England, was a British railway enthusiast and sometime contributor to Railway Magazine.

107  Ibid. See also LAC ERF, R12642/1.14, Rathburn to a “Mr. Webster,” 2 October 1997. In this letter written nearly twenty-five years after his letter to S.C. Dean (fn 107), Rathburn wrote: “As far as I know there are only two calliopes in Canada that operate by steam. One is in Stratford, Ontario, the other in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The one in Stratford is in good condition.”

108  Tony Ianzelo, The Mighty Steam Calliope (Montreal: National Film Board of Canada, 1978), film, 10 minutes. Rathburn’s letter indicates that Webster had written to him on 13 August 1997 expressing interest in the calliope tracks heard on the Mostly Railroad Music CD (Crystal Records, CD520, 1994): Three Calliope Pieces (1994) and The Rise and Fall of the Steam Railroad (1982).

109  The original 1854 piano score is held in the archive of the Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, https://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/collection/059/052.

110  LAC ERF, R12642/1.14, Rathburn to Webster, 2 October 1997.

111  LAC ERF, R12642/1.14, James O’Neill to Clyde Gilmour, 12 December 1994. According to his obituary: “Many knew Jim as ‘The Circus Man,’ as his leisure time was spent with his family, and on his hobby of building miniature model circuses. This became very much a family effort, with his wife Gilberte sewing tents and sons providing assistance on setups. The O’Neill Bros. Model Circus was displayed several times at the Fredericton Exhibition and the former National Exhibition Centres (both Fredericton and Saint John) along with the New Brunswick Museum, Moncton Museum, and Nova Scotia Museum. See “James ‘Jim’ O’Neill (1923–2014) obituary,” Saint John Telegraph-Journal, 12 March 2014.

112  LAC ERF, R12642/1.14, Sweetland to Rathburn, 22 June 1995.

113  Dahlinger has been a regular contributor to Carousel Organ (Journal of the Carousel Organ Association of America), and he is a past editor of Bandwagon, the Journal of the Circus Historical Society of America. See for example Dahlinger, “Mechanical Organs of the American Traveling Circus, Menagerie and Wild West”; “Joseph Ori and the Early Circus Air Calliope”; and “Ringing and Ringling: Showmens’ Bell Chimes & Related Novelty Instruments.”

114  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Dahlinger to Rathburn, 18 January 1984.

Chapter Eight

    1  LHT, Rathburn interview by Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

    2  Ibid.

    3  Rathburn, “Thoughts on My Craft.”

    4  LHT, Rathburn interview by Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993). Rathburn is referring in particular to his score for Sky (1963), discussed in chapter 3.

    5  LHT, Rathburn interview by Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

    6  Rathburn’s handwritten list of his works (LAC ERF) includes “A Child’s Christmas” (ca. 1943–44), a vocal work that has been lost and may have been written for choir.

    7  Wolters-Fredlund, “A ‘League against Willan’?” 445–80.

    8  Although a recording has not been located, according to Rathburn (conversation with the author, 6 August 2006), a recording of “To a Wandering Cloud,” by soprano Frances James (1920–1988, wife of composer Murray Adaskin), is available in the archive of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

    9  Flecker, “A Ship, an Isle, a Sickle Moon.”

  10  Scott, Green Cloisters: Later Poems, 71. Scott (1862–1947) was a Canadian bureaucrat, poet, and prose writer. With Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Archibald Lampman he associated with a literary group known as Canada’s “Confederation Poets.” Scott was a lifetime Canadian civil servant who served as deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs (1913–32). In that role he is best known today for advocating the assimilation of Canada’s Indigenous peoples. See Ross, Poets of the Confederation, vii.

  11  Carman was named Canada’s poet laureate in 1921. Like Rathburn, he was born and raised in New Brunwick and was the great-grandson of United Empire Loyalists.

  12  Pierce, Selected Poems of Bliss Carman.

  13  LAC ERF, R12642/1.15, Rathburn to Biermann, 28 October 2003.

  14  LAC ERF, R12642/3.1, listening journal, undated. Rathburn’s emphatic underlining is transcribed from the original.

  15  Ibid.

  16  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Rathburn to Hagani, 12 April 1996.

  17  Ibid. The Koussevitsky/BSO concert to which Rathburn is refers here took place in Jordan Hall on 11 February 1934. See Boston Symphony Orchestra Program Books, Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives, Symphony Hall, Boston, MA, http://cdm15982.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/PROG/id/141711/rec/2.

  18  Rathburn, interview with Mathieu Lavoie, 2007.

  19  Victor Feldbrill, in conversation with the author, 22 August 2016.

  20  Ibid.

  21  Scott Wilkinson, Myth, Canadian Music Centre, MI 1100 W687my, print score.

  22  Armour, Eldon Rathburn Works, liner notes.

  23  Radio Canada International RCI no. 41, 1947. See Toronto Symphony Orchestra, “Recording History,” https://www.tso.ca/tso-historical-documents.

  24  In collaboration with Helmut Blume, Kash also developed a program titled The Magic of Music (1955–58), a CBC television series designed to introduce children to music theory, music history, and the instruments of the orchestra. The series won an award from the Institute for Education in Radio and Television from Ohio State University.

  25  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on Children’s Concert, undated. The circumstances surrounding the making of the Children’s Concert series were evidently less than ideal. “A book could be written about the process of making this film,” Rathburn wrote years later in his notes on Children’s Concert. “All kinds of trouble, including kids barging in on a recording session at St. Barnabas, and a session ruined by a power outage in Toronto!”

  26  LAC ERF, R12642/1.1, personal notes, undated. Rathburn lists his Five Short Pieces as a work written for Kash’s Children’s Concert series.

  27  “Images of Childhood,” Ottawa Journal, 18 October 1950.

  28  Eldon Rathburn, Images of Childhood, performed by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Ernest Macmillan, Canadian Music Centre AR005, archival recording, compact disc.

  29  Davies, “Interview with Eldon Rathburn.”

  30  Morten Parker, Family Circles (Ottawa: National Film Board of Canada, 1949) film, 31 mins. Family Circles won a Canadian Film Award (non-theatrical category) in 1950.

  31  “Guide to Films,” The Coordinator 1, no. 5 (December 1952): 40–4, Pamphlets, Films, Books on Personality Development in Family and Community, http://www.jstor.org/stable/581277.

  32  “Musical Walk Across Canada Title of First Children’s Concert,” Ottawa Journal, 14 November 1953.

  33  LAC ERF, R12642/3.10. “Horse opera” (or “hoss opera”) is film and television industry slang for a formulaic and melodramatic cowboy film or television series, according to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary (http://dictionary.infoplease.com/horse-opera, accessed 4 June 2018). The term – apparently coined by silent film–era Western star William S. Hart – derives from the characteristic feature of these films, including a perfunctory scene in which a cowboy is shown singing to his horse. Although it can be used to convey either disparagement or affection, it is clear that the latter was Rathburn’s intention with this title. Overture to a Hoss Opera is listed in the CBC archive card catalogue as an “Opportunity Knocks” commission by the CBC (catalogue no. ST-2651).

  34  Nocturne is listed in the CBC archive card catalogue as an “Opportunity Knocks” commission by the CBC (catalogue no. STAN. 2801).

  35  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on film scores, undated. Rathburn mentions that his Overture Burlesca was “performed by the CBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Geoffrey Waddington.” If this performance was recorded, the recording appears not to have survived.

  36  Ibid.

  37  Helmer, Growing with Canada, 218.

  38  Eldon Rathburn, Gray City, performed by the Halifax Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leo Mueller, Canadian Music Centre, CMC AR065, archival recording, compact disc.

  39  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Rathburn to the Canadian Performing Rights Society, 27 February 1940.

  40  An archival recording of the 22 December 1974 premiere performance by the Lancaster Kiwanis Steel Band and the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Skitch Henderson, is available at the Canadian Music Centre (CMC catalogue nos. AR391  and TT990).

  41  Established in 1972, two years prior to this performance, the twenty-five-member Saint John’s Lancaster Kiwanis Steel Band was the first of its kind in Canada. With a range of nearly five octaves, the band “makes, pounds out, and tunes their own instruments from used, specially selected, forty-five-gallon steel oil drums of a requisite gauge.” See http://www.norecordsnobs.com/music-blog/lancaster-kiwanis-steel-band.

  42  Skitch Henderson, “Spoken Preamble to the Premiere Performance,” Canadian Music Centre, CMC T 990, archival sound recording, https://www.musiccentre.ca/node/10502.

  43  Eldon Rathburn, Canadian Brass Rag (Mississauga, ON: Canadian Brass Publications, 1979). The Canadian Brass Rag is also included on Canadian Brass. Raz-Ma-Tazz, Boot Records, BMC-3004, 1975, LP.

  44  LAC ERF, CBC broadcast recording of Three Ironies, Images of Childhood, and a short interview with Rathburn, accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 415875, audio recording.

  45  LAC ERF, R12642/1.14, Rathburn to Brownell, 30 October 1994.

  46  Apel, Harvard Dictionary of Music, 734.

  47  Pastorella was originally written in 1949 for oboe, string trio, and double bass, but was revised by Rathburn in 1972 for oboe and string quartet. Two archival recordings are available. The original arrangement can be heard in a recording – by Perry Bauman (oboe), Hyman Goodman (violin), Harold Sumberg (violin), Robert Warburton (viola), Isaac Mamott (cello), and Sydney Wells (bass) – that is archived by the Canadian Music Centre, AR112, https://www.musiccentre.ca/node/28109. The second arrangement can be heard in an archival recording in the possession of Ottawa conductor Daniel Swift, featuring the Chamber Players of Canada with oboist Charles Hamann, conducted by Daniel Swift, 21 April 1997, Ottawa (“Tribute to Eldon Rathburn” on the occasion of his 81st birthday).

  48  The Chamber Players of Canada, Eldon Rathburn Works, ATMA Classique ACD2 2371, 2006, compact disc.

  49  The recording by National Arts Centre Orchestra clarinetist Kimball Sykes is particularly affecting. Eldon Rathburn Works: Chamber Players of Canada (ATMA Classique, 2006)

  50  Rathburn, interview with Mathieu Lavoie, 2007.

  51  Rathburn, “My Most Successful Work,” 8.

  52  Druick, Projecting Canada.

  53  The Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival (“Chamberfest”) is frequently described as the world’s largest annual Chamber Music Festival of its kind. See for example Caroline Phillips, “Ottawa Chamberfest Marks 25 Years with Celebration at Iconic French Embassy,” Ottawa Business Journal, 26 July 2018, https://obj.ca/article/ottawa-chamberfest-marks-25-years-celebration-iconic-french-embassy.

  54  Andrea McCrady, “What Should the Carillon Play?” Parliament of Canada, December 2012, http://www.ourcommons.ca/About/HistoryArtsArchitecture/collection_profiles/CP_carillon-e.htm.

  55  “Peace Tower Carillon Makes Orchestral Debut,” Ottawa Citizen, 24 February 1949.

  56  Rathburn, Eldon Rathburn Works, liner notes.

  57  I am grateful to Joan and Roberta Morris for providing insights and anecdotes related to Eldon’s love of cats (personal conversations with the author, 2 August 2016). They also remarked on how delighted Eldon was to be able to attend a 1982 performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats in London’s West End, together with Margot, his sister Joan, brother-in-law John Morris, and niece Roberta.

  58  Nixon, The Other Side of the Hill. Cats were first brought to Parliament Hill in 1924 in order to deal with a “mild plague of rats and mice in the basement of the then brand-new Centre Block” of the parliamentary precinct. See also Berton, Cats I Have Known and Loved, 107–11. According to Pierre Berton, some three hundred tourists visited Canada’s parliamentary cat sanctuary daily.

  59  Messiaen, Technique de mon langage musicale, 58. Messiaen defined his “modes of limited transposition” as follows: “Based on our present chromatic system, a tempered system of twelve tones, these modes are formed of several symmetrical groups, the last note of each group always being common with the first of the following group. At the end of a certain number of chromatic transpositions which varies with each mode, they are no longer transposable, giving exactly the same notes as the first.”

  60  “Tribute to Eldon Rathburn,” 21 April 1997. Rathburn’s Light and Shadow (1993) should not be confused with Light and Shadow (2003), by Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra composer-in-residence Heather Schmidt.

  61  LAC ERF, R12642/1.13, Rathburn to the Iturbi family, 3 August 1980.

  62  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Willan to Rathburn, 24 May 1947. As we saw in chapter 2, Rathburn had made an appeal to both Arnold Schoenberg and Healey Willan to write in support of his attempt to secure the Carrie Jacobs-Bond Scholarship, which would have enabled him to further his composition studies at the University of Southern California. Since no subsequent reference to the scholarship appears in Rathburn’s biographical notes or correspondence, the fate of his application is unknown.

  63  Siegel and Shuster, Superman.

  64  Elaine Keillor, Canadian Compositions for Young Pianists, Studea Musica CD-BR1336, Canadian Music Centre, CD 585 2000, compact disc.

  65  Brodsky, “The Agony of Death, Film Score.”

  66  La valse (1920) is a caricature of Imperial Vienna seen through French eyes after the ravages of the Great War. In Ravel’s quasi-programmatic symphonic poem a Viennese waltz is torn apart, caricaturized, orchestrated in increasingly brutal ways, and made to seem a perfect symbol of everything unattractive, decadent, and ultimately destructive in what, from Ravel’s postwar vantage point, seemed to be the destructive vortex of German/Austrian culture.

  67  Alex Cook, “The Saint John String Quartet Celebrates Maritime Composers,” The East (East Coast Art & Culture Magazine), 21 October 2014, http://www.theeastmag.com/2014/10/21/the-saint-john-string-quartet/.

  68  Ibid.

  69  LAC ERF, R12642/3.10, short essay “Humor and Music,” undated. In the same essay, Rathburn mentions how he enjoys giving “serious treatment to old-fashioned tunes (for example, ‘Who Threw the Overalls in Mrs Murphy’s Chowder’)” as a form of musical humour.

  70  Armour, Eldon Rathburn Works, liner notes.

  71  Kallmann, Catalogue of Canadian Composers.

  72  MacMillan and Beckwith, Contemporary Canadian Composers.

  73  Armour, Eldon Rathburn Works, liner notes.

  74  Kinsky and Halm, Das Werk Beethovens.

  75  Canon No. 5 of “Fünf Canons von L. van Beethoven,” Ludwig van Beethovens Werke, Serie 25: Supplement, Gesang-Musik, no. 285 (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1862–90). Molt lived and taught in both Quebec City (1822–32, 1841–49) and Burlington, Vermont (1832–41, 1849–56). He willed the manuscript to his eldest son, who spoke to Beethoven’s first biographer, Alexander Wheelock Thayer, about his father’s 1825 visit with Beethoven. In 1933 it turned up for sale in a Berlin antiquarian shop, and in 1966 it was sold at auction in New York to Lawrence Lande of McGill University. Library and Archives Canada acquired the manuscript from Lande in 1979. The canon’s Canadian connection was discovered during the summer of 1948 by Helmut Kallmann when he was reading the second appendix of Fritz Prelinger’s Ludwig van Beethovens Sämtliche Briefe und Aufzeichnungen (Vienna and Leipzig: C.W. Stern, 1907–11): “There, underneath a letter to the composer from a visitor to Vienna, it stared at me in clear print: ‘Theodor Molt, Musiklehrer in Quebec in North America, December 1825.’” See chapter 15 (“Mapping Canada’s Music: A Life”) in John Beckwith and Robin Elliott, eds, Selected Writings of Helmut Kallmann (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013).

  76  LAC ERF, R12642/1.1, concert program, 11 April 1993. The founding members of the Ottawa String Quartet were violinist Marcelle Mallette, violinist Edvard Skerjanc, violist Guyaine Lemaire, and cellist Julian Armour.

  77  Julian Armour, “85th Birthday Celebration,” concert program notes, 20 April 2001, St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Ottawa.

  78  Jurkowski, “Review of Montage: Saint John String Quartet,” 39.

  79  Michael Shobe, “Classical Commute: James Graseck,” WQXR blog, 2 August 2015, http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/classical-commute-james-graseck/. Graseck has appeared on The Tonight Show, in the feature film One True Thing (1998), starring William Hurt, Meryl Streep and Renée Zellweger, and in the hit television series Mozart in the Jungle (2014) in the role of a homeless violinist.

  80  Rogers, “Canada’s Musical Group of Seven,” 9.

  81  For example, Marius Barbeau, John Barron, Barbara Cass-Beggs, Helen Creighton, Edith Fowke, John Murray Gibbon, Helmut Kallmann, Ellen Karp, Alan Mills, Kenneth Peacock, and Tom Kines.

  82  Peacock, Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, 522. Peacock collected the song from Mrs John Fogarty of Joe Batt’s Arm, Newfoundland, in 1952. It should be noted that parts of Fogo Island have strong ancestral connections to Ireland. An audio recording of the song, sung by Peacock himself, can be heard on Peacock’s Album Songs and Ballads of Newfoundland (Folkways Records, 1956). Peacock was a leading authority in Canadian ethnomusicology whose research had a profound impact on the folk music revival in Canada during the mid- to late-twentieth century. See also Gregory, “Kenneth Peacock’s Songs of the Newfoundland Outports.”

  83  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  84  Forte, Structure of Atonal Music.

  85  Ibid. These are both Forte pitch-class sets 3–4 (015).

  86  Fox, “Darmstadt School.”

  87  Stravinsky and Craft, Dialogues and a Diary.

  88  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Sam Goody Records to Rathburn, 10 October 1957. Eldon wrote letter of inquiry about Webern recordings (complete works) on 4 October 1957, and Sam Goody Records replied on 10 October.

  89  Eldon Rathburn, Bout in Three Rounds, performed by Davis Joachim and Peter Dagostino, Canadian Music Centre AR571, archival recording.

  90  Forte, Structure of Atonal Music. In Forte’s pitch-class set theory, these triads are all inversionally equivalent pc sets with Forte number 3–11 (037).

  91  In Forte’s pitch-class set theory, these hexachords are both equivalent pc sets 6–20 (014589). In his discussion of “modes of limited transposition” in Technique de mon langage musicale, Messiaen overlooked the 6–20 “hexatonic” hexachord (perhaps intentionally, since he did not employ the hexatonic scale in his music).

  92  Messiaen, Technique de mon langage musical.

  93  An exhaustive discussion of hexachordal combinatoriality is beyond our present scope. Hexachordal combinatoriality refers to a property of two row forms whereby aligning them one above the other gives rise to another presentation of the complete twelve-tone aggregate, since all twelve tones are also heard when the first hexachord of a row form and the first hexachord of one of its “hexachordally combinatorial” row forms are combined one above the other.

  94  Cohn, “Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems.”

  95  LAC ERF, R12642/1.1, personal notes, undated.

  96  LAC ERF, R12642/1.11, Joanne Turner to Rathburn, 24 October 1955. Ernest MacMillan had recommended this rhythm band piece to Joanne Turner, the music supervisor for the Sarnia Public School Board.

  97  Avrahm Galper, New for Now: An Adventure in Learning for Young Clarinetists, vol. 2, Avrahm Galper et al. Dominion S-69004, 1971. This recording, featuring clarinet works by Canadian composers Agostini, Fleming, Glick, Hill, Hyslop, Kymlicka, Kenins, Rathburn, and Weinzeig, was also released in French under the title “De la clarinette dans le vent.” It was co-produced by CAPAC in collaboration with the Canadian Federation of Music Teachers.

  98  Studies in Twentieth Century Idioms (Waterloo, ON: Waterloo Music, 1970).

  99  Liner notes, John Rodby, Concerto for 29, and Eldon Rathburn, The Metamorphic Ten (Crystal Records S504, 1977).

100  For example, Rathburn employs the zither in his NFB film scores for It’s a Crime (1957) and Enemy Aliens (1975), and his The Metamorphic Ten (1971) is listed in Mackie Banks, “The Electric Guitar in Contemporary Art Music.”

101  The musicians on the recording were Gordon Fleming, Canada’s premier jazz accordionist, William Kuinka on mandolin and banjo, Tony Romandini on acoustic and electric guitar, bassists Peter Dagostino and Tony Dichiaro, harpist Dorothy Masella, Estonian-Canadian jazz pianist Armas (“Art”) Maiste, and percussionists Guy Lachapelle, Pierre Béluse, and Jean-Guy Plante (who also played the Jew’s harp part).

102  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, Rathburn to Alan J. Wood (president, Toronto Musicians’ Association), 28 July 1976.

103  Rodby, Concerto for 29, and Rathburn, The Metamorphic Ten, 1977.

104  LAC ERF, R12642/1.13, Rathburn to Applebaum, 30 June 1976.

105  Eldon Rathburn, Mostly Railroad Music, liner notes.

106  The premiere performance of Apparition was given on 13 July 1991 by cellist Julian Armour and pianist Michael Woytiuk at King’s Theater, Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.

107  See, for example, “Methods and Studies. Cello. Repertoire Grade 8,” Opus II, http://www.opus-two.com/CelloPage.html.

108  “Uncle” Dave Lewis, Review of Eldon Rathburn Works.

109  Armour, Eldon Rathburn Works, liner notes.

110  Ibid.

111  The Palladium has had many corporate incarnations: The Palladium (1996, when it opened), the Corel Centre (1997–2006), Scotiabank Place (2006–13), and the Canadian Tire Centre, its current name (2013–).

112  Armour, Eldon Rathburn Works, liner notes.

113  Gordon Slater kindly provided some amusing details and commentary (personal correspondence, 7 August 2016): “It was near-real-time and here is why. The signal from the belfry microphones was digitized before sending it over a telephone line to the venue. The analogue-to-digital converter used for this purpose had a latency – that is, it introduced a delay – that was equal to one eighth-note in duration. Therefore I had to play half a beat in advance of what I heard on the headset relative to the other players, in order to sound in sync with them to the audience at the venue. Naturally the involuntary audience of passers-by on Parliament Hill could hear only the carillon and nothing of the other instrumentalists. I could not see whether or not they stood at attention when they heard me playing ‘O Canada.’”

114  Joan Morris, email correspondence with the author, 4 August 2017.

115  Lewis, “Review of Eldon Rathburn Works.”

116  “A magnificent and Debussyesque evocation of the New Brunswick landscape” (author’s translation). Cardin, Review of Eldon Rathburn Works.

117  Lewis, “Review of Eldon Rathburn Works.”

118  Rathburn, interview with Mathieu Lavoie, 2007.

119  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

120  Ibid.

121  Don McWilliams, interview with Allyson Rogers, 14 April 2015.

122  Eldon Rathburn, Lawrence Schoenberg, and Ronald Schoenberg, interview with Adrian Harewood, CBC All in a Day, 27 July 2007.

123  Eldon Rathburn, in discussion with Dianne Parsonage, 17 March 2008.

Chapter Nine

    1  Grierson, “Review of Moana.”

    2  McInnes, One Man’s Documentary, 211.

    3  Clifford Lincoln, Our Cultural Sovereignty: The Second Century of Canadian Broadcasting (Ottawa: Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, 2003), http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/hoc/Committee/372/HERI/Reports/RP1032284/herirp02/herirp02-e.pdf.

    4  Druick, Projecting Canada.

    5  The Applebaum-Hébert Committee produced three publications: a guide for submissions titled Speaking of Our Culture (Ottawa, 1981), Summary of Briefs and Hearings (Ottawa, 1982), and its final Report of the Federal Cultural Policy Review Committee (Ottawa, 1982), which contained 101 recommendations. See also Jackson and Davies, “Review of the Report of the Federal Cultural Policy Review Committee.”

    6  Pitman, Louis Applebaum, 478–9.

    7  Ibid., fn 4.

    8  York University Archives, Louis Applebaum Fonds, 2000/009-003[19]), Stoney to Applebaum, 6 December 1982.

    9  Harry Rasky, “Letter to the Editor,” Globe and Mail, 19 November 1982.

  10  Canada, Department of Communications, and Fox, The National Film and Video Policy, 8.

  11  At the 1980 Oscars in Los Angeles, the four Academy Award nominations for NFB films were: Bravery in the Field, Going the Distance, Nails (an NFB/Mercury Pictures co-production), and Federekno’s Every Child/Chaque enfant (NFB).

  12  Martin, “The National Film Board and Canadian Education”; Martin, NFB Filmmakers Look at Education. A pioneer in the development of audio-visual services for the North York Board of Education during the 1950s, Martin joined the NFB in 1966 and was instrumental in bringing German film pioneer Lotte Reiniger to Canada in the 1970s.

  13  Cited in Hardy, Grierson on the Movies, 34–5.

  14  McLane, A New History of Documentary Film, 73–92. The four subsequent films were Our Hunting Fathers (1936), On This Island (1937), The Ascent of F6 (1937), and Ballad of Heroes (1939).

  15  John Grierson, “Letter from Grierson to Applebaum,” Canadian Composer 38 (March 1969).

  16  NFBA, “The Purchase of Distribution Rights for Music in English Production Films,” memorandum from the Director of English Production to All Studios, 1 July 1983.

  17  Haliwell, “National Film Board Stresses Original Scores”; Pratley, “Music Can Often Communicate Better Than Dialogue”; Pratley, “The Ups and Downs of Creating Music for Canadian Feature Films”; Schulman, “Two Films, Two Music Scores, and Two Less-Than-Happy Composers.”

  18  See Druick, Projecting Canada.

  19  Louis Hone, interview with Allyson Rogers, 23 April 2015.

  20  Geringas, “Mentorship Blues”; Hassannia, “Colin Low, Don Owen and How the NFB’s Unit B Changed Canadian Cinema.”

  21  Evans, In the National Interest.

  22  Druick, Projecting Canada.

  23  LHT, Rathburn interview with Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  24  See for example Piotrowska, “Modernist Composers and the Concept of Genius.”

  25  Copland, Music and Imagination, 47.

  26  Rathburn, “My Most Successful Work,” 8.

  27  LAC ERF, R12642/2.2, listening journal, undated (ca. 1986–87).

  28  Marchessault, “Multi-Screens and Future Cinema,” 45.

  29  Pratley, “Music Can Often Communicate Better Than Dialogue,” 4–7.

  30  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  31  Joan and John Morris, in conversation with the author, 29 December 2014.

  32  Morgan and Barden, A Beautiful Constraint.

  33  Terry O’Reilly, Under the Influence, CBC Radio One, 27 August 2016, http://www.cbc.ca/radio/undertheinfluence/summer-series-bookmarks-2016-1.3612090.

  34  Ford, “Eldon Rathburn.”

  35  Eldon Rathburn, “Thoughts on My Craft,” 7.

  36  NBPA ERF, MC3421, box 58398, personal notes on Down to Earth, undated.

  37  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  38  Ibid.

  39  LAC ERF, R12642/1.6, City of Saint John Certificate of Commendation, 17 October 1967.

  40  LAC ERF, R12642/1.6, statement from Mayor Jacqueline Holzman, 21 April 1997.

  41  Nomination, “UN Award” (best film embodying one or more of the principles of the United Nations Charter), BAFTA Award.

  42  Oscar nomination, Best Animated Film; Special Prize, BAFTA Awards.

  43  First Prize, Documentary Film, Mostra Internatzionale del Cinema, Venice, Italy; Award of Merit, Edinburgh International Film Festival.

  44  Oscar nomination; Best Documentary Film, BAFTA Awards; Festival Golden Mikeldi Prize, Bilbao International Documentary film; Film of the Year, Canadian Film Awards.

  45  Oscar nomination; Best Animated Film Award, BAFTA Awards; Film of the Year, Canadian Film Awards; twenty other national and international awards.

  46  Silver Berlin Bear Award, Short Documentary Film, Berlin International Film Festival.

  47  Oscar nomination; Best Animated Short Film Award, San Francisco International Film Festival.

  48  Robert Flaherty Award for best non-fiction film, BAFTA Awards.

  49  Two Yorkton Film Festival Golden Sheaf Awards, and a Canadian Etrog/Genie Award for best colour cinematography.

  50  Jury Prize for Best IMAX/OMNIMAX Film, and Public Prize for Best IMAX/OMNIMAX Film, International Film Festival de la Géode (large format), Paris.

  51  Coté, Foreword to Musique et Cinema.

  52  Eldon Rathburn: They Shoot … He Scores (NFB, 1995), https://www.nfb.ca/film/eldon_rathburn_they_shoot_he_scores/. See also Joanne Robertson’s recent five-minute short documentary on the NFB’s film composers, Making Movie History: The Composers (NFB, 2014), https://www.nfb.ca/film/making_movie_history_the_composers/. The title of this book has been adapted with permission from Hone’s cleverly punning documentary film title. It bears another layer of meaning given that Rathburn was a passionate hockey fan – a devotee of the Montreal Canadiens in particular – for most of his life.

  53  Louis Hone, correspondence with the author, 28 May 2018.

  54  Ibid.

  55  Joan Morris, correspondence with the author, 23 May 2018.

  56  LHT, Rathburn interview by Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  57  Eldon’s family attended St Stephen’s Church in Queenstown, New Brunswick, and St John’s Anglican (“Stone”) Church in Saint John.

  58  Since St Margaret’s was too small to house the large congregation expected to attend Rathburn’s funeral service in 2008, it was conducted at St Aidan’s Anglican Church, 955  Wingate Drive, Ottawa, on 5 September 2008. Joan Morris, in conversation with the author, 29 December 2014.

  59  Joan Morris, in conversation with the author, 29 December 2014.

  60  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  61  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993). “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” (“O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden”) is excerpted from both Bach’s St Matthew Passion (BWV 244) and the cantata Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem (BWV 159).

  62  LHT, Rathburn interview with Louis Hone, undated (ca. 1993).

  63  Rogers, “Canada’s Musical Group of Seven,” 9.

  64  LAC ERF, tribute to Eldon Rathburn upon his retirement from the NFB, 17 March 1977, accession number 2008-00495-3, item number 416027, audio recording, 70 minutes.

  65  Eldon had named Margot as his executor, and Margot subsequently transferred all responsibilities concerning their wills and estate to her niece, Lise Payette-Leroux. In his will, Eldon stipulated that all future royalty revenues generated by his music (following Margot’s death) were to be donated to the Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). Lise Payette-Leroux, in conversation with the author, 1 October 2018.

  66  Section 36, lot 14, Notre Dame Cemetery, 455 Montreal Road, Ottawa.