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Biography & Autobiography Composers & Musicians

Anthems and Minstrel Shows

The Life and Times of Calixa Lavallée, 1842-1891

by (author) Brian Christopher Thompson

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
May 2015
Category
Composers & Musicians
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773584167
    Publish Date
    May 2015
    List Price
    $39.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773545557
    Publish Date
    Jun 2015
    List Price
    $55.00

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Description

Calixa Lavallée, the composer of “O Canada,” was the first Canadian-born musician to achieve an international reputation. While primarily remembered for the national anthem, Lavallée and his work extended well beyond Canada, and he played a multitude of roles in North American music as a composer, conductor, administrator, instrumentalist, educator, and critic.

In Anthems and Minstrel Shows, Brian Thompson analyzes Lavallée’s music, letters, and published writings, as well as newspapers and music magazines of the time, to provide a detailed account of musical life in nineteenth-century North America and the relationship between music and nation. Leaving Quebec at age sixteen, Lavallée travelled widely for a decade as musical director of a minstrel troupe, and spent a year as a bandsman in the Union Army. Later, as a performer and conductor, he built a repertoire that prepared audiences for the intellectually challenging music of European composers and new music by his US contemporaries. His own music extended from national songs to comic operas, and instrumental music, as he shifted between the worlds of classical and popular music.

Previously portrayed as a humble French Canadian forced into exile by ignorance and injustice, Lavallée emerges here as ambitious, radical, bohemian, and fully engaged with the musical, social, and political currents of his time. While nationalism and nation-building are central to this story, Anthems and Minstrel Shows asks to which nation – or nations – Lavallée and “O Canada” really belong.

About the author

Brian Christopher Thompson is a senior lecturer in the Department of Music at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Brian Christopher Thompson's profile page

User Reviews

Best book on Canadian music in 2015

For anyone wanting to learn about Canadian music, this is the place to start: back over a century ago. In fact, this biography of the composer of O Canada, Calixa Lavallée begins just before his birth in 1842. Most of it, though, is about his life and experience as a working musician in Canada and in the US in the 1860s '70s and '80s. The book puts the events of his life and his career in the context of the time -- including the US Civil War, Confederation, and numerous economic ups and downs.
Thompson is a excellent writer. He provides a lot of detail but nothing that isn't central to the tell of this this rich and very relevant story. It left me with a much greater appreciation of the hardship that artists faced and how important it is to support our music now.