What is music – where does it come from and what does it mean? If music is in the background, and no one listens to it, does it still exist?
Why do composers write music, and how do they learn their profession?
What about Canadian music – a regional dialect of this "universal language"? How has it been created inside the country – how well is it understood abroad?
Music papers are reflections from a life of composing and teaching. These articles, talks and reviews, whether intended originally for general or professional audiences, communicate a passion for music rooted in a North American culture and place, informed by long and loving familiarity with masterpieces from elsewhere.
Also included are alternative versions of the early life of Glenn Gould, proofs of the existence of musical life in Toronto, and some questions still unanswered.

John Beckwith’s thirty-eight years with the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, included seven as its dean and five as founding director of its Institute for Canadian Music. Among his compositions are four operas and many orchestral, choral, chamber, and solo works. A frequent contributor to Canadian and foreign music journals, he is the author of Music Papers (1997) and In Search of Alberto Guerrero (WLU Press, 2006).

Since 1972 Brian Cherney has been on the staff of the Faculty of Music (now the Schulich School of Music) at McGill University, where he teaches composition at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. His extensive compositional output includes orchestral, choral, and instrumental music. His monograph on the Canadian composer Harry Somers was published in 1975.

John Beckwith's profile page