Jean Coulthard (1908-2000) is generally recognised as one of the preeminent figures of 20th century Canadian music history. Her works are some of the most frequently performed and recorded in the Canadian repertoire. She received numerous prizes and accolades for her work, both in Canada and internationally. Her influence on composition and her creative enthusiasm have left a lasting mark on the Canadian music scene. Born near Vancouver, B.C. in February 1908, Jean Coulthard began studying music as a child with her mother, a professional musician and music teacher. Her mother also supervised the writing of her first works, introducing her at a young age to “impressionist” music and to the English and French musical repertoires of the early 20th century. Debussy in particular had a lasting influence over the course of her entire career. In 1928, she received a scholarship to London’s Royal College of Music, where she studied for a year alongside RO Morris, Kathleen Long, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. When she returned to Vancouver, she felt a burning need to dedicate herself to composing, but also saw the flaws that remained in her technique and creativity. During the 1930s and World War Two, she worked to improve her knowledge and perfect her compositional approach as a professional composer. She built up a precocious body of work made up of vocal pieces, piano pieces, and some ensemble works, all of which she revised over the years.

Unable to find a teacher or mentor nearby, she occasionally travelled to seek out critical advice on her work from various renowned musicians, meeting such personalities as Béla Bartók in New York, Arnold Schönberg in Los Angeles, Darius Milhaud at Mills College in Oakland, California, and Aaron Copland, again in New York. She did not formally study under these composers, seeking above all to gather opinions and advice from established professionals about her work. Starting in 1939, she studied further under Australian composer Arthur Benjamin, who was living in Vancouver at the time and encouraged her to widen the breadth and scope of her work. Until then, she mainly wrote for small ensembles, and usually for voice. Benjamin pushed her to write, instead, for orchestra. She then began to write ambitious orchestral pieces, including A Canadian Fantasy (1939), A Winter's Tale (1940), Excursion (1940), and Song to the Sea (1942). From 1944 to 1945, Coulthard resided in New York to study intensively under Bernard Waagenar (1894-1987) at Julliard, developing her technical acumen, sense of form, harmonic language – mainly through her exploration of polytonality and the twelve-tone technique, and better assert her own style. Back in Vancouver, she embarked on twin careers in composing and teaching. She was hired at the University of British Columbia in 1947, where she taught musical theory and composition for 26 years and trained many future musicians of repute. Between 1946 and 1948, Coulthard worked on three sonatas – one for piano, one for oboe and piano, and one for cello and piano – which illustrate her skill at that time. Later, she wrote many more sonatas (solo and duet) for almost every orchestra instrument. In the following years, she continued to develop her personal musical language: despite prevailing modernist trends of the time, she remained true to her artistic path, marked by the heritage of impressionism and the influences of musicians like Bartok.

In the 1950s, however, she began to question the pertinence of her style, at a time when the musical avant-garde – the heirs of Webern – preached the use of integral serialism and other complex technical and mathematical approaches that were rather far removed from her own style. Coulthard had previously discussed this question with Schoenberg when they had met, referring to the twelve-tone technique. Schoenberg had encouraged her to follow her own path, without feeling obligated to embrace this approach, and she had therefore favoured the path she considered more in step with her aspirations. The renewed interest in serialism in the 1950s and the dominant influence of modernist trends, changed things however. Worried that her musical style could be considered passé or too conservative in the face of new trends, she decided to take a sabbatical and travel to France. Among others, she hoped to meet Nadia Boulanger, the famous French pedagogue who had a massive following in North America. In 1955, she received a grant from the Royal Society of Canada which paid for a year of scholarship in France. Though Nadia Boulanger’s teaching style and personality did not fit Coulthard, her stay in France did prove enriching, putting her in direct contact with the music that had so inspired her. She returned revitalised and refocused on the essential aspects of her creative process, having solidified her ambition as a composer and summoned the strength to follow her own path, free from doctrine and passing trend, accepting that her approach could be judged more traditional than the avant-garde trends of the time. Coulthard was very prolific in the late 1950s and across the 1960s. Her biggest project, three-act opera Return of the Native, was started in Paris in 1955 and only completed in 1979. In the 1960s, her work started receiving international acclaim, mainly due to numerous radio broadcasts worldwide.

She retired from teaching in 1973, but her musical career was far from over. Her post-retirement period was even more prolific and rich, as her musical language evolved considerably. She received numerous accolades and prizes for her works (see below), remaining active until late in her life and even accepting commissions into old age. Jean Coulthard passed away in March 2000 at age 92, having lived most of her life in Vancouver. She left behind a vast body of over 350 works across nearly every musical genre, including and opera, four symphonies, a violin concerto, three string quartets, many sonatas and pieces of chamber music, and numerous pieces for voice or vocal ensemble.


Aesthetic, musical language, and expression

Her musical style evolved over the years, mixing various influences including (principally, as stated previously) impressionism, romanticism, Bartόk’s work, and various modernist aesthetics, while also adding elements from Canadian culture to several of her works. Her musical language rests, see above, in large part upon a widened tonal language – though it never stoops to being scholarly, as Coulthard was always seeking originality in her artistic approach. Her works also combine elements such as traditional forms with a tonal-modal language, enhanced with polytonal elements and chromatic harmonies. However, her language also evolved towards exploring modernist writing techniques (see below). At any rate, faced with the rise of avant-gardist doctrines in the second half of the 20th century (often linked, rightly or no, to a “cerebral” image), Coulthard championed the idea of the sensitive, expressive, and personal character of the creative endeavour, as a means of speaking to the heart and not exclusively to the intellect – an idea she would discuss often. Her music sought to represent her ideas about human values in an age of science. She was first and foremost preoccupied with the subject of expressivity, and the evocativeness of music. According to her, the creative impulse had to remain intuitive and spontaneous, without trying to force it or conform to an imposed style, doctrine, or technique. This was the key, according to her, to staying connected to the workings of one’s own creative sensitivity, and to allowing inspiration to flow more freely. Similarly to Bartόk’s approach, her works attempted to express certain feelings linked to her love for her country, exploring various aspects of Canadian life by evoking its landscapes and traditions – hence the numerous references to Canadian culture and sometimes to native cultures (e.g. Love Song of the Haida Indians) found across her music. Canada Mosaic (1974), a celebratory orchestral suite commissioned by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, is among her most emblematic works in this regard. The piece is built around several traditional Canadian melodies, and seeks to pay homage to Canada’s cultural and ethnic diversity while being infused with her own childhood memories. In addition to referencing traditional songs, Coulthard also included references to Canadian poets and painters in her works.

Coulthard’s later, post-retirement works also highlight an increased interest in 20th century avant-garde techniques, such as her use of microtones, elements of musique concrète (mixed music pieces like The Birds of Landsdowne in 1972), electronic instruments, indeterminacy, clusters, or even twelve-tone writing. Image Astrale (1981) for piano and its companion piece Image terrestre (1990), for example, leverage several of these modernist elements, alongside more traditional and impressionistic writing forms. These works exemplify the development of new composition strategies, which would particularly influence the maturation of her piano style. She herself, however, did not consider her work as divided into distinct stylistic periods, as one could be tempted in light of her successive explorations of musical language. She described her own work as divided into two parallel currents: one she described as “the rippling lyrical nature of sunlight glinting on the watered stone of a small brook,” the other “more brooding—the depth of one's being reflected in the deep fiords of our west coast.” She happily includes in the former category (“sunlight works”) her Fantasy for violin, piano, and chamber orchestra, her first String Quartet, and her collection of chamber duets for wind instruments and piano. The darker, more meditative works include her Sonata for violin and piano, her second String Quartet (Threnody), the Variations on BACH for piano, her string octet Twelve Essays on a Cantabile Theme, and her Symphonic Ode for viola and orchestra. The aesthetic approach only differed according to the finality she gave to her work: the impressionistic, atmospheric, evocative spirit remains in some of her later works, such as Sketches from the Western Woods (1970), which echoes certain elements of Debussyist piano writing. Conversely, she wished in other pieces to explore a more abstract, less-accessible approach, as was the case with Twelve Essays on a Cantabile Theme (1972), considered one of her masterworks. There was therefore never any strict separation between one stylistic period and another, rather a widening of the possibility space and of the range of techniques she used to translate aspects of her sensibility. The impressionistic models of her youth, however, remained a creative anchor during the entirety of her career.


Accolades

In the course of her career, Jean Coulthard was awarded many accolades and prizes – both in her native Canada and internationally – in recognition of her work. The majority of the awards, prizes, homages, and honours she received, however, likely came after her retirement. She was named Officer of the Order of Canada in 1988, and Freeman of the City of Vancouver in 1978. She also ranks among the associate composers of the Canadian Music Centre, and was a member of the Canadian League of Composers. The tenth volume of RCI’s Anthology of Canadian Music (1982) was also dedicated to her, and included the conversation Music Is My Whole Life, which retraces her career and artistic approach. In 1984, she was also named Composer of the Year by PRO Canada (Performing Rights Organization of Canada Limited). She was also awarded to honorary doctorates, by the University of British Columbia in 1988 and by Montreal’s Concordia University in 1991. In 1994, she received the Order of British Columbia. She also won international prizes during the London and Helsinki Olympics (respectively for Sonata for oboe and piano, 1947, and Night Wind, 1951), from the Australian Broadcasting Commission (for Symphony no 1, 1950), from the British Women Musicians' Society (Capriani Prize for Music for Midsummer 1971), and from several other organisations. Jean Coulthard was also named to Maclean’s honour roll in 1990.


– Frédérick Duhautpas –

[Traduction en anglais : Raphaël Meyer]