Helmut Kallmann

Helmut Max Kallmann (7 August 1922 – 12 February 2012) was a Canadian musicologist, music educator, librarian, and scholar of Canadian music history. He was a librarian at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, head of the music division at Library Archives Canada, and co-founder of the Canadian Music Library Association. Urged by Helmut's teacher, the family sent Kallmann to London as part of the Kindertransport rescue mission in 1939. His mother, father and older sister Eva were unable to get the necessary papers to leave Germany, and were murdered in the Holocaust. He was held in a series of internment camps, first near Fredericton, New Brunswick, then Farnham, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Quebec, and finally Ile aux Noix, Quebec. While at Sherbrooke, Kallmann passed an external examination in harmony and counterpoint from McGill University. While there, he built an archive of some 1,000 Canadian compositions. In 1960, he published A History of Music in Canada 1534–1914.

In 1970, Kallmann became the head of the newly created music division of the National Library of Canada, now Library and Archives Canada. He led the building and preserving of a broad collection of musical Canadiana: printed material, manuscripts and recordings. With Gilles Potvin and Kenneth Winters, he edited the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, released in English in 1981 and in French in 1983. At almost 1,100 pages, the English edition was the largest book that University of Toronto Press had published up to that time. In his memory, the university has established a fund for the Helmut Kallmann Chair in Canadian Music.

The Helmut Kallmann Award for Distinguished Service relating to music libraries and archives in Canada was established by the Canadian Association of Music Libraries in 2000. In 2006, he was the first librarian to receive the Friends of Canadian Music Award, given by the Canadian Music Centre and the Canadian League of Composers.

In 2018, Carleton University announced the creation of the Helmut Kallmann Chair for Music in Canada, an endowed chair that will work with undergraduate and graduate students and research topics of Canadian music. The position received significant funding from Carleton Distinguished Research Professor Elaine Keillor as well as The Koerner Foundation.

Selected bibliography "Canadian music as a field for research", The Toronto Conservatory of Music Bulletin, March 1950.

"The Music Collection of the National Library of Canada." Fontes Artis Musicae, vol. 34, no. 4, 1987, pp. 174–184. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23507508?seq=1 "Mapping Canada's Music: A Life's Task", in Music in Canada/La Musique au Canada, Vol 1, ed. Guido Bimberg (Bochum 1997).