Jean Coulthard

Jean Coulthard, (February 10, 1908 – March 9, 2000) was a Canadian composer and teacher. She was one of a trio of women composers who dominated Western Canadian music in the twentieth century: Coulthard, Barbara Pentland, and Violet Archer. All three died within weeks of each other in 2000. Her works might be loosely termed "prematurely neo-Romantic," as the orthodox serialists who dominated academic musical life in North America during the 1950s and 1960s had little use for her.

Life and career

Early life and education Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Coulthard was the daughter of Jean Blake Robinson Coulthard, a prominent and influential music teacher in Vancouver. Through her mother, she received her earliest musical training and was introduced at an early age to the work of French composers like Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, both of whom were lifelong influences. In 1944-1945, Coulthard worked for an entire academic year with Bernard Wagenaar of the Juilliard School, New York. In 1948, she met the British composer Elizabeth Poston (who was visiting Canada) and they began a long friendship and an extensive correspondence over the next 30 years.

Professional career Beginning in 1925, Coulthard taught the piano privately in her mother's studio, and then as an independent teacher (1935–1947). In 1947, she joined the fledgling Department of Music in the Faculty of Arts of the University of British Columbia. The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra continues to honor her legacy through the annual Jean Coulthard Readings, established in 2005, a yearly event in which young composers have the chance to receive mentorship from an established composer and to hear their works performed by a major orchestra.

Music Coulthard composed around 350 works throughout her long career in most traditional genres: an opera, four symphonies, a violin concerto, three string quartets and other chamber music, many instrumental sonatas, and songs and choral music to Canadian and other texts. Her style was predominantly Romantic and Impressionistic, though more experimental material, including electronics, bitonal and quartal harmonies, unusual scales, serialism, and tone clusters, became more common from the 1960s. Canadian musicologist and pianist Elaine Keillor identifies in her style "both a lyricism expressed within a contemporary musical language and a brooding introspection often associated with the geography of Western Canada."

Among her best-known pieces are: Prayer for Elizabeth for strings, written in 1952 for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and showing the influence of her teacher Ralph Vaughan Williams; the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1963); and the highly regarded Twelve Essays on a Cantabile Theme for string octet (1972). They include the Canadian Fantasy (1940), the ballet Excursion (1940), Ballade (A Winter's Tale) (1940) and Song to the Sea.

Her later work, after 1960, includes her most personal, abstract works such as the Third String Quartet and the octet Twelve Essays on a Cantabile Theme. The double CD, Jean Coulthard, released by Centrediscs in 2002 as part of the Canadian Composers Portraits series, includes an hour-long documentary alongside recordings of the Piano Concerto, Sketches from the Western Woods, and Twelve Essays on a Cantabile Theme.

Principal works

Chamber and Solo Music Cradle Song, for soprano and piano (1927) Four Studies for Piano (1945) Piano Sonata No. 1 (1947) Cello Sonata (1947) Oboe Sonata (1947) String Quartet No. 1 (1948) Three Love Songs (1948), text Louis MacKay Sonata in Duet, for violin and piano (1952) String Quartet No. 2, Threnody (1954, rev. 1969) 12 Preludes (1954–1964) Aegean Sketches, for piano (1961), composed for Gina Bachauer Sonata Rhapsody, for viola and piano (1962, rev. 1995) Six Medieval Songs, for baritone and piano (1962) Variations on BACH (1951) Lyric Trio, for piano, violin, and cello (1968) Divertimento, for horn, bassoon and piano (1968) Lyric Sonatina, for bassoon and piano (1969) The Pines of Emily Carr, for alto, narrator, timpani, piano, string quartet (1969) Day-dream, for violin and piano (1970) Sketches from the Western Woods, for piano (1970), composed for John Ogdon Lyric Sonatina, for flute and piano (1971) The Birds of Lansdowne, for piano trio and tape (1972) Octet (double string quartet) (1972) Twelve Essays on a Cantabile Theme, for string octet (1972) Three Sonnets of Shakespeare, for alto and string quartet (1977) String Quartet No. 3 (1981) Piano Sonata No. 2 (1986) Introduction and Three Folk Songs (1990)

Choral Works

Threnody for chorus, words by Robert Herrick (1935) Auguries of Innocence, for chorus, words William Blake (1963-65) Three Ballades From the Maritimes, for chorus (1979)

Orchestral Works Canadian Fantasy, for orchestra (1940) Song to the Sea, for orchestra (1942) Symphony No. 1 (1950) A Prayer for Elizabeth, for strings (1953) Violin Concerto (1959) Piano Concerto (1963, rev. 1967) Endymion, symphonic poem (1964) This Land (Symphony No. 2), for chorus and orchestra (1967) Lyric Symphony (Symphony No. 3), for bassoon and orchestra (1975) Burlesca, for piano and orchestra (1977) Symphonic Ode, for viola and orchestra (1977) Spring Rhapsody, for alto and orchestra or piano (1978) Autumn Symphony (No. 4), for string orchestra (1984) Symphonic Image Vision of the North, for string orchestra (1989) Music to St. Cecilia, for organ and strings (1993)

Ballet and Opera The Devil's Fanfare, ballet (1958) Return of the Native, opera (1979)