Programme Note

Reviews

George Corwin (centre) conducts the Victoria International Festival ensemble in a rehearsal for the premiere performance of Shanadithit, August, 1983.

Programme Note Shanadithit was written to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the claiming of Newfoundland for England by Sir Humphrey Gilbert on August 5, 1583. Shanadithit was the last survivor of the Beothuck Indians, the aboriginal inhabitants of the island of Newfoundland. The Beothucks were a gentle race of people who, because of their custom of covering their skin with red ochre, were often called Red Indians. But, from the time of the arrival of the European explorer, this peaceful tribe was attacked and massacred. James P. Howley, in his book The Beothucks or Red Indians (originally published in 1915 and currently published by Coles of Canada), gives this account of their sad history: Any excuse was given for the most barbarouscruelties and wholesale slaughter by the fishermen...[The Beothuck] was ruthlessly shot down whenever he made his appearance just like any wild denizen of the forest. (p. 25) As a result, by 1823, there were only 13 Beothucks left. In March of that year, Shanadithit and two other Beothuck women (both of whom died shortly afterward) were captured and taken to St. John's. From 1823 to 1829, Shanadithit lived with her English captors in St. John's, was "civilized" by them and learned enough English to communicate with them quite well. But she contracted tuberculosis and died in 1829. Her death was announced in the London Times on September 14, 1829: "Died - at St. John's, on the 6th of June, in the 29th year of her age, Shanadithit, supposed to be the last of the Beothucks". She was buried on June 8, 1829, in the Anglican cemetery. Yet even then she could find no peace. Her grave was destroyed by workmen as they were building a new road. My work is in some small sense a tribute to her memory. Although certain events in her life were envisioned as the work was being written, a specific programme is irrelevant here. Suffice it to say that a theme representing Shanadithit (heard first in the English Horn with French Horn accompaniment) occurs throughout the work. The work should be approached as an emotional statement about the last of the Beothucks. My feelings are most closely verbalized in the final lines of a poem on Shanadithit by my friend and colleague, Newfoundland poet Al Pittman: Lie easy in your uneasy peace, girl, and do not, do not, forgive those who trespass against you.

REVIEWS 1. The Premiere Performance, Victoria, B.C., August 3, 1983 Victoria Times-Colonist, August 4, 1983: Audrey Johnson. An exceptionally beautiful and brilliant work by a 25-year-old (sic) composer from Corner Brook caught the imagination and stirred the enthusiasm of a discerning audience Wednesday at the University of Victoria Recital Hall. The work was entitled Shanadithit and the composer is Michael Parker, a native son of Toronto, who is currently an assistant professor of classics and music at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University, in Corner Brook, Nfld. Shanadithit was commissioned by the Johannesen International School of the Arts through a Canada Council grant and premiered here in the Victoria International Festival's Contemporary Ensemble series. The program presented four other compositions, including another premiere, a wind quintet by Victoria's internationally noted composer Rudolf Komorous. There was a great deal of interest and much to admire throughout the evening, but the climax and the crown belonged unquestionably to Parker. Basing his work on a theme and a figure as tragic and poignant as any in the world's bleak history of cruelty and suppression, Parker has written music for eight instruments, keyboards and percussion that transcends the particular to express the universal. Shanadithit was the name of the woman who was the last of the Beothuck aboriginal inhabitants of Newfoundland, systematically exterminated by white invaders. A captive in St. John's, "civilized" and taught to speak English, Shanadithit died at the age of 29 of tuberculosis. Parker says of the composition: "My work is in some sense a tribute to her memory (but) rather than a specific program accompanying the music, the work should be approached as an emotional statement about the last of the Beothucks." Emotional it is most certainly, but never self-indulgent. Nor is it music of a dark and heavy texture; not morose nor agonized. It makes splendid use of the instrumentation, developing rich sonorities that are almost symphonic in depth and volume. The haunting voice of the horn is identified with Shanadithit, but this is not, as the composer has pointed out, program music. Shifting images build throughout, like light playing on different parts of a composite canvas of history, revealing colours and forms, sometimes in passionate, sometimes in melancholy mood, occasionally achieving a subtle irony. Like the passage where we hear a frenetic snatch of Bach or a polished phrase that reminds us of Mahler - references to the civilization that is capable of the heights of inspiration and creative perfection as it is of the depths of destruction. Parker's invention avoids clichéd references to "Indian" motifs, relying on atmosphere invoked by imaginative use of his instruments. The Festival Contemporary Ensemble, conducted with keen insight by George Corwin, gave the work an outstanding first performance, and the audience, among which were many musicians and composers, reacted with a prolonged ovation and a flurry of post-concert excitement.   2. The Performance of December 14, 1984, St. John's, Newfoundland The Evening Telegram, St. John's, Nfld., December 15, 1984: Josephine Herriott The Canadian content came in the form of Michael Parker's prize-winning Shanadithit, a composition for a collection of solo instruments. This work gives a feeling of discomfort, a grim reminder, in the midst of all the festive music that fills our lives during this season, that life is far from comfortable for many people. The sudden diversion in the Bach Brandenburg No. 3 Concerto seemed to form a link in time if not in music. The work closes with a sense of eeriness, hollow sounds, threatening, even menacing.   3. The Performance of June 5, 1986, Halifax, Nova Scotia Halifax Times-Chronicle, June 6, 1986: Stephen Pedersen "Lie easy in your uneasy peace, girl, and do not, do not, forgive those who trespass against you." With these lines, Newfoundland poet Al Pittman addresses Shanadithit, the last of the Beothuck Indians, who died of too much civilization in 1829 at St. John's, at the age of 29. The irony and bitterness of Pittman's apostrophe is echoed by the act of Newfoundland composer Michael Parker in choosing the poem as a point of departure for his programmatic elegy, Shanadithit, written for string trio, woodwind quintet, percussion, piano and harpsichord. Parker wrote the piece on commission to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the claiming of Newfoundland for England by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583. Although himself blameless, it is not likely that Sir Humphrey would have approved, as the work is a highly effective and dramatic cry of outrage against a ruthless act of genocide by our pioneering ancestors. It was the lead-off work on the fifth Scotia Festival Highlight Performance at the Dunn on Thursday night. And it got from conductor Victor Yampolsky and the Festival's fine woodwind, brass, and percussion players, a performance that was a moving mix of elegiac phrases and cool fury. Yampolsky's interpretation captured the drama of the work with careful pacing and measured climaxes. Rowland Floyd introduced the Shanadithit theme on the English horn, with haunting melancholy, making an ironic reference of its own to the pastoral sonority of the Largo of Dvorak's New World Symphony. Parker's writing is contrapuntally complex, and, in the tuttis, tense and dissonant. His use of harpsichord, fugal textures, and musical quotations from Bach's Brandenburg concertos, are imaginative images by which he contrasts the elegance of 18th century European civilization with the domination by its traders of New World forests, and the brutal extermination of the Beothucks.   4. The Performance of December 17, 1986, Hamilton, Ontario Hamilton Spectator: Hugh Fraser a) December 18, 1986. (Shanadithit) tells of the genocide of the Beothuck Indians of Newfoundland by European settlers. Shanadithit was the last Beothuk to survive. A woman, she was captured, tamed and killed by tuberculosis with Western efficiency. Parker tells her story in three parts. The first is a pastoral, serene beginning filled with gorgeous orchestra colours to depict Beothuck life. The tempo speeds up and Parker quotes all six of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos to stifle the romantic noble savagery of the opening and to depict Shanadithit's capture and Westernization. It ends with a bang as final as Hartwell's (March) [another work on the programme]. I question the use of Bach's music as Shanadithit's shackles. At one point a Brandenburg with percussion brings The Swingle Singers' Bach jazz stylings so vividly to the ear the audience found itself laughing happily at genocide. b) January 3, 1987. The notice I gave for the last Hamilton Philharmonic MusicAlive concert of 1986 was blunt to say the least. There were many things I wanted to say in that review for which there was no room. One was that through the Hugh Hartwell March and Michael Parker's Shanadithit works had vaguely the same message - the March about the militarism threatening us with our own extinction and Shanadithit telling the tale of the extinct aboriginal Newfoundland tribe of Beothuck Indians - they did it in totally different ways. Shanadithit was beautiful. Gorgeous melodies and orchestral colours chased themselves across Parker's musical canvas in delicious profusion. When he wished to show the Indian culture being suffocated by the Western, he had quotations from Bach's Brandenburg Concertos flung over the Indian themes. This led to a percussion accompaniment polyphony so like the Swingle Singers or Jacques Loussier records that the audience broke up happily at what was a depiction of genocide. March wasn't at all pretty. It was, as I said, a goose-stepping goose-bump raising horror and therefore more successful at passing on its message. But the audience preferred Shanadithit and it struck me that while we can stand, even demand the depiction of stark, realistic horror from such media as literature, theatre and film, we still demand that music "soothe the savage breast". A great deal of the public's rejection of contemporary music is this demand that music charm. Contemporary composers refuse to be doomed forever to beguile and charm and pay for that with unpopularity.