Library holdings, concert programmes and other kinds of primary source material provide documentary evidence for the early cultivation of string quartet performance in Canada. Some of the earliest such evidence is in the library of the Quebec Seminary, where late-eighteenth-century editions of chamber music by Haydn and Mozart inscribed "Sewell 1791" and "Sewell 1793" can be found.¹ Included in this collection are string quartets by Haydn and string quintets by Mozart, which would have been played by the lawyer and violinist Jonathan Sewell (1766-1839) and his associates.² Sewell's chamber music activities apparently continued during his term as Chief Justice of Lower Canada (1808-1838), when he performed in a quartet with notaries Archibald Campbell and Edouard Glackemeyer and shipbuilder J. Harvicker. This quartet consisted of two violinists, a flautist and a cellist, although as Helmut Kallmann has pointed out, "One may speculate that the second violinist took the viola part and the flautist one of the violin parts"³ in performances of string quartets. This quartet seems to have been the first in Canada to have played in public on a regular basis, for according to Cécile Huot and Helmut Kallmann, they "met every Saturday during the fall and winter and gave subscription concerts" (EMC 379c). The repertoire was comparable to what would have been heard in Europe: Mozart's String Quintets K.515 and K.516, for instance, were played just six years after their composition (EMC 220c).

Late-eighteenth-century concert programmes from Halifax give further documentation of early chamber music activity, and more specifically of early quartet performances, in Canada.⁴ These concert programmes often list the performance of a "quartetto," "quartette" or "quartett." The word "quartell" appears on at least two of these programmes, but this is surely a misprint of "quartett." The spelling "quartette," incidentally, appears on programmes and as the name of ensembles in Canada until well into the twentieth century. It is not until the 1950s that "quartet" becomes the normal and indeed the only English spelling used for ensembles and compositions alike. Works by such people as Jean-Baptiste Davaux (1742-1822), Charles Avison (1709-1770) (spelled "Aveson" in the Halifax programmes), Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739-1813) (spelled "Vanhall" in the Halifax programmes) and Ignace Joseph Pleyel (1757-1831) were heard in Halifax during the 1790s.

Although the instrumentation of these quartets is not specified, it seems not unlikely, given the active local trade in string instruments, that there could have been at least some string quartet performances. Davaux, Vanhal and Pleyel wrote over two hundred string quartets between them. However one must guard against making easy assumptions about this repertoire. Avison, for instance, wrote no quartets of any kind, and so the reference to a quartet by "Aveson" must refer to his Twelve Concertos in Four Parts, Opus 9, for strings and continuo. The term "quartet" and its variants were used to refer to a large variety of instrumental forms in four part harmony during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and so a reference to a quartet may not even refer to a chamber music composition, much less a string quartet. Furthermore, even if a string quartet is definitely implied, the possibility remains that it was not performed in string quartet scoring. In the library of Laval University, for instance, there are twenty-one string quartets by Pleyel in a late-eighteenth-century edition in which they are arranged for piano with accompaniment for violin (or flute) and cello.⁵ Early concert programmes usually do not list the performers for each selection, and so the exact details of the repertoire heard in Halifax must remain a mystery.

The type of mixed programming featured in these Halifax concerts, with instrumental and vocal, or orchestral and chamber selections appearing together in one evening, remained the norm throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century in towns and cities across Canada. Songs and opera arias regularly shared the stage with orchestral repertoire and chamber music, even at concerts by distinguished visiting artists. In the absence of a large and discriminating chamber music audience, concert organizers realized that the appeal of their offerings had to be broadly-based in order to attract a suitable number of patrons. If a string quartet ensemble was a major participant in such a concert, the event would sometimes be advertised as a "popular quartet concert."

A concert given on 29 September 1790 in Halifax illustrates this type of mixed fare:⁶

A recital given in Toronto over 100 years later, on 12 December 1901, by the Conservatory String Quartette shows that this type of mixed programming continued to be featured into the twentieth century:⁷

1. Dvorák String quartette, Op. 96, F major
2. Leoncavallo I Pagliacci The Prologue; Mr. R. Drummond, baritone; Mrs. H.M. Blight, accompanist
3. Rheinberger Quartette, Op. 38, E flat (piano and strings) three movements; Mr. Napier Durand, piano
4. Sullivan "I Would I Were a King" Mr. R. Drummond
5. Schubert String quartette, Op. posth., D minor

The Conservatory String Quartette was active from 1901 to 1904; this was their second public concert. It was at concerts such as these by local musicians and at others by visiting (mainly U.S.) groups that Canadian audiences were gradually introduced to the major works of the European chamber music and, more specifically, string quartet repertoire.

The musicians organizing and performing in concerts in which chamber music was featured during the late eighteenth century and for the first half of the nineteenth century were for the most part talented amateurs or else versatile members of the British regimental bands stationed in Canada from 1759 to 1867. Not until the second half of the nineteenth century did European-born and -trained string players begin to visit Canada regularly, and some of them eventually took up residence here and founded string quartet ensembles of professional or near-professional standards.

Writing in 1914, J.S. Loudon recalled a string quartet in Toronto led by Ferdinand Griebel, a professional violinist born in Berlin in 1818.⁸ According to Loudon, the other members of Griebel's quartet were I. Marshall, Fred Thomas and J.E. Ellis, all of whom were amateurs. Loudon notes that the repertoire of this group included quartets by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and that the group was active until Griebel's death (18 February 1858). Writing some forty years after Loudon, Marcus Adeney states that the members of Griebel's "String Quartette Society" were Noverre, Childs and Ellis, and that the group "gave many public performances, adding one or two flutes to the ensemble as occasion required."⁹ At any rate, Griebel would seem to have been the first professional violinist in Toronto to have lead a string quartet.

In Montreal the Belgian-born violinist Frantz Jehin-Prume gave a series of concerts in 1871 in which quartets by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn were performed in a series together with a variety of orchestral works. Twenty years later Jehin-Prume was among the founding members of the Association artistique de Montreal, which Cécile Huot called "the first professional chamber music society in Quebec" (EMC 473c). The Belgian-born cellist J.-B. Dubois, who was a member of this society, later formed his own quartet, active from 1910 to 1938; Dubois thus provides a link between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Organizations which specialized in giving chamber music concerts came into being in Canada at the end of the nineteenth century. The Toronto Quartette Club and the Ottawa String Quartette Club were both active in the 1880s. Under the auspices of the Toronto Quartette Club, and later of the Chamber Music Association, the Toronto String Quartette, the first of several ensembles to bear this name, gave "Popular Quartet Concerts" from 1884 to 1887, with as many as 1300 people in attendance at one of their concerts.¹⁰ The first concert of the Ottawa String Quartette Club took place on 26 January 1886 (EMC 220b reproduces the programme for this first concert), but it seems to have been a rather short-lived organization.

An important impetus to chamber music in Toronto was the founding of the Toronto (later Royal) Conservatory of Music in 1887, with Edward Fisher as its first music director. In the first year of its operation, the TCM offered instruction in chamber music, for according to the calendar "Students will be formed into classes for ensemble playing; and, practising in trios and quartettes, they will be enabled to study chamber music for piano, string and other instruments."¹¹ In its second season the TCM announced that a professional Conservatory String Quartette Club had been formed "not only in connection with the Conservatory concerts, but also on a separate and permanent basis" and that it "may be engaged by concert managers in and out of Toronto" with a repertoire comprising "the compositions of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Raff, Massenet, Saint-Saëns, Rubinstein, Bazzini, etc."¹² The Conservatory String Quartette Club was in existence for seven or eight years and it had a rotating personnel consisting of various faculty members or senior students of the TCM, including Mrs. Bertha Drechsler Adamson, Miss Lena Hayes (who later married the cellist and composer Leo Smith), John Bayley and August Anderson on violin or viola and F.L. Napolitano and Giuseppe Dinelli on cello. The concert fare was of the "popular quartet concert" variety, with instrumental and vocal solos interspersed between entire string quartets or quartet movements.

The first string quartet at the TCM with stable membership was formed in 1901 by Mrs. Bertha Drechsler Adamson,¹³ with her daughter Lina, second violin, Lena Hayes, viola and Henry S. Saunders, cello (see page 4 for the programme of this group's second public concert). Mrs. Drechsler Adamson was born in Edinburgh in 1848, and between the ages of eight and thirteen she studied with Ferdinand David in Leipzig. She had been on the faculty of the TCM when it had opened in 1887, and in addition to her daughter, her pupils included Frank Blachford, later first violinist of the Toronto String Quartet, and Harry Adaskin, later second violinist of the Hart House String Quartet. The Conservatory String Quartette led by Mrs. Drechsler Adamson gave five concerts in each of its first two seasons and three concerts in its third and last season. The repertoire of this quartet included compositions of Haydn and Mozart and the Dvorák American Quartet Op. 96, together with now less well-known works by Grieg, Svendsen, Raff and Jadassohn.

In the fall of 1902 Heinrich Klingenfeld joined the faculty of the TCM. This German-born and -trained violinist had earlier been on the staff of F.H. Torrington's Toronto College of Music and W.O. Forsyth's Metropolitan School of Music, and he had played in string quartets in Toronto as early as the late 1880s according to J.S. Loudon.¹⁴ A year after joining the TCM he formed a new string quartet with Jason O. Close, second violin, Frank C. Smith, viola (later a member of the Toronto String Quartet and the Academy String Quartet) and H.S. Saunders, cello. The group gave two concerts in each of its two seasons (1903-04 and 1904-05), including piano quartets and quintets with Frank Welsman. Frank Williams replaced Jason Close at the end of the second season, but in the summer of 1905 the Klingenfeld Quartet disbanded when its leader left Toronto to reside in New York.¹⁵

The long-lived successor to the Conservatory and Klingenfeld String Quartettes was the Toronto String Quartet(te) led by Frank Blachford. (The group seems to have alternated freely between the spellings "Quartet" and "Quartette"). Blachford was born in Toronto in 1879 and studied with Bertha Drechsler Adamson at the TCM, graduating in 1897. He continued his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory and returned to Toronto in 1901 where, in addition to his chamber music activities, he composed, taught at the TCM, and played in various orchestras.¹⁶ In 1907 a review noted that

On January 23rd the first concert of the Toronto String Quartet was well attended by a critical and appreciative audience in The Conservatory Music Hall, when quartets by Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Svendsen were performed by the accomplished artists, Mr. Frank E. Blachford, 1st violin; Mr. Roland Roberts, 2nd violin, Mr. Frank C. Smith, viola and Mr. Fred Nicolai, violoncello, in a manner which drew forth the warmest and most enthusiastic applause.¹⁷

As the information in EMC regarding the personnel of the Toronto String Quartet is sketchy and somewhat inaccurate, a more detailed account is provided here:

The ensemble seems to have gradually phased out its activities in the mid-1920s, perhaps ceasing altogether early in 1926 when Blachford joined Smith as a member of the Conservatory Trio with Alberto Guerrero. Blachford occasionally appeared as the leader of a string quartet after this time, for instance at the TCM Annual Closing Concert on 18 May 1927 when, with Florence Richardson, second violin, Mrs. Leo Smith, viola and Leo Smith, cello he played the Phantasie Suite by Roy Angus, a pupil of MacMillan.²² Leo Smith later continued his string quartet playing activities as cellist of the Conservatory String Quartet from 1929 to 1942.

The Toronto String Quartet gave an average of three or four concerts per year in Toronto during its first ten seasons and also frequently toured to smaller towns in Southern Ontario. In 1908 it received the patronage of Governor General and Lady Grey, and in 1911 a Toronto reviewer wrote that the group was "a combination of local chamber music players who are recognized as the finest string quartet in Canada."²³ The Toronto String Quartet did not include much Canadian music in its repertoire, although it did perform the String Quartet by Luigi von Kunits twice, as well as a folk song arrangement by Leo Smith and the Willan Piano Trio (with Willan at the piano). The Haydn string quartets were the particular specialty of the Toronto String Quartet. Blachford revealed his admiration of the Haydn quartets in an article he wrote in 1920:

[A]fter wandering through amazingly intricate passages of a quartette by one of the ultra-moderns, what peace of mind and contentment, and what absolute satisfaction for the musical appetite is to be found in one of these masterpieces by "Papa" Haydn.²⁴

Augustus Bridle paid tribute to the Toronto String Quartet's championing of the Haydn quartets on the occasion of the debut of the Hart House String Quartet in 1924, when he wrote

[T]he Hart House Quartet would have been impossible, but for the remarkably fine work done by three chamber music corps during the past fifteen years: of which the Toronto String Quartet were the first, the Hambourg Concert Society the second, and the Academy Quartet the third. And it was the work of the first in Haydn and the third in Beethoven that most suggested the elevating performance in Hart House yesterday.²⁵

The Toronto String Quartet also introduced many nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century works to Canada, including the String Quartet, Opus 19 by Lalo (7 November 1910), Glazunov's Suite Opus 35 (January 1913), Ippolitov-Ivanov's String Quartet, Opus 13 (26 November 1913), the String Quartet in D flat, Opus 15 by Dohnányi (27 January 1915) and Elgar's String Quartet in E Minor, Opus 83 (21 April 1920) among many others.²⁶ The programmes also often featured guest pianists such as Frank Welsman, Ernest MacMillan and Healey Willan in performances of piano trios, quartets and quintets. The group was important in helping to build up a discriminating audience for string quartet music in Toronto by virtue of its longevity and the consistently high quality of its programmes.

In 1910 the cellist Jean-Baptiste Dubois founded the Dubois String Quartet in Montreal. The ensemble was in existence until Dubois' death in 1938, making it the longest-lived string quartet to date in Canada.²⁷ The original members of the Dubois String Quartet were Albert Chamberland, 1st violin; Alphonse Dansereau, 2nd violin; Eugen Schneider, viola and Dubois on cello. Dubois and Chamberland had previously played together in the short-lived McGill String Quartet of 1904. Over the years there were several changes in personnel, the most significant of which was the departure of Chamberland in 1920 to form his own string quartet. Edgar Braidi, a mysterious figure about whom nothing is known beyond his involvement with the Dubois String Quartet, became first violinist in 1922 and stayed with the group until 1937.

The concerts of the Dubois String Quartet nearly always included vocal or instrumental solos in addition to quartet repertoire. This practice was formalized in 1922 with the addition of a pianist as a regular member of the ensemble, functioning both as accompanist and chamber musician. George Brewer and Marie-Thérèse Paquin were the two pianists to hold this position.

While the Dubois String Quartet never established much of an international reputation, it did perform regularly in Montreal and it toured to various locations in the province of Quebec. The group gave its 100th concert in 1927, and in that same year a government grant allowed it to eliminate the admission charge to its concerts. This experiment in government subsidization seems not to have been repeated in Canada on such a scale either before or since, and it must have allowed many people to hear string quartet music who would not otherwise have had the opportunity. The Dubois String Quartet performed the standard European repertoire, with something of a specialization in works by modern French and Belgian composers. It introduced many European chamber music works to Canada but in the course of its 28 seasons the ensemble featured only three works by Canadian composers: the Trio by Alexis Contant (18 March 1929), the Quatuor-Fugue by Guillaume Couture (18 November 1929, the Canadian premiere) and the Lied by Georges-Émile Tanguay (18 November 1929, the premiere performance).

Although native-born musicians such as Blachford and Chamberland were beginning to make a name for themselves in Canadian chamber music circles, immigrant musicians from Europe continued to play an important role. One of the more notable of these immigrants was Luigi von Kunits, who arrived in Toronto in 1912. Kunits was born in Vienna in 1870 and already as a young man he was active there as a composer and violinist. He came to Toronto to join the faculty of the Canadian Academy of Music and two years later he founded the Academy String Quartet. For the inaugural series of this ensemble, the members were Luigi von Kunits, first violin, and Milton Blankstein, second violin (who later, as Milton Blackstone, was violist of the Hart House String Quartet), with the Bruce brothers, Alfred and George, on viola and cello. For the first three concerts, given early in 1914, the quartet was joined by Walter Kirschbaum, a pianist at the Academy.²⁸ A further three concerts featuring the Saint-Saëns Piano Quintet and string quartets by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert and Schumann followed soon thereafter.²⁹ By the fall of 1914, Arthur Ely, a pupil of Kunits and a member of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, had become the new second violinist.³⁰

The first full season of the Academy String Quartet (1914-15) consisted of six regular concerts, including the Canadian premiere of Kunits' own String Quartet, written in 1891 in Vienna, and a special extra concert on 31 May 1915 in which Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Opus 7 (composed 1904-05 and published in 1907) was also given its Canadian premiere. Kunits went to great lengths to ensure the successful introduction of this work by Schoenberg, providing printed sheets with the main themes of the quartet and giving a spoken introduction about the work before the performance. This careful preparation for what was certainly regarded as a difficult, if not incomprehensible, work (one critic called it "Arnold Schoenberg's mysterious elucubration")³¹ may explain why the criticism of the concert in the press was, if not entirely positive, then at least cautiously expressed on the whole. A selection of press criticism of the Academy String Quartet and Hart House String Quartet performances of Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 1 appears in Appendix IV.

Highlights of later seasons of the Academy String Quartet included the programming of three late Beethoven and two Brahms string quartets during the second full season (1915-16) and the appearance of U.S. composer and pianist Amy Cheney Beach in two concerts devoted to her works in 1917 and 1918. Programming for the Academy concerts was far removed from the "popular quartet concert" variety that had been prevalent earlier. Indeed, one writer was moved to comment at length upon the seriousness of purpose of players and audience alike at Academy concerts:

A devoted audience of musical enthusiasts assembles at each occasion, to listen to a rather 'academic' programme exclusively made up of string quartet works. No concession is made to flippant taste, no light vocal selections are interspersed, no brilliant solo-numbers are diverting the hearer's attention to the performer's personality, nor are the concerts allowed to turn into half-veiled society events; music is presented on its own merits, and only genuine lovers of the divine art congregate at the holy shrine . . . no face shows signs of bored apathy or supercilious indifference; and, at the end of each concert, the reluctantly leaving listeners may be seen indulging in eager discussion and animated debate over the merits of the several compositions performed.³²

These remarks reveal that attitudes towards programming were changing at this time, and they also show the author's Romantic view of music as a substitute for religion. In addition this excerpt constitutes a thinly-veiled criticism of concerts given by earlier groups like the Toronto String Quartet in which vocal soloists often participated, and the reviews of which sometimes included a list of important members of society in attendance.

At the end of the 1915-16 season the cellist George Bruce left the quartet to join the overseas forces and his place was taken by Leo Smith, who had arrived in Canada six years earlier and was a member of the Toronto String Quartet. In the final years of the quartet several changes in personnel took place, with Moses Garten, Harry Adaskin and Milton Blackstone filling the second violin position (the last two-named soon to reappear as second violinist and violist of the Hart House String Quartet), Frank C. Smith (previously with the Toronto String Quartet) as the new violist and George Bruce returning as cellist after the war. In the summer of 1924 the Canadian Academy of Music amalgamated with the TCM, and at that time the Academy String Quartet disbanded.

Even as the Academy String Quartet was disbanding in 1924, another group was forming in Toronto which would soon rise to North American and world-wide prominence. This was the Hart House String Quartet, Canada's first fully professional ensemble dedicated exclusively to chamber music. At the beginning of this quartet's existence, some of the members held a second job, teaching music or performing in theatre orchestras or with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. With a rapid rise to fame and the support of their patron Vincent Massey, the players could soon afford to concentrate solely on the performance of chamber music.

Milton Blackstone, founding violist and business manager of the quartet, kept an invaluable collection of programmes, reviews and other material relating to the history of the group in twelve volumes of scrapbooks. He presented the scrapbooks to Hart House at the University of Toronto on 3 December 1952, and they are now kept in the Edward Johnson Music Library.³³ The following discussion is based on information from this set of scrapbooks.

The Hart House String Quartet gave its first concert before an invited audience of 500 people on 27 April 1924 in Hart House Theatre at the University of Toronto. The ensemble's name was suggested by their patron Vincent Massey, whose Massey Foundation had built Hart House (named for Vincent Massey's grandfather Hart Massey) and donated it to the University of Toronto in 1919.³⁴ The debut concert was on a Sunday, provoking the wrath of some who felt that the Lord's Day Act was being violated. Augustus Bridle, in reviewing the concert, noted that it marked "a new adventure in both music and alleged morality."³⁵ The debut programme included Haydn's Opus 76 No. 2, the slow movement of Beethoven's "Harp" Quartet, Opus 74 and a complete performance of Beethoven's Opus 95.

The timing of this debut concert was most propitious. The Academy String Quartet was in the process of disbanding and the activities of the Toronto String Quartet had been severely diminished. The Toronto Chamber Music Society, which flourished briefly around 1921 and sponsored appearances by both local and international quartets (including the Flonzaley, Letz and London String Quartets) in Hart House Theatre and Massey Hall, had since ceased operations. One reviewer noted after the inaugural concert that "During the past season, the greatest from a musical viewpoint in the history of Toronto, we have heard less chamber music than at any time in the past generation, except during the war years."³⁶ The Hart House String Quartet was now prepared to supply that missing chamber music activity.

Members of the Hart House String Quartet were as follows:

1924-35      Géza de Kresz; Harry Adaskin; Milton Blackstone; Boris Hambourg
1935-38      James Levey; Harry Adaskin; Milton Blackstone; Boris Hambourg
1938-41      James Levey; Adolph Koldofsky; Milton Blackstone; Boris Hambourg
1941-42      James Levey; Adolph Koldofsky; Allard de Ridder; Boris Hambourg
1942-44      James Levey; Henry Milligan; Allard de Ridder; Boris Hambourg
1944-46      James Levey; Henry Milligan; Cyril Glyde; Boris Hambourg

The final performances by the Hart House String Quartet were three concerts in April 1946 that were broadcast on the CBC. Levey was unable to play these concerts due to a serious eye condition. His place was taken by Elie Spivak on the first broadcast and by Adolph Koldofsky on the final two broadcasts.³⁷

The Hart House String Quartet quickly built up a large repertoire, performing twenty-three different quartets in its first season alone. The second season included the Canadian premiere of Bartók's String Quartet No. 1, given on 25 October 1925 in Toronto, prompting one reviewer to recall an earlier concert:

[T]his quartet composed in 1908 seemed as modern as that ugly algebraic puzzle of Schoemberg [sic] done here some years ago by the Academy players, but a work of more than casual beauty where Schoenberg's was flamboyantly ugly.³⁸

That same season the ensemble also gave the premiere of this Bartók quartet in Montreal, Boston and San Francisco. Harry Adaskin has reported that there were only seven people in the audience for the San Francisco performance.³⁹

The Academy String Quartet's pioneering 1915 performance of Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 1 was recalled by another Hart House String Quartet performance, one given 14 April 1935 at which this same work was played, with the introductory lecture by Luigi von Kunits reprinted in the programme notes. Indeed, as Appendix IV shows, the critical reaction to these two performances of the Schoenberg quartet present an interesting case study in the growing acceptance of the modern quartet repertoire in Canada during the early twentieth century.

During the Hart House String Quartet's first regular season (1924-25) they presented five concerts in Toronto on Thursday evenings and also undertook trips to Ottawa, London, Montreal, Halifax, Kingston and other Canadian centres. The String Quartet Club of Toronto was formed at this time to engage the HHSQ to give a series of Sunday evening concerts in Toronto. This may well have been an attempt to circumvent the Lord's Day Act, which forbade the charging of admission on Sundays. A group calling itself the Lord's Day Alliance certainly thought that this was the case, and tried to forbid these Sunday concerts, saying that the membership fee was in reality an admission charge. The HHSQ escaped the wrath of the Lord's Day Alliance by not requiring patrons to show their membership tickets. It was at a String Quartet Club concert on 8 February 1925 that the HHSQ gave the first complete performance of Ernest MacMillan's String Quartet in C minor; they had played the last three movements of this work on 7 August 1924 in their second public appearance. MacMillan, incidentally, also provided exemplary programme notes for the early HHSQ concerts.

In its second season (1925-26), the HHSQ was engaged by the Radio Department of Canadian National Railways to do a series of broadcasts from radio stations across Canada. A Western tour took the quartet to many smaller Canadian centres, in the course of which it played for Women's Musical Clubs and also in mixed programmes with choruses. There were seventy concerts given in all during this second season, which also saw the first U.S. appearances of the HHSQ at concerts in New York and Boston.

During the 1926-27 season the one-hundredth anniversary of Beethoven's death was commemorated in Toronto by a series of five concerts in which the complete string quartets were performed. The HHSQ played in three of these concerts, with the London String Quartet and the Kilbourn Quartet of Rochester giving one concert each. There was also a successful four week tour of the U.S.A., and appearances at the first CPR Festival in Quebec City, 20-22 May 1927, at which folksong arrangements for string quartet by Leo Smith and Ernest MacMillan were performed. On 1 July 1927 the HHSQ participated in a Diamond Jubilee of Confederation broadcast from Ottawa, playing the slow movement of MacMillan's String Quartet and the Smith and MacMillan folksong sketches.⁴⁰

For its fourth season the HHSQ increased the length of its U.S. tour from four to sixteen weeks. As a result of the success of this tour, it was reported in the Musical Courier that

[T]he Hart House Quartet has been urged to move its headquarters to New York and to become a distinctively U.S. orchestra [sic]. This however, does not suit the inclinations either of the members of the quartet or its sponsor, and so it will remain Canadian, which, of course, will not prevent its frequent visits to the United States.⁴¹

The HHSQ appeared in New York on 7 January 1928 in a Ravel concert, performing the String Quartet and in the Introduction and Allegro with harpist Carlos Salzedo, in the presence of the composer. The String Quartet was also played in the presence of Ravel at concerts in Albany, N.Y. and Toronto.⁴² One work by Schubert was included in each of the four Toronto concerts during this season, to commemorate the centenary of that composer's death. In May the HHSQ appeared at the second CPR Festival in Quebec City; as de Kresz was in Europe, his place was taken by Adaskin, with J. Langley as second violinist. There was a competition for string quartet compositions based on French Canadian folk songs at this festival, and the HHSQ premiered the winning work, by Winnipeg composer George Bowles, on 24 May 1928.

Highlights of the 1928-29 season were the tours of the Maritimes and of the Western United States and Canada, including an appearance at the CPR Festival in Vancouver. In five months the HHSQ gave 60 concerts in 44 different cities.

The HHSQ made its European debut during its sixth season (1929-30), with concerts in London (on 8 October 1929) and Paris (on 24 October 1929). MacMillan's Two Sketches for String Quartet were included on the Paris programme. The quartet also did broadcasts for the BBC and a recital in Belgium for Eugène Ysaÿe, who is reported to have said of the HHSQ that "one would have to go back to the time of Joachim's original quartette to equal it."⁴³

The pattern which had by now become firmly established, with a concert series in Toronto and regular tours across Canada and the United States, continued into the 1930s. Beginning in 1932 there was also a special Modern Music Concert once a year in Toronto, with performances of works by Hindemith, Kodály, Bloch, Honegger, Prokofiev and many others, in addition to the above-mentioned performance of the Schoenberg String Quartet No. 1.

The first change in the personnel of the HHSQ occurred in 1935 when de Kresz, who had been ill for some time, returned to Europe to teach at the National Conservatory in Budapest. There is some question about whether de Kresz left due to poor health or as the result of a disagreement with the other members of the ensemble; the Mail and Empire reported that de Kresz left "due to differences of opinion over matters of policy for the future of the quartet."⁴⁴ His place was taken by James Levey, the former first violinist of the London String Quartet. With Levey as leader, the HHSQ reduced its small quota of Canadian compositions to zero, but it did play several recent works by English composers. In the fall of 1936 the HHSQ embarked upon its most ambitious tour ever, travelling first to the U.S.A., Mexico and Cuba (until April 1937), followed immediately by a year-long tour to the British Isles, Scandinavia and Russia. A HHSQ concert in Toronto on 10 June 1938 marked the first local appearance by the quartet in over two years.

At the end of April 1937, Adaskin left the HHSQ and his place was taken by Adolph Koldofsky, former leader of the Ševcík String Quartet. A European tour was planned to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary season of the HHSQ (1938-39), but it had to be cancelled because of the worsening political situation in Europe. The fortunes of the HHSQ were now definitely on the wane. Godrey Ridout summed up the closing years of the ensemble:

Later in the 1930s the personnel of the quartet began to change, and, although performance standards in chamber music were rising generally, those of the Hart House Quartet did not, and in the 1940s it finally sank into oblivion.⁴⁵

The final performances of the HHSQ were the three concerts in April 1946 which, as mentioned above, were broadcast nationwide by the CBC.

The importance of the HHSQ to chamber music in Canada is difficult to over-estimate. Through its wide-ranging tours and by virtue of its high standing among quartet ensembles of its day, the HHSQ secured for Canada a reputation as a place where chamber music was cultivated seriously. (The HHSQ provides the only Canadian content in Cobbett's Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, where it is included in the survey article "American Organizations").⁴⁶ The HHSQ was the first Canadian chamber music ensemble to make recordings, and it participated in the early stages of radio broadcasting in this country. Included among the seven double-sided 10-inch 78 rpm Victor records made by the HHSQ between 1926 and 1930 is the Two Sketches for String Quartet by MacMillan, which is the first recording of a work for string quartet by a Canadian composer.⁴⁷ And finally, in the first four years of its existence the HHSQ premiered a few works by Canadian composers, thus helping to establish the foundations of the Canadian string quartet repertoire.

Just five years after the establishment of the HHSQ another major quartet was founded in Toronto. The Conservatory String Quartet was formed at the TCM in 1929 at the request of Ernest MacMillan, the principal of the TCM at the time. The original members were Elie Spivak, first violin; Harold Sumberg, second violin; Donald Heins, viola and Leo Smith, cello.⁴⁸ The programme for the first concert on 5 November 1929 consisted of Beethoven Opus 18 No. 4, MacMillan Two Sketches for String Quartet and the Elgar Piano Quintet with Norman Wilks, pianist (who succeeded MacMillan as principal of the TCM in 1942).⁴⁹ The quartet gave six concerts in the first season, including Smith's Two Sketches for String Quartet, and six in the second season. A highlight of the third season was the premiere of Leo Smith's String Quartet in D, written especially for this ensemble, on 19 January 1932.⁵⁰

An assisting artist was present at every concert given by the Conservatory String Quartet. In the first two seasons this was usually a local pianist (in addition to Wilks, Alberto Guerrero, Norah de Kresz, Florence Singer, Viggo Kihl, Ernest MacMillan and Walter Whitaker appeared) performing in a piano quartet or piano quintet, but the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, a Mozart flute quartet and Schubert's Trout Quintet were also performed. The quartet continued this policy in subsequent years, which not only gave Toronto audiences the chance to hear works for varied chamber music ensembles, but also avoided direct competition with the HHSQ, which concentrated on the string quartet repertoire. In later years the Conservatory String Quartet also toured Ontario and did some broadcasts in addition to its Toronto concert appearances. After many changes in personnel, the Conservatory String Quartet disbanded in 1946, the same year the HHSQ folded.

While no string quartet of the quality of the HHSQ was active in Montreal in the period before 1945, there were several ensembles, in addition to the Dubois String Quartet, that were giving concerts locally. Two groups flourished for a number of years under the name Montreal String Quartet, the first from ca. 1925-28 and the second from 1934-40. The second of these two groups premiered the string quartet version of Claude Champagne's Danse villageoise in 1938. Two short-lived McGill String Quartets also existed in Montreal, the first in 1904 and the second in 1930, before Alexander Brott established a somewhat longer-lived organization with that name in 1939 that eventually became the nucleus of the McGill Chamber Orchestra.

String quartet performance in Canada early in this century was by no means confined to Montreal and Toronto. As early as 1912 the Georgia Quartette was active in Vancouver. The cellist of this ensemble was Maude Scruby from London, England who later taught in Toronto.⁵¹ In 1914 Donald Heins organized a string quartet in Ottawa, with his wife on second violin, Miss Bonnar, viola and Miss Langton, cello.⁵² The Heins quartet enjoyed a continued, though sporadic, existence until ca. 1927 when Heins moved to Toronto to become concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. A second string quartet organized in Ottawa in 1914 consisted of Albert Tassé, first violin; Santhier, second violin; F.B. Jennins, viola and Carl Lund, cello.⁵³ This is perhaps the same quartet which Susan Frances Harrison mentioned as being chiefly of French origin and rehearsing in rooms at the House of Commons. ⁵⁴

In Quebec City the Gilbert String Quartet was active for over 30 years beginning in 1911. Also in Quebec City, Robert Talbot, a violinist, composer and the conductor of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra from 1924-41, formed two string quartets, the first in 1921 and the second ca. 1924. He also composed a string quartet. In these respects his career is paralleled by that of violist, composer and conductor Allard de Ridder, who conducted the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra from 1930-41, formed the Allard de Ridder Chamber Music Quartette ca. 1933 in Vancouver and wrote a string quartet sometime before coming to Toronto in 1941 to play in the HHSQ. The first violinist of the Allard de Ridder Chamber Music Quartette was Jean de Rimanoczy, a Viennese-born violinist and conductor who later formed his own string quartet, which was active from 1947 to 1956 in Vancouver. In Winnipeg the Tudor String Quartet was heard on local CBC broadcasts in the 1930s. String quartet concerts by local groups could also be heard in such smaller centres as Regina, where a Canadian String Quartet was active in 1930, and Trois-Rivières, where a local string quartet gave two concerts in 1937.⁵⁵

String quartet performance in Canada had made some important advances in the period up to the end of World War II. Standards had risen considerably since the time of the first chamber music concerts in the late eighteenth century, when such activities were largely the domain of local amateur groups. In Toronto and Montreal several groups, some of them led by prominent immigrant musicians, had introduced professional standards of quartet playing and provided local audiences with the opportunity of becoming acquainted with much of the standard quartet literature and a few selected works representative of modern compositional styles. The HHSQ had given Canada a profile in international chamber music circles, and had also increased awareness of chamber music across Canada, both by its fame and reputation and also through its recordings and broadcasts and its tours to communities both large and small across the country. Local string quartet ensembles were active in many cities, evidence of a genuine and widespread interest in this country for chamber music activity. Although no ensembles had yet commissioned any Canadian composers to write new works, several had taken the first steps in encouraging the creation of a Canadian string quartet repertoire by programming such Canadian compositions as were available. The foundations thus laid would be built upon handsomely in the following decades.

The major new string quartet ensemble to arise in Canada during the 1940s was the Parlow String Quartet. It was founded in Toronto in 1942, at a time when the Conservatory and Hart House String Quartets were ending their careers and there was room for a new group to take their place.

The driving force behind the Parlow String Quartet was its leader, Kathleen Parlow, perhaps the most famous of all Canadian-born violinists. Parlow was born in Calgary in 1890 and moved to San Francisco in 1894. After studies in San Francisco and with Leopold Auer in Russia, Parlow embarked on a solo career that took her on regular trips across Europe and North America until 1927. In 1926 she took up residence in the United States and the following year all but ended her solo appearances to concentrate on teaching and chamber music. She returned to Canada in 1941 to take up a teaching position at the TCM and the following year she founded the Parlow String Quartet. Maida Parlow French in her biography of Kathleen Parlow writes that

Her new partners were awed by her knowledge of chamber music repertoire. She had no trouble inspiring them with enthusiasm for the quartet and devotion to frequent rehearsals. Kathleen supplied the studio for practice, arranged the hours when the others could come, made the engagements and divided equally the earnings. But before the debut of the Parlow Quartet there was a year of intensive preparation.⁵⁶

Parlow was certainly the dominant personality in the quartet, and indeed she tended to overshadow her partners in a way that was not altogether in accordance with modern ideals of string quartet performance.

The other original members of the Parlow String Quartet were Samuel Hersenhoren, second violin, John Dembeck, viola, and Isaac Mamott, cello, all of whom were members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the time. Hersenhoren stayed with the Parlow String Quartet until 1951 and kept a scrapbook of its activities, which is now located at the National Library of Canada.⁵⁷ Dembeck was only with the group for two seasons; he went on to found the Dembeck String Quartet in 1950, which was heard occasionally on CBC broadcasts from 1951 to 1961. Mamott had earlier been a member of the Tudor String Quartet in Winnipeg. He played with the Parlow String Quartet until poor health forced him to cut back his activities and eventually retire from the group in 1952. Details of the later members of the Parlow String Quartet can be found in EMC 727c; the group went into decline in the late 1950s and does not seem to have performed at all after 1958.

The Parlow String Quartet was first heard on a CBC broadcast on 11 April 1943 and gave its first public concert on 1 May 1943 at the Eaton Auditorium in Toronto. The programme for that first concert included Schubert's String Quartet in A minor, Opus 29; Brahms' String Quartet in C minor, Opus 51 No. 1 and the Debussy String Quartet.⁵⁸ One of the notable aspects of the Parlow String Quartet's career is that it was the first ensemble to perform a commissioned string quartet by a Canadian composer. On 21 April 1947 it gave the premiere of John Weinzweig's String Quartet No. 2 (1946), which had been commissioned by the Forest Hill Community Centre of Toronto. It also premiered the Quartet in A minor by James Gayfer (1943, premiered 1944) and the String Quartet No. 2 by Oskar Morawetz (1952-55, premiered 11 March 1956) and included Clermont Pépin's String Quartet No. 1 in C minor (1948, performed by the Parlow String Quartet on 19 October 1948) and Harry Freedman's Five Pieces for String Quartet (1949, recorded by the Parlow String Quartet in 1950) in its repertoire, although none of these works had been written on commission. In addition, the Parlow String Quartet recorded the above works by Pépin and Freedman and the second movement of Weinzweig's String Quartet No. 1 in 1950.⁵⁹ These were the first recordings of string quartet works by Canadian composers since the Hart House String Quartet's 1927 recording of MacMillan's Two Sketches for String Quartet.

Another Toronto quartet that performed commissioned works by Canadian composers in the 1940s was the Solway String Quartet. The quartet was founded in 1947 by its leader Maurice Solway (born in Toronto in 1908) and was in existence until 1968.⁶⁰ It gave its debut concert on 28 March 1948 in Hart House, home of the recently disbanded Hart House String Quartet. That first concert included Haydn's String Quartet Opus 54 No. 1, the Kreisler String Quartet, Howard Cable's Newfoundland Sketches (written for the Solway Quartet), Healey Willan's Poem and John Weinzweig's String Quartet No. 1. The Solway String Quartet also premiered the String Quartet No. 1 by Jean Coulthard in 1948. The Coulthard quartet was commissioned by the Forest Hill Community Centre, the same organization that had commissioned John Weinzweig's String Quartet No. 2 for the Parlow String Quartet in 1947. In 1955 the Solway String Quartet gave the first complete broadcast performance of Ernest MacMillan's String Quartet in C minor.⁶¹ Apart from its numerous CBC broadcasts, the Solway String Quartet was noted for its many tours to smaller communities in Ontario. For these appearances, the quartet specialized in arrangements of popular works for string quartet. ⁶² Neither the Parlow nor the Solway String Quartets ever performed outside of Canada.

The first major new ensemble to arise in Montreal after World War II was the Montreal String Quartet. Its origins date back to the early 1950s when Hyman Bress and brothers Otto and Walter Joachim all arrived in Montreal. They were soon playing in various chamber music groups together, and with the violinist Mildred Goodman they gave their first concert together as a string quartet on 2 March 1955 at the Hermitage in Montreal. This concert, given under the auspices of the Canadian League of Composers, featured only Canadian compositions: Violet Archer's String Trio, and quartets or quartet movements by Harry Freedman, Jean Vallerand, Robert Turner, Lorne Betts, Jean Papineau-Couture and François Morel. Otto Joachim has given the following account of the formation and activities of the Montreal String Quartet:

The Trio, [consisting of] Hyman Bress, Walter and Otto Joachim concertised, played radio programs and made the sound track for a film [called] "Ozias Leduc" where we played string trios by Beethoven during the whole length of the N.F.B. film. The start of the Montreal String Quartet was because of a proposition of Jean Papineau-Couture, who suggested an evening of Canadian String Quartets for the Canadian League of Composers, seven compositions altogether. I, as a member of the League, suggested the formation of the Trio with Mildred Goodman as the second violinist. The choice of Mildred Goodman stemmed from our collaboration at the "Musica Antiqua of Montreal". The initial concert for the League led to many other concerts of Canadian composers, as well as the complete literature of the masters. The complete rendition of the Beethoven Quartets was one of the highlights of the M.S.Q. The M.S.Q. was considered as a permanent quartet in Canada for years to come. In spite of the occasional funding through the Canada Council and other institutions, the quartet had no other sponsorship and often played with practically no remuneration. Each member had to cope with other activities such as the M.S.O., Conservatories and solo activities. We often rehearsed till early in the morning on the C.B.C. premises, hiding from the cleaning staff. Many mornings before Symphony rehearsals were dedicated to quartet rehearsals. The same could be said of [evening] rehearsals after Symphony concerts.⁶³

All of the members of the quartet had extensive backgrounds in chamber music. Bress, although only twenty-three years old at the time of the founding of the Montreal String Quartet, already had an impressive list of solo and chamber music performances in his native South Africa, as well as the United States and Canada, to his credit. Goodman, the second violinist, was concertmaster of the Montreal Women's Symphony Orchestra and a member of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and from 1942-44 had been a member of the McGill String Quartet led by Alexander Brott. Violist Otto Joachim was a member of the McGill Chamber Orchestra and was soon to become head of chamber music classes at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal, a post he retained until 1977. Cellist Walter Joachim also played in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and the McGill Chamber Orchestra and had toured Europe and Asia from 1930 to 1933 as a member of the Quartetto d'Italia. (He also taught two men who were later to become cellists with the Orford String Quartet, Marcel St-Cyr and Denis Brott.) With such widely experienced chamber music players as members, it is not surprising that the Montreal String Quartet was one of Canada's leading string quartets from its inception.

The first concert of the Montreal String Quartet was reviewed very favourably by critic Thomas Archer:

What it added up to was as fine quartet playing, intrinsically, as I have heard here even from outsiders. Why not let us have a Joachim String Quartet? ... Above all it was an exciting evening as a revelation by a group of splendid executive musicians of a cross-cut of what is being done in Canada by our authentic creative musicians.⁶⁴

The broadcasting career of the Montreal String Quartet began immediately. The performance of Jean Vallerand's Quartet from their first concert was broadcast on 28 March 1955 over the CBC French network.⁶⁵ This was the beginning of a busy broadcasting career for the quartet, which performed live and also recorded many works for the CBC French, English and International Service networks. On the French network alone, the Montreal String Quartet performed regularly on the programmes Premières and Musique de Chambre and appeared occasionally on other programmes from 1955 to 1963. In addition to standard repertoire from the Classic and Romantic era, the group played the following Canadian compositions over the French network between 1955 and 1961: Vallerand Quartet, Gould String Quartet, André Mathieu Piano Quintet, Pépin String Quartet No. 2, Eckhardt-Gramatté String Quartet No. 1, Pentland String Quartet No. 1, Champagne Quartet, Pépin String Quartet No. 4, and Garant Pièces pour quatuor.

The New York debut of the Montreal String Quartet took place in Carnegie Hall on 23 February 1958. The critical acclaim which the group had enjoyed in its home town was not repeated to the same degree in the New York press. The New York Times reported that

Yesterday afternoon [Hyman Bress] again impressed as an interesting artist; and this highlights one of the weaknesses of the quartet. It is not very well balanced. Earnest and dedicated as the other members of the group are, they often seem to be providing only an accompaniment for Mr. Bress. In the first movement of the Brahms' C Minor Quartet, too, Mr. Bress led them at a pace they could not keep up with and still play with clarity of texture ... Haydn's Quartet in E flat, Op. 64 No. 6, and Beethoven's Quartet in G major, Op. 18 No. 2, were the other selections. All of them had beautiful sections, but all of them were inclined to be rough when the going was more difficult. Even Mr. Bress, who played with especial beauty when the music was lyrical, grew edgy in some of the moments of stress.⁶⁶

The discrepancy between the views of the Montreal and New York critics is worth noting. To the New York critic, the Montreal String Quartet was just another of the many visiting quartets appearing during the course of the busy New York concert season, while to the Montreal critic the group was an important new ensemble of prominent local musicians. In addition, the quartet was playing standard works from the European Classic and Romantic eras in New York but recent works composed by contemporary Canadian composers in the concert reviewed in Montreal. The Montreal critic, Thomas Archer, seems on the whole to have been supportive of contemporary Canadian composers and would thus be favourably disposed towards a new local quartet playing works by these composers, while the New York critic appeared to be more interested in hearing Hyman Bress perform than in judging the merits of the quartet as a whole. It should be noted, however, that Archer's reviews of the Montreal String Quartet were equally favourable when they played the standard European repertoire.

The Montreal String Quartet seems to have terminated its activities sometime after 1961. In this year Bress moved to Paris and embarked upon a successful solo career which took him all over the world. There seems to be no evidence that the Montreal String Quartet was very active after 1961, although Isabelle Papineau-Couture and Nadia Turbide maintain that it did not disband until after the 1962-63 season (EMC 639b). Otto Joachim has written as follows about the cessation of the activities of the Montreal String Quartet:

The termination of the quartet was mainly due to the reason of Hyman Bress' soloist schedule. We all thought it impracticable to accommodate such [a] schedule, as the quartet needed full dedication to the standard we had achieved. I rejected the suggestion of a part-time quartet. It was with regret that we had to abandon our activities, which all of us considered one of our highest achievements and a most gratifying collaboration.⁶⁷

In the final analysis it will be for its contributions to the Canadian repertoire that the Montreal String Quartet will be remembered, as it commissioned, premiered, broadcast and recorded a great number of Canadian works in the course of its career.⁶⁸ Of fourteen works recorded for RCI by the Montreal String Quartet, nine were by Canadian composers.

As the Montreal String Quartet was ending its activities, the Canadian String Quartet was being formed in Toronto. The original members of the Canadian String Quartet were Albert Pratz, first violin, Bernard Robbins, second violin, David Mankovitz, viola and George Ricci, cello. In the summer of 1962, after the quartet had been together for one year, George Ricci left the group and was replaced by Laszlo Varga.

All of the members had extensive solo, orchestral and chamber music backgrounds. The group was assembled by Pratz, the only Canadian member of the four. At the time of the founding of the ensemble Pratz was concertmaster of the CBC Symhony Orchestra but he had previously been a member of the NBC Symphony in New York, where he had met the other members who were invited to form the Canadian String Quartet.

The founding of this new group and its aims and goals were outlined by Pratz in an article in the 17 June 1961 edition of The Globe and Mail:

The establishment of the first quartet in residence at the University of Toronto is indeed an important milestone in the development of the arts in Canada. I refer to the Canadian String Quartet of which I am proud to be first violinist. It is being formed under the sponsorship of the university, with its official appointment to take effect July 1 ... Notwithstanding the fact that many string quartets have been established within the past 20 years, there has not been a single instance where a group has been able to devote itself completely to the art of quartet playing. The only organization, to my knowledge, that functioned as a full-time ensemble, was The Hart House Quartet, and it has not been in existence for many years ... We have symphony orchestras, the National Ballet and Canadian Opera companies, but very little to offer in the quartet field. The Canadian String Quartet will stimulate new interest in chamber music throughout Canada, thereby enriching our cultural and musical life ... The quartet will include in its repertoire both classical and modern literature. In the modern field, the emphasis will be on worthy Canadian compositions. We shall strive to develop into a unit which will bring fresh laurels and international prestige to Canada, making us worthy of the vision and faith that the name, The Canadian String Quartet, implies.⁶⁹

The nationalistic tone of the Pratz article and the adoption of the name "Canadian String Quartet" were curious and, as it turned out, controversial, in view of the fact that three of the four original members were from New York. Murray Schafer was the first to draw attention to this fact in his review of the group's inaugural concert:

There is one ugly aspect to the task of reviewing the Canadian String Quartet and it might as well be disposed of first. "Canadian" as applied to this organization is a misnomer. Including Albert Pratz on first violin who is indeed a well-known Canadian, it also embraces Bernard Robbins on second violin, David Mankovitz on viola and George Ricci on 'cello, all of whom are Americans. I do not wish to create an impression of uncontrollable jingoism on this matter, for the less flag-flying with the arts the better. But I did not hoist the flag over this company. Those who did have not only shown a distinctive lack of titular enterprise but have invited the stronger criticism of fraudulence. It is purely a question of telling the truth! So much for that.⁷⁰

For whatever reason, Pratz was unwilling to find Canadian string players at the time with the kind of experience that the members of the Canadian String Quartet had. Given this fact, though, it was bad judgement for Pratz (or whoever chose the name) to call the group the Canadian String Quartet. The choice of name did nothing to help the group win acceptance in the Canadian musical community; rather it seems only to have made more obvious the fact that the ensemble was largely imported from abroad.

This is not to say that the Canadian String Quartet, once formed, ignored the Canadian repertoire. On the contrary, the group not only performed, it also commissioned and recorded quartets by Canadian composers. Furthermore there were a number of features about the Canadian String Quartet which were important for the future development of string quartet playing in Canada. It was, for instance, the first quartet-in-residence at a university in Canada and as such the start of a trend which was followed by several other Canadian universities in subsequent years. The University of Toronto, in hiring the Canadian String Quartet, was the first Canadian university to follow the lead of U.S. institutions such as the Juilliard School, where the Juilliard String Quartet had been in residence since 1946.⁷¹ The only duties of the Canadian String Quartet were to teach string instrument students privately and in chamber groups. Although instructing ensembles of student musicians had long been a part of music conservatory education in Toronto, this would be the first time that such instruction was given by a full-time professional string quartet.

After six months of rehearsal the Canadian String Quartet began to play in public. Given the comparatively short amount of preparation time, the number of quartets which the ensemble had in its repertoire was amazing. In their first year of radio broadcasts alone, the ensemble played over fifty different works by some twenty different composers. The first public performance was a CBC broadcast of Haydn quartets on 17 January 1962, and the concert debut took place the following evening in a recital which included Opus 59 No. 2 by Beethoven, Bartók's String Quartet No. 1 and the Ravel String Quartet. Murray Schafer, Udo Kasemets and John Kraglund all reviewed this first concert.⁷² Kasemets noted that at the end of the concert the invited audience, which consisted of prominent local musicians, "rose to its feet and gave the group a lasting ovation." Nonetheless all three critics found fault with the Canadian String Quartet's performance of the Beethoven quartet, particularly in matters of ensemble, balance and interpretation, but all seemed in agreement with Kraglund's assessment that "such minor flaws as existed are of the sort that can only be erased over a long period of close association."

The radio broadcast on 17 January marked the beginning of a remarkable collaboration between the Canadian String Quartet and the CBC. In the space of just one and a half years (17 January 1962 to 28 August 1963) the Canadian String Quartet gave over 50 recitals on CBC radio, in addition to several television appearances.⁷³ The broadcast repertoire included predominantly the quartets of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, with a variety of contemporary quartets and a few selected works from the late-nineteenth century as well. After Varga joined the group works by Hungarian composers such as Dohnányi, Weiner and Lajtha were added to its repertoire, as were the second and fourth quartets of Bartók.

Of the modern quartets performed on radio broadcasts, about one-third were by Canadian composers. New works written for the ensemble included the Adaskin String Quartet and Morel's String Quartet No. 2 (both commissioned by the CBC and given their premiere performances on radio broadcasts in 1963), and Weinzweig's String Quartet No. 3 (commissioned through the Canada Council and given its premiere performance on 17 January 1963 in the Edward Johnson Building, University of Toronto, with the broadcast premiere following on 28 February 1963). The String Quartet No. 2 by Somers was also given its long-awaited premiere by the ensemble in a broadcast on 18 March 1963.

Premiering four new string quartets in a year and a half may not seem like an impressive record, but taken together with the large amount of other repertoire the Canadian String Quartet introduced, it marked a good beginning. Unfortunately, however, this beginning was also the end, for the Canadian String Quartet did not prove to be a lasting institution. In the summer of 1963, after just two seasons, the group disbanded as suddenly as it had been formed when cellist Varga moved to California to accept a post there. In the words of a later Canada Council report looking back on the occasion, the Canadian String Quartet "flew apart expensively in our hands - as will sometimes happen when personalities are not as well tempered as instruments."⁷⁴ The lasting significance of the Canadian String Quartet lies in the works written for it on commission and in the one recording it made, which features four works by Canadian composers.⁷⁵ In spite of the controversy caused by the importation of U.S. players to form the Canadian String Quartet, in the end the group did well by the Canadian repertoire. It was unfortunate for the string quartet in Canada that the Canadian String Quartet had such a brief career.

In 1965, two years after the demise of the Canadian String Quartet, the Orford String Quartet was formed at the Jeunesses musicales of Canada summer music camp at Mount Orford Provincial Park in Quebec (known as the Orford Arts Centre since 1986).⁷⁶ By the end of the 1960s, three more professional quartets were active in Canada: the Vághy String Quartet, formed in New York at the Juilliard School of Music in 1965 and resident in Canada from the fall of 1968; the Purcell String Quartet, formed in Vancouver by members of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in 1968; and the Czech String Quartet, founded in 1968 by Zdenek Konicek, who had been the cellist of the Prague Quartet before emigrating to Canada after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Czech Quartet lasted only five years, but the other three quartets all continued to be active into the late 1980s after twenty years and more of playing together, albeit each with several changes in personnel and with varying degrees of success. One other group which should be mentioned at this point is the University of Alberta String Quartet, a professional ensemble formed in Edmonton in 1969 which enjoyed sporadic activity during this same time period.⁷⁷ The fact that so many ensembles were active during the late 1960s and the 1970s created a Golden Age of string quartet performance in Canada, which resulted in a correspondingly enthusiastic response to the medium by Canadian composers. Each of the above-mentioned ensembles will be described briefly here in order to establish their individual importance in bringing about this era of intense string quartet activity in Canada.

The founding members of the Orford String Quartet were the violinists Andrew Dawes and Kenneth Perkins, the violist Terrence Helmer and the cellist Marcel St-Cyr, all of whom were born and received their early musical training in Canada and went on to further studies abroad. In its formative years the group was coached by the Hungarian-born violinist Lorand Fenyves and received the support of Gilles Lefebvre, who was then general director of the Jeunesses musicales of Canada. The first public concert of the quartet was given at Mount Orford on 11 August 1965, when it performed the Debussy and Ravel quartets and Mozart K. 421. The identical programme was also given at the Orford Arts Centre on 26 July 1975, marking the tenth anniversary of the ensemble. The recital was not repeated for the twentieth anniversary in 1985, however, because Pierre Rolland, who was then director of the Orford Arts Centre, "thought that the Quartet didn't play well enough to justify a return," according to Andrew Dawes.⁷⁸

In the fall of 1965 the ensemble moved to Toronto and in the following two years it toured Canada, France and Austria on the Jeunesses musicales circuit. This early period of the quartet's career was capped by a successful New York debut at Carnegie Recital Hall on 22 November 1967. On the programme for this concert were Haydn Op. 54 No. 1, Bartók String Quartet No. 2 and the Ravel String Quartet. Donal Henahan wrote in the New York Times

Not long ago, the string quartet was feared to be a dying species, but a program of careful nurture by musical conservationists has been reviving the breed. There suddenly are half a dozen absolutely world-class young groups in action, and to that heartening list the name of the Orford String Quartet may now be added. Not Oxford, mind you, but Orford, from a music camp near Toronto [sic], where the four Canadians came together 2 1/2 years ago. The Orford, whose members are under 30 years old, made its New York debut Wednesday night at Carnegie Recital Hall under the auspices of Jeunesses Musicales and the consul general of Canada. The concert was financed through a Steinway Foundation grant, and a full house was present. All this was no more than the group deserved for it played a difficult program with uniformly fine results.⁷⁹

In 1968 the Orford String Quartet began its association with the University of Toronto and the members of the quartet have held teaching appointments in the Faculty of Music since 1972. Although it was referred to from the beginning as the quartet-in-residence at the University of Toronto, it did not officially receive that designation until 1982, when it negotiated an arrangement with the office of the university's President. In 1974, in competition with seven quartets from Europe, the Orford String Quartet tied with the Franz Schubert Quartet of Austria for first prize in the European Broadcasting Union International String Quartet Competition held in Stockholm. Other awards won by the group have included the Molson Prize in 1976 and the 1986 Ensemble of the Year award from the Canadian Music Council, in addition to numerous awards for its recordings.

By the time of its twentieth anniversary in 1985, the Orford String Quartet could look back on some impressive statistics. It had given over 2,000 concerts in 317 cities before more than half a million people; it had well over 100 string quartets (including some 30 works by 22 Canadian composers) and 50 works for quartet with other forces (including 8 works by 7 Canadian composers) in its repertoire; it had premiered 12 string quartets by Canadian composers; and it had made some 40 recordings.⁸⁰ The Canadian quartets which the Orford String Quartet had premiered by 1985 were those by Beckwith, Cherney (No. 1), Fleming, Glick (No. 1), Heard (Prelude), Hétu, Morawetz (Five Fantasies), Mozetich (Changes), Papineau-Couture (No. 2), Prévost (Suite), Schafer (No. 3) and Wilson (No. 2). The many times that the Orford String Quartet had toured abroad made it one of the best-known Canadian ensembles since the Hart House String Quartet.

The year 1977 had been a high water mark for the Orford String Quartet; it had embarked on an extensive European tour and had performed a complete cycle of the Beethoven quartets for the first time. The Beethoven cycle was performed in Toronto in January, exactly fifty years after the Hart House String Quartet had participated with the Kilbourn and London String Quartets in a Beethoven quartet cycle in Toronto to mark the centenary of the composer's death. (The Orford String Quartet repeated the cycle in Ottawa in July 1977.) A 1977 publicity leaflet stated that the success of the ensemble in the traditional repertoire both at home and abroad was matched by a "strong commitment to Canadian Music, with about one-third of its repertoire made up of Canadian compositions, many of which were specially commissioned."⁸¹ The dedication to Canadian works may have been somewhat exaggerated by the ensemble's publicist, but the very fact that Canadian music was mentioned at all in such a document is significant. In subsequent years the number of Canadian works performed by the Orford String Quartet decreased, but even the traditional quartet repertoire at times took second place to popular and cross-over music. In addition to appearing in concert with popular music and jazz guest artists, the Orford String Quartet also recorded arrangements of Beatles tunes and in general seemed to lose sight of its artistic goals. As often happens with long-established chamber music ensembles, a certain disillusionment set in and the stability of the group was challenged by a flurry of personnel changes. Cellist St-Cyr was replaced by Denis Brott in 1980, who in turn was succeeded by Desmond Hoebig late in 1988, and after Helmer left the quartet in the summer of 1986 the viola chair was filled by Robert Levine for a year and then by Sophie Renshaw from 1987. It is a general rule of professional chamber music performance that an ensemble can only maintain its sense of purpose and cultivate the serious quartet repertoire if the majority of its personnel remains constant over a number of years. This factor, more than any other, affected the Orford String Quartet's career in the latter part of the 1980s.

The fact that the Orford String Quartet was turning away from Canadian repertoire was commented upon as early as 1976 by John Fraser:

Canadian music is one of two areas where the Orford seems to find itself on sticky ground at the moment ... There was a time, particularly when it was in residence at the Shaw Festival, when the quartet performed new native fare almost without question ... But after awhile, they came to the realization that they still had a lot of work to do on the main-stream repertoire ... So while they have not abandoned Canadian material, which still constitutes about a third of their repertoire, they are becoming a little more selective.⁸²

By 1985 the proportion of Canadian works in the Orford repertoire had dropped from one-third to one-tenth, and few Canadian works other than the Schafer quartets and MacMillan's Two Sketches were performed by the group regularly. The decline in performances of Canadian works was part of a general turning away from twentieth-century music by the ensemble. In an interview given in 1985, Andrew Dawes attributed the decline in contemporary music performances by his quartet to audience preference, stating "We certainly do less new music than we used to, because we play so many concerts where people want standard repertoire."⁸³ Whatever the reason may be, during its second decade the Orford String Quartet introduced less Canadian material than in its first decade, and it kept few Canadian pieces in its active repertoire.

The Orford String Quartet has made more recordings than any other Canadian string quartet. The majority of these records have been made for the CBC and are not easily available outside of Canada, although in 1986 the ensemble recorded the complete string quartets of Beethoven for the U.S. label Delos. The Orford String Quartet is the first such Canadian group to have made a substantial number of recordings in a wide variety of repertoire, ranging from Haydn to the present day.⁸⁴ This fact, taken together with the many new works that the group has commissioned and/or premiered, has insured that the Orford String Quartet's legacy will be an important and lasting one.

Although the members of the Orford String Quartet maintain that they have not modelled their collective sound on that of any specific group or individual, it is probably safe to say that the most important influence in this area has been Lorand Fenyves. Dawes and Perkins both studied with Fenyves in Geneva, and in addition to being instrumental in the formation of the Orford String Quartet, Fenyves coached the group for three years at the University of Toronto. Fenyves's refined, fluent and elegant style of playing is similar to the collective sound generated by the Orford String Quartet. In 1985 Helmer described the Orford style as "an amalgam and probably an agreement of understatedness compared to the aggressive American style."⁸⁵ It would be going too far to call their sound characteristically Canadian though; it is unique and personal to the Orford String Quartet alone. Despite its many years of teaching at the University of Toronto, at the Kelso Summer String Quartet Camp from 1971 to 1974, and in the National Residency Program during the late 1980s, the Orford String Quartet has not nurtured a student group to a level of full professional activity and so its sound ideal has not been transmitted to another ensemble.

The Vághy String Quartet was formed in the same year as the Orford String Quartet but was not resident in Canada until 1968. Brothers Dezsö and Tibor Vághy have played first violin and viola respectively since the founding of the quartet. Their early musical training was with Ilona Halasz in Budapest, but together with their parents they left their native Hungary in 1956. Both men received master's degrees from the Hamburg State Academy of Music in 1964 and in that same year they went to New York for postgraduate study with Dorothy Delay at the Juilliard School of Music. In the summer of 1965 the Vághy String Quartet was formed with the addition of Stephen Kecskeméthy, second violin and Edward Culbreath, cello. It was immediately invited to the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, where it was coached by the Amadeus Quartet. After further coaching with Claus Adam of the Juilliard String Quartet, the Vághy String Quartet was appointed quartet-in-residence at the Westchester Music and Art Camp in the summer of 1966, and in October of that year it was appointed quartet-in-residence at the University of Maine in Portland.

The Vághy String Quartet appeared in Canada for the first time at Expo 67 in Montreal, and it was there that it was heard by Alexander Brott, conductor of the Kingston Symphony, and George Whalley of Queen's University. Upon the recommendation of these two men, the Vághy String Quartet was asked to become the section leaders of the Kingston Symphony and the quartet-in-residence at Queen's University. Financial assistance for this arrangement was provided by the Ontario Arts Council through its Resident Musician programme, which was established in 1967.⁸⁶ The Vághy String Quartet accepted the offer and in the fall of 1968 it moved to Kingston, where it has remained ever since. In 1969 the U.S. musicians David George and Robert Dodson became the new second violinist and cellist respectively, and they remained with the quartet until 1981. In the summer of 1981, the Canadian violinist Alanna Vághy (wife of Dezsö Vághy), and the Polish-born cellist Julian Tryczynski joined the quartet.

During the 1970s the Vághy String Quartet was at its most successful, making a name for itself both in Canada and abroad by specializing in twentieth century works. The programme for its New York debut on 2 March 1975 was typical of its repertoire during this period; it included string quartets by Szymanowski (No. 2), Prokofiev (No. 1) and Bartók (No. 6). This recital was reviewed favourably by the New York Times critic Peter G. Davis:

All three pieces operate at a very high level of intensity, and the more passionate the music became, the better the Vághy Quartet liked it. The four musicians cultivate an extremely large, lush, glamorous ensemble tone, and they used it to excellent effect. Particularly impressive were the Szymanowski and the Prokofiev, each of which sported a luminous glow and rhythmic thrust that went straight to the point ... the performance had a generous amount of sheer animal excitement.⁸⁷

The Vághy String Quartet's repertoire has always featured much twentieth century music, including quartets by Bartók (all six), Janácek, Ives, Schoenberg, Shostakovich and Lutoslawski among others. Canadian string quartets which the quartet has premiered include those by Crawford (La nuit étoilée), Fodi (Ch'ien), George (Fuguing Music for String Quartet), Kent (Cadenza String Quartet), Montgomery (Reconnaissance), Sherman (Quadron), Wallace (Quartet for Strings) and Willan (Introduction and Allegro, in the completed version by F.R.C. Clarke). It has also performed works by other Canadian composers such as Barnes, Glick, Hétu, Joachim, Koprowski and Somers. In addition to regular concerts at Queen's University, the Vághy String Quartet has appeared widely in Canada and the United States and has also performed in Europe. During the 1980s it has not been heard much in Canada but it has continued to perform regularly abroad.

In a 1972 interview, leader Dezsö Vághy cited the Tatrai, Hungarian, Juilliard and Amadeus Quartets as the most important influences on the Vághy String Quartet, but added

Though really as far as string quartet playing is concerned we are self-taught. It's very important that you have a good musical background and let the music dictate your style. It would have been nice if we could have learned what we do today from another quartet, but we really followed the hard way. It was very difficult to get hold of a quartet and work for a long time with them. Naturally we used the service when we could get it, but our progress had to come largely from our own resources.⁸⁸

In this same interview, on the issue of programming, Dezsö Vághy explained that audience preference was not a determining factor in his quartet's selection of repertoire:

There is a problem of who you want to please. There are always people who don't like certain things, so it is very difficult to choose a program that pleases everyone. I really think that if you play a piece that is not normally appealing to the public, but you play it well, there is always something which stays with the audience. And even if they reject it at the moment, there is something which catches their ears, and maybe the next time they will be more aware of things, and more willing to listen with an objective mind.⁸⁹

This was the philosophy behind the extensive programming of twentieth century repertoire by the Vághy String Quartet. New works were often presented in informal lecture-recitals in an attempt to explain the music to the audience, sometimes with the help of the composer. For the first performance of John Fodi's Quartet for Strings (Ch'ien), for instance, the work was played, then there was a discussion with the composer, and after that the work was performed a second time (it lasts under a minute and a half). On other occasions Dezsö Vághy would give an introduction to the new work, illustrating his talk by musical examples.

The Vághy String Quartet has quite a different approach to quartet playing from the Orford String Quartet. The Vághy sound has never been understated; it is vigorous and powerful, the players often seeming to push their instruments to the limit. This approach can be heard to best advantage in a passage such as the opening of the last movement of Bartók's String Quartet No. 4 (recorded on CBC SM 325 in 1976) with its full chords, heavily accented dissonances and pounding ostinati. It is in this sort of repertoire that the Vághy String Quartet has especially excelled. Like the Orford String Quartet, the Vághy String Quartet has done extensive teaching and has coached many student string quartets, both at Queen's University and at the Kelso String Quartet Camp (which it took over in 1975 from the Orford String Quartet) and at The Chamber Music Institute which it founded in the summer of 1978 at Queen's University as the short-lived successor to the Kelso Music Centre. None of these student quartets has gone on to achieve professional status.

Another Canadian string quartet with East European members was the Czech String Quartet, which was formed at the instigation of Zdenek Konicek.⁹⁰ Konicek had been the founding cellist of the Prague Quartet in 1955 and he continued in this position until the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia on 21 August 1968. Within a week of the occupation Konicek had left his native country, as had the Prague Quartet violist Jaroslav Karlovsky. Konicek and Karlovsky, together with the Hungarian-born violinist Stephen Czapary and the Swiss violinist Adolphe Mandeau, formed the New Prague String Quartet in West Germany in 1968. With this membership the group toured Europe from October to December of 1968.

Mandeau was replaced by the German-born violinist Rudolf Kalup early in 1969, and in March 1969 the New Prague String Quartet became the quartet-in-residence at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. In October 1969 the group changed its name to the Czech String Quartet and became the quartet-in-residence at McMaster University in Hamilton and first desk players with the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1969 to 1971 the group spent half the year in Canada (October to April) and half the year in New Zealand (April to September). Czapary left the Czech String Quartet in 1971 to return to Europe and for one season Kalup played first violin with Czech violinist Anton Matasovsky on second violin. Matasovsky left the group in 1972, at which time Kalup returned to second violin and Czech violinist Milan Vítek joined the quartet and was leader for its final two seasons. The quartet does not seem to have been active after April 1974.

The Czech String Quartet played a wide variety of repertoire from all eras and frequently included works by Czech composers such as Dvorák, Suk and Janácek on its programmes. It played a limited amount of Canadian repertoire, including string quartets by Cherney, Betts and Morawetz, and other works by Wallace and Beckwith. Highlights of its six-year career included tours of Europe in March 1971 and October 1973 and a tour of the U.S.A. from October to December 1970 with pianist Rudolf Firkušný, as well as frequent appearances in Southern Ontario and elsewhere in Canada. After a New York concert with Firkušný on 20 November 1970, Harold C. Schonberg noted in the New York Times that

Like many other European groups, the Czech Quartet is not particularly interested in sonority or surface gloss. It plays within a limited set of dynamics, produces an intimate sound, and is not always in precise tune. What it does have, and what redeems its by no means strong instrumentalists, is an obvious love for making music. This was dainty, delicate playing, and very endearing of its kind.⁹¹

According to Zdenek Konicek, the Czech String Quartet was faced with a lack of touring possibilities due to the demands of its contracts with McMaster University and the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, and so terminated its activities in frustration before having achieved its fullest potential.⁹² Vítek returned to Europe and Karlovsky eventually ended up at the University of Victoria, but Konicek and Kalup remained in Hamilton and formed the McMaster String Quartet with leader Marta Hidy and violist Mark Childs. This ensemble was active locally and also toured New Zealand twice. Its activities came to an end in 1989 when university funding was withdrawn. Konicek served as a judge for the preliminary elimination rounds of the Banff International String Quartet Competition in 1989.

The Purcell String Quartet was formed in 1968 by four of the first-desk players of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. From the outset it was evident that this was the most important quartet ever to have been formed in Western Canada. The original members were Norman Nelson, first violin, Raymond Ovens, second violin, Simon Streatfeild, viola and Ian Hampton, cello. Nelson was born in Dublin and the other three were born in England, and all but Ovens had once played in the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The choice of name for the ensemble was doubly appropriate, as it not only stressed the English roots of the members through association with the composer Purcell, but it also, whether intended or not, referred to the Canadian location by association with the Purcell Mountains of southern British Columbia.

There have been many personnel changes in the Purcell String Quartet over the years, details of which are given in EMC 783b-c, together with brief biographies of the various quartet members. In September of 1973 the ensemble became quartet-in-residence at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., allowing the members to leave their orchestra jobs and concentrate solely on chamber music performance. Simon Fraser University paid the quartet a retainer of just $15,000 a year (which had to be split among the players) but with concert income and support from the Canada Council, the provincial government and private sponsors, the quartet was able to survive financially. The university backing was terminated in 1980 due to financial constraints and a change in priorities at Simon Fraser that saw experimental and electronic music emphasized at the expense of chamber music. During the 1980s the quartet continued to tour both in Canada and abroad, to make recordings and to commission new works, but it was clearly on a downward spiral. Once the university support was withdrawn, concerts and private funding started to diminish and the quartet members were forced to take on other work in order to make a living. This resulted in a deterioration of standards which in turn made concert dates and funding more difficult to obtain, and the vicious cycle continued in this way for a number of years. A crisis of sorts was reached in 1986, and the local press reported that the ensemble was in serious financial difficulties.⁹³ In 1987, Canadian violinist Marc Destrubé replaced Sydney Humphries as leader of the group, which managed to continue its activities on a somewhat reduced scale.

The Purcell String Quartet enjoys the distinction of having commissioned and premiered more works by Canadian composers than any other ensemble. Included in the list of premieres are string quartets by Behrens ("In Nomine"), Berry (No. 4), Buczynski (Nos. 2 and 3), Chan (No. 2), Coulthard (No. 3), Davis, Fodi (Concerto a Quattro), Freedman (Graphic II, Blue), Genge (Music for String Quartet), Kuerti (No. 2), Pentland (Nos. 3, 4 and 5), Prévost (No. 2 "Ad Pacem"), Schafer (Nos. 1, 2 and 4), Turner (No. 3), Weisgarber and Eugene Wilson (Five Pieces). The Purcell String Quartet has also performed string quartets by Archer, Beckwith, Eckhardt-Gramatté, Pépin, Somers, Underhill and Weinzweig among others, as well as many Canadian compositions for string quartet with other forces.

Imaginative programming has been a feature of Purcell String Quartet concerts from the outset. Its initial public performance was with pianist Fou Ts'ong in March of 1969. In that same year it gave a series of concerts in the course of which all of the Purcell Fantasias were performed, with one Haydn quartet and one Romantic or modern composition completing each programme. The only Canadian work in this first concert series was Pentland's String Quartet No. 2, but by the second season the Canadian content had increased dramatically. Between January and July of 1970, the Purcell String Quartet gave its second concert series. There were six recitals, each of which featured one quartet by Beethoven, one by Bartók and one by a Canadian composer, with the premiere of two commissioned works (Pentland's String Quartet No. 3 and Schafer's String Quartet No. 1). There was also a guest appearance by the University of Alberta String Quartet in this series, and it premiered Coulthard's String Quartet No. 2. This concentration on Canadian repertoire has been a consistent feature of the Purcell String Quartet throughout its career. To celebrate its twentieth anniversary in the 1988-89 season it gave a series of four concerts in Vancouver, and there was a Canadian string quartet on each programme, with the premiere of Schafer's String Quartet No. 4 in the final concert.

In the course of its first twenty years the Purcell String Quartet has made many tours both within North America and further afield to such places as England, the Soviet Union and Japan. It made its New York debut at Carnegie Recital Hall on 17 February 1974, one year before the Vághy String Quartet appeared at the same hall. The programme was characteristic of the Purcell String Quartet repertoire, with works by Haydn (Op. 103), Purcell (Fantasias 6 and 10), and Beethoven (Op. 127), together with the first New York performances of Schafer's String Quartet No. 1 and Freedman's Graphic II. Music critic John Rockwell, writing for the New York Times, felt that the Haydn, Purcell and Beethoven were given solid but unexciting performances. He went on to devote most of his review to a discussion of the Canadian works:

Both of the Canadian pieces, which had been commissioned by the Purcell Quartet, were of interest. Harry Freedman's "Graphic II" (1972) consisted of 12 minutes of reasonably ingenious if hardly unprecedented coloristic effects. R. Murray Schafer's String Quartet No. 1 (1970) was more expansive in length, more focused and individual in timbral effects and more coherent in its formal structure. It was a piece that couldn't have been written without the Polish explorations of the early nineteen-sixties, but still a persuasive addition to an already established genre.⁹⁴

The strength of the Purcell String Quartet's reputation does indeed lie in the amount of Canadian repertoire that it has introduced both at home and abroad. It has never won a major competition or recorded for an international label, but it has always provided Canadian composers with the opportunity to hear their work performed under ideal circumstances. Schafer paid tribute to this aspect of the Purcell String Quartet's activity in 1974:

Working with the Purcell Quartet was very good. I could get them to try out bits of my quartet, or perhaps describe an effect, and they could suggest another way of doing things, which was a real luxury.⁹⁵

The recordings of the Purcell String Quartet have been made predominantly for the CBC. Its total recorded repertoire has been split about evenly between Canadian and European repertoire, but all ten recordings released since 1979 (including re-issues) have been of Canadian repertoire. All the recordings of string quartets by Canadian composers listed in the EMC discography have been re-issued since 1979 in the various volumes of the Anthology of Canadian Music series and in 1985 an earlier taped performance of Eckhardt-Gramatté's String Quartet No. 3 was released as a record for the first time in the ACM series. Recordings released since 1979 which are not included in the EMC discography have featured quartets by Pentland (Nos. 4, 5) and Somers (No. 3).⁹⁶

It is difficult to generalize about the sound of the Purcell String Quartet as it has had eight different violinists in the course of its twenty-year history. At its height in the 1970s, when it was a full-time professional quartet, it compared both in sound and quality with the better British ensembles. The sound was both smooth and focused, with the use of a narrow vibrato. Ensemble work was precise and there was a good balance between all four instruments. Although its sound was perhaps best suited to the repertoire of the Classic era, the group nonetheless adapted well to the manifold demands of the contemporary Canadian compositions on which its reputation will ultimately rest.

Less than a year after the founding of the Purcell String Quartet, the University of Alberta String Quartet was formed in Edmonton. There had been various string quartets active at the University of Alberta since at least the 1950s, but in September of 1969, Thomas Rolston, Lawrence Fisher, Michael Bowie and Claude Kenneson formed the first group there that could claim to have attained professional standards. In 1979, Rolston (the only Canadian-born member of the group) left the quartet and Norman Nelson took his place, having been lured from the Purcell String Quartet by the promise of a tenured position at the University of Alberta. In 1970 the University of Alberta String Quartet appeared in Vancouver and premiered the String Quartet No. 2 by Jean Coulthard, a work it later recorded. It has also performed string quartets by Somers and Pépin, and with the Purcell String Quartet it premiered and later recorded the Octet (Twelve Essays on a Cantabile Theme) by Coulthard.⁹⁷ The University of Alberta String Quartet has appeared in Canada at the Banff Centre and in recital across the country and in Britain at the Menuhin School and at various festivals. Its repertoire has included all six quartets by Bartók and a generous selection from the traditional European repertoire as well as the Canadian works already listed.

A host of other string quartets, which either did not attain fully professional status or else were in operation for a limited period of time, have come and gone in Canada during the last 25 years. Some of these groups have performed and on occasion also premiered and/or recorded string quartets by Canadian composers. In Montreal, for instance, the Gabora Quartet was active from 1964 to 1968. It performed works by Morel, Pépin, and Perrault among others and in 1966 it premiered the String Quartet by Saint-Marcoux. The Classical Quartet of Montreal was founded in 1968 and it recorded quartets by Papineau-Couture, Saint-Marcoux and Alain Gagnon on RCI 363 in 1972. The Quebec String Quartet performed during the late 1960s in Quebec City and gave the first performance of Alain Gagnon's String Quartet No. 2 in 1969 and of his String Quartet No. 3 in 1970. The Assumption University String Quartet, formed in 1974 under the auspices of Assumption University and the Basilian Fathers of Windsor, premiered the Second and Third String Quartets by Jens Hanson in 1975 and 1977.

String quartet ensembles of the second rank such as the above perform an important role. Active mainly on the local level, they help to widen the audience for chamber music and they often provide help, encouragement and performances for local composers as well. In addition they often provide a valuable educational service by performing in schools and taking on private students. Without the groundwork laid by many such groups across the country, there would be less support for the occasional fully professional quartet that arises. The proliferation of these mostly amateur ensembles is an important measure of the health of chamber music activity in a country.

The most obvious standard by which a country's chamber music life is judged, however, is the number of professional ensembles it is able to support. In this area, little or no progress has been made in Canada during the last twenty years. As the various professional quartets that were established in the late 1960s have aged, no comparable new groups have arisen to join their ranks. This has become particularly obvious as a result of the fact that only one Canadian quartet ensemble competed during the 1980s in the Banff International String Quartet Competitions.

The first Banff International String Quartet Competition was held to mark the 50th anniversary of the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts in 1983. Application tapes for the competition were submitted by twenty-one string quartets (none from Canada), and ten ensembles travelled to Banff for the final elimination rounds. After two rounds of the competition there were five ensembles left in the running. The first Banff Competition demonstrated that the U.S.A. had the best prepared, most technically assured and most consistently good string quartet ensembles. The Colorado Quartet won first prize, and three of the top four quartets were from the U.S.A. As a result of the successful running of the first competition, it was decided to make the event a permanent one, taking place every three years.

The second Banff International String Quartet Competition confirmed the results of the first one. Ten ensembles were again chosen for the elimination rounds. There were three quartets from the U.S.A., three from Great Britain, two from Switzerland and one each from France and Canada. The lone Canadian entry was the Debut Quartet of Edmonton; it was eliminated in the first round of competition. Once again the winning ensemble, the Franciscan Quartet, was from the U.S.A., as were three of the four top prize winners.

Four Canadian quartet ensembles were among the 29 groups to submit audition tapes for the third Banff Competition in 1989, but none advanced to the elimination rounds. U.S. groups again made a strong showing, although three of the top four ensembles were from Europe, including the Manfred Quartet of France which won first prize. The wealth of residency opportunities for young string quartet groups at U.S. universities, together with the many professional U.S. quartets available for teaching and consultation, is clearly producing many excellent young ensembles in that country. It is equally clear that no such encouraging signs can be found in Canada, and that the chamber music life in this country in the 1980s registered a rather faint pulse. The benefit to Canada of the Banff Competition thus far has been twofold: in the first place, there have been three excellent compositions by Canadian composers written to serve as test pieces for it (Movement for String Quartet by Harry Somers, Three Archetypes by John Hawkins and Arche II by Allan Bell) and secondly it has demonstrated that string quartet performance in this country is in desperate need of encouragement.

There are, however, some signs of improvement in the second matter. In the summer of 1988, the Canada Council set up a pilot programme to allow new chamber music groups to be eligible for a grant of up to $14,000 for each member. Under this programme, a beginning string quartet would thus be eligible for $56,000. A good string quartet ensemble cannot be purchased, but financial incentives must be provided to allow existing ones to flourish. This Canada Council programme is a badly needed incentive for the invigoration of chamber music activity in Canada, which was in grave need of sustenance and encouragement by the late 1980s.