by Glenn D. Colton
as published in the IAWM Journal, Winter 1998, pp. 4-9.
In February of 1998, the musical community of Vancouver, Canada, marks the ninetieth birthday of composer Jean Coulthard (b. 1908, Vancouver) with a week-long festival of concerts, lectures, and radio broadcasts devoted to the music of its most cherished composer. To be sure, Coulthard remains one of the foremost composers in the history of Canada and one of the most remarkable women in twentieth-century music. Her compositions are among the most widely performed and recorded works in the Canadian repertoire, and she has received numerous awards and honors for her music internationally. To cite just a few examples, she has been the recipient of international awards from the London and Helsinki Olympiads (for the Sonata for oboe and piano, 1947, and Night Wind, 1951), the Australian Broadcasting Commission (for Symphony No. 1, 1950), and the British Women Musicians' Society (the Capriani Prize for Music for Midsummer, 1971). Furthermore, her first piano sonata (1947) was awarded second prize in the 1947 North American Prize for Sonata Composition, a competition which included 75 prominent composers.
The art of Emily Carr (1871-1945) has exerted a profound and enduring influence upon Coulthard's creative output. After first meeting the artist at Carr's home in Victoria, Canada, in 1936, Coulthard became increasingly absorbed with the concept of capturing in musical terms the varied moods of the West Coast as Carr had done in her landscape paintings.1
The many "western" compositions in Coulthard's catalogue include the Ballade "Of the West" (1982-83), for piano and chamber orchestra; the orchestral prelude Kalamalka (Lake of Many Colours) (1973); Sketches from the Western Woods (1970), for solo piano; and, most notably, The Pines of Emily Carr (1969), for alto voice, narrator, string quartet, piano, and timpani, a work based upon Carr's published diaries. Coulthard also makes explicit reference to Carr in the orchestral suite Canada Mosaic (1974), a composition based upon a diverse collection of folk materials. The third movement of the work, "D'Sonaqua's Song," is derived from fragments of a Coast Salish song which evoke the legend of D'Sonaqua, the Kwakiutl "wild woman of the woods" who appears in Carr's painting, Guyasdoms' D'Sonaqua (ca. 1930) and in her short story, "D'Sonaqua" in Klee Wyck, the artist's award-winning collection of short stories based on her many visits to Native villages.2 Carr's art, in fact, has served as an inspirational source behind works in a variety of artistic media, including poetry by Charles Lillard, Florence McNeil, and Kathleen C. Moore; stage works by Don Harron, Norman Campbell, and Herman Voaden; and music by Harry Freedman, Diana McIntosh, and Ann Southam.3
In studying the relationship between Carr and Coulthard, one cannot help but be struck by the remarkable parallels between the two artists throughout their creative lives. Collectively, the works of Carr and Coulthard constitute some of the greatest achievements in the fields of Canadian music, art, and literature of the twentieth century. For both women, the pursuit of artistic careers represented a transgression of the prevailing ideology of early twentieth-century society towards women-"woman as wife, mother, and homemaker"4-revealing both a strength of character and a deeply felt artistic commitment on the part of both artists.
Both were heavily indebted stylistically to French models-Coulthard to the impressionistic idioms of Debussy and Ravel, Carr to the Post-Impressionist and Fauve Schools-and both experienced a marked stylistic transformation in their late period works. For Carr, this change comprised a shift in the 1930s from emphasis on solid, formalized pictures to those in which "the paint itself is broken in rhythmic swirls and sweeps with a more dashing and seemingly careless handling."5 Coulthard, similarly, has adopted an increasingly eclectic approach since the late 1960s, introducing elements of serial technique, aleatory writing, and electronic music into her stylistic vocabulary.
Both artists have likewise exhibited broadly-based interests in the arts. Coulthard has long held a fascination for the visual arts and literature, while Carr was equally adept as both writer and painter. Aside from Klee Wyck, Carr published books entitled The Book of Small, a collection of short stories about her childhood, and The House of All Sorts. Her autobiography, Growing Pains, was published posthumously, as were Pause: A Sketch Book and The Heart of a Peacock.6 Interestingly, while visual imagery has played an integral role in Coulthard's compositional process, Carr frequently described her visual impressions in terms of sound imagery and, on occasion, in terms of musical metaphors:
I feel that there is a great danger in so valuing and looking for pattern and design as to overlook the bigger significance, Spirit, the gist of the whole thing. We pick out one pleasing note and tinkle it regardless of the whole tune. In the forest think of the forest, not of this tree and that but the singing movement of the whole.7
Carr's influence upon Coulthard's music is revealed most explicitly in The Pines of Emily Carr (1969), a work "a very effective evocation of certain aspects of Emily Carr, painter and writer."8 The work had its genesis with a 1968 commission in connection with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Festival of Music at the Queen Elizabeth Playhouse in Vancouver. The terms of the commission called for Coulthard to write a piece for narrator, singer, and small group of instruments based on writings from the newly published Journals of Emily Carr. As Coulthard has stated, with respect to the CBC commission, "I felt happy to accept for two reasons. First, I had found passages in the 'Journals' very moving to me and I felt they would evoke my music. Secondly, I hoped to try to prove to myself that I might follow Emily's magnificent example and write a musical work for the forests of the West."9
The final draft of the work was completed in Spain, the distant locale provoking vivid recollections of the composer's native land: "In that distant land the familiar West Coast forests loomed in front of me as though they were etched there."10 With the libretto compiled by Dorothy Davies (based upon Coulthard's suggestions), the work interprets the contrasting scenes and moods of the western forest suggested by Carr's journals through a series of continuous musical sequences. Coulthard wrote:
I constructed the form of the work in various sequences, relating to the forest. It was as if the trees were souls (for Emily often conversed with them)-the restless woods, the peaceful forest, a storm. The culmination of the whole musical work being Emily Carr's magnificent vision of death-the land above the Pines....11
The work is not merely a sensitive setting of Davies' libretto, however, but rather an extended musical commentary upon Carr's mystical impressions of the western forest, as expressed through her art and writing. In translating these impressions into musical terms, Coulthard's compositional process and Carr's aesthetic philosophy run in parallel.12 Among these aesthetic precepts are the concepts of spirituality and mysticism in nature, and the interrelated notions of motion and spatiality.
Carr's spiritual bond with nature, of course, represented much more than an aesthetic stance toward landscape painting but rather a set of values and beliefs by which both her life and art were governed. Throughout Carr's writings and in many art works, these beliefs are colorfully and passionately asserted, as in an extract from Carr's journals, dated 11 October 1935, in which the forest is referred to as "God's tabernacle."13 One of the recurring motifs in Carr's art is the portrayal of nature as the site of a spiritual experience, an aspect often expressed through subtle symbolic representations of the underlying correspondence she perceived between the mysticism of nature and Native carvings.14 In an untitled charcoal drawing of 1930, for example, the forest landscape is dominated by a mystical "eye in the sky" motif. With respect to Native carvings, Carr once observed that "the eyes [are] always exaggerated because the supernatural beings could see everywhere, and see more than we could."15
Coulthard's textual material for The Pines of Emily Carr (compiled by Davies) is based on excerpts from the artist's journals which reinforce Carr's spiritual bond with nature. In the section entitled "Meditation," for example, the narrator's text reads as follows: "How solemn the pines look, more grey than green-a quiet spiritual grey-lifting to mystery."16 The expressive content of the text in this instance invokes direct comparison with Carr's visual representation of similar imagery in the painting Grey (1931-32), a stark, haunting work depicting "a dim, enfolded world, an iconic confronting silence."17
In other instances, the text emphasizes Carr's tendency to imbue aspects of nature, particularly trees, with human-like senses and emotions, as illustrated by the following excerpt from the alto line: "Through the sighing of the wind they [the trees] tell their sorrows." Such textual references are consistent with the recurring presence of nature imagery in the vast majority of Coulthard's vocal texts, particularly nature as a symbol for human emotions. These themes are exemplified in works such as the choral piece More Lovely Grows the Earth (1957); the Two Night Songs (1960), for baritone, piano, and string quartet; and the Christina Songs (1983).18
Coulthard underscores the spiritual qualities of Carr's text through the use of melodic and harmonic formulas intended as symbolic representations of mysticism. A prime example of Coulthard's "mystical" writing may be observed in the section entitled "The Quiet Woods Theme." The narrator's text for the opening of this section reads as follows: "I am circled by trees....I have done a charcoal sketch today of young pines at the foot of a forest....I may make a canvas of it....It should lead from joy back to mystery....mysterious forest with a density and immensity of our western woods."
This theme, marked Lento tranquillo, is characterized by chromatic inflection, a type of melodic writing also employed for the programmatic representation of the Saint in the orchestral pieces Music to Saint Cecilia (1979) and Prayer for Elizabeth (1953).19 The religious subject matter of both works suggests that the use of similar figuration in The Pines of Emily Carr represents a conscious effort to imbue her vision of Carr's forest with a decidedly spiritual dimension, a tendency also evident in the chromatic piano study "Revelation in the Forest," the first of Coulthard's three Sketches from the Western Woods. Harmonically, the opening measures of "The Quiet Woods Theme" are characterized by stability, with reiterated D-sharp major references in each of the instrumental lines.20 With the words "mysterious forest," however, harmonic stasis is undermined by a sustained bitonal chord (E-flat/F), thus accentuating Carr's "journey from joy back to mystery" via a dramatic shift from stability to instability, monotonality to bitonality (see Example 1).21
An interrelated facet of Carr's mystical aesthetic is the interpretation of nature as a vital, animated force and, on a hilosophical level, a symbol for life itself. As Carr once wrote, "you can find everything in them [the forests] that you look for, showing how absolutely full of truth, how full of reality the juice and essence of life are in them. They teem with life, growth, expansion."22 Carr's perceptions of the vital, dynamic, and regenerative aspects of nature are reflected in an emphasis on motion as an aesthetic precept, as revealed in the following remarks on the art of sketching in the "big woods":
Everything is waiting and still. Slowly things begin to move, to slip into their places. Groups and masses and lines tie themselves together....Air waves between each leaf. Sunlight plays and dances. Nothing is still now. Life is sweeping through the spaces. Everything is alive. The silence is full of sound.23 Carr's conceptualization of nature as an animated life force fostered an artistic philosophy based on the ideal of continuous movement which postulated that "a picture equals a movement in space....Great care should be taken in the articulation of one movement into another so that the eye swings through the canvas in one continuous movement...."24 Carr's emphasis on unity of movement, influenced by Van Gogh, resulted in a progressive move in the 1930s away from formalized pictures comprised of concrete forms in favor of works which dissolve solidity and containment into a "mutual life of movement."25 The principal means of attaining this sense of perpetual motion was the brush stroke, a technique whereby "the brush moves in easy waves across the paper from one side to another in a continuous flow, uniting the foliage of a stand of trees in one fluid movement."26 These tendencies are dramatically exhibited in the oil painting Swirl (1937) (see Plate 1).
How then does Coulthard reinterpret Carr's aesthetic of motion in musical terms and, perhaps more significantly, how does the "mutual life of movement" expressed in The Pines of Emily Carr draw comparisons between the creative processes of both artists? As a general observation, the "continuous flow" Shadbolt speaks of with respect to Carr's art has a close parallel in the long, flowing melodic lines characteristic of much of Coulthard's music. In The Pines of Emily Carr, references to motion abound, as suggested by the titles of several of the work's sections, including "Restless Woods" and "The Stirring Theme." The form of the work, in fact, comprises a series of interlocking sequences based upon contrasting representations of motion. At the initial alto voice entry, Coulthard takes the animated imagery of Carr's prose (as compiled by Davies) as a point of departure for a musical representation of motion comprising two distinct rhythmic motives (see Example
2). The text reads as follows: "In spring she dances, dances. How her pines do twirl and whirl in tender green." On the word "dances" (m. 14), the alto line states a dance-like dotted figure, imitating the rhythmic pattern established in the viola line in the preceding measures,27 while on the word "whirling" (m. 17) the alto sings a sextuplet figure first introduced by the first and second violins in imitation at mm. 13-16. The implicit momentum of this figure is emphasized by its accelerated rhythmic motion in comparison with the basic eighth-note pulse of the alto line and also by registral emphasis, with the highest note of the motive (F-sharp) denoting the apex of the melodic line.28 The constant imitation of each motive between instrumental and vocal lines, combined with the contrapuntal interplay of one motive with the other, produces a texture in which one or both of the motives are continually sounded, thus underscoring Carr's animated textual imagery, with music embodying the "continuous movement" aesthetic characteristic of the artist's writings and paintings.
Coulthard's representation of motion in this passage, however, consists not merely of the implicit momentum generated through rhythmic motives, but also in expressive gestures which reinforce the type of motion suggested by Carr's text. Both motives are marked legato, comprise a subdued dynamic range (p < mp) and are prefaced by the expressive markings Poco lento grazioso and Quasi arpa (piano), thus reinforcing the pastoral mood suggested by the text. In terms of both character and articulation, this type of writing is closely analogous to one of the fundamental types of movement expressed in Carr's paintings which Shadbolt describes as "smooth flowing and serene movement,"29 a tendency evident in paintings such as A Young Tree (1931), Red Cedar (ca. 1931-33), Cedar Sanctuary (1942), and Quiet (1942).
Other sections in The Pines suggestive of "serene, flowing movement" include "The Quiet Woods Theme" (mm. 65-66) and the Variation of "Quiet Woods Music" for "Dream Music" (mm. 158-161).30 Interestingly, Coulthard's representation of this type of metaphor for motion draws explicit parallels between Carr's "serene movement" aesthetic and the "rippling, lyrical" imagery underlying Coulthard's own dualistic style.31 Similar figuration is utilized in many works as a symbol for the tranquil beauty of nature, as in the piano piece Image Terrestre (1990) and the vocal work "Spring Quiet," the first of the four Christina Songs.32
As a consequence of the intrinsic sense of motion evident in Carr's late paintings, a new expressive paradigm began to emerge. As images of continuous movement dissolved solid forms and blurred the perceptual boundaries between foreground, middle ground, and background, a spatial dimension emerged in which "the composition is not framed by forms which restate the picture's margins but rather those in which the animating movement of a picture sweeps up and into and through its space without hindrance. In such works the picture space is simply part of the infinite space that continues in all directions in and out beyond the frame."33 The following remarks from Carr's journals reinforce the perceptual link between spirituality, motion, and spatiality in the artist's creative vision, as well as underscoring a decidedly musical conceptualization of sound imagery: "It is a swaying rhythm of thought, swaying back and forth, leading up to suggesting, waiting, urging the unordered statement to come forth and proclaim itself, voicing the notes from its very soul to be caught up and echoed by other souls, filling space and at the same time leaving space, shouting but silent."34
Coulthard's formal process in The Pines of Emily Carr closely mirrors the infinite spatiality of Carr's canvases as a series of continuous, contrasting sequences which merge and flow into one another. Each sequence, then, may be conceptualized as an individual canvas, reflecting the type of picture space found in Carr's late paintings where perceptual boundaries are purposefully blurred to create an impression of infinite space unfolding in all directions. In a anner analogous to the effect produced by Carr's brush strokes, Coulthard opens up perceptual space by taking steps leading to the dissolution of form, resulting in the negation of formal boundaries through devices of harmonic and thematic connectivity. Harmonically, this type of link is exemplified in the transition between the contrasting sequences "The Green Sea" and "The Quiet Woods Theme" through an elided authentic cadence on D-sharp. An extended bass pedal on D# in the piano line and reiterated D# timpani trills reinforce this sense of harmonic connectivity, as if the harmonic stability of "The Quiet Woods Theme" represents the fundamental goal-both tonal and emotional-toward which the turbulent and tonally unstable material of "The Green Sea" has been striving.35
A perception of infinite space is likewise revealed through Coulthard's process of thematic integration. Through this process, an implicit sense of continuity is created by de-emphasizing structural divisions between sections. Motivic cells and themes recur in various permutations throughout the course of the work, transversing formal boundaries so that the listener is made aware both of their connection to past events and of their structural function as components of a continuously evolving thematic process. The most extensive example of thematic integration in The Pines of Emily Carr is the transformation of the tranquil "Quiet Woods Theme" in subsequent sections, first as a dramatic representation of a storm at mm. 94-99, as a dream-like reminiscence both in "Meditation" and the Variation of "Quiet Woods Music" for "Dream Music," and finally as a dramatic spiritual symbol in the culminating movement, "Vision of Death." As successive thematic entrances unfold, the original theme is transformed both contextually-through varied instrumentation, dynamics, articulation, and mood-and motivically, as the germinating motivic cell (motive "a": A# - B - A# - G#, 16th notes) upon which the theme is based is manipulated through a series of developmental techniques. These include statements in retrograde and inversion, rhythmic modifications, expanded interval patterns, and contrapuntal development.
The final, culminating statement at the end of the "Vision of Death" represents the completion of this transformational thematic process, as the once tranquil theme is intensified into the climactic moment of the entire work (see Example 3). After the cello line enters with a transposed, modified reprise of the first nine notes of the original theme (with variants of motive "a" stated in the upper strings at m. 172), the subsequent nine notes are stated in the piano line at m. 173. At this point, a variant of the theme is superimposed in the alto line, creating a two-part contrapuntal texture between voice and piano. The harmonic stability of the original theme is likewise undermined by a succession of bitonal chords (D# /F - B/G), while an enriched texture, expanded dynamic range, and the climactic use of tremolos (in the viola and cello lines) conspire to heighten the emotional intensity. The recurrence of this theme throughout the entire work in transfigured emotional guises, moreover, suggests its programmatic function as a type of idée fixe symbolizing the cyclical life of the forest and, by extension, a recurring representation of Carr's spiritual identification with nature.36
As a musical interpretation of Emily Carr's literary impressions of the western landscape, The Pines of Emily Carr functions as a vehicle for establishing a comparative framework between the aesthetic philosophies of two of Canada's leading women artists in the fields of music, literature, and the visual arts. By translating Carr's mystical impressions of the forest into musical syntax-thus mirroring the spiritual inspiration of nature underlying her own compositional style-Coulthard not only captures the essence of the painter's text but also invokes striking parallels between her own creative process and the aesthetic precepts of motion and spatiality underlying Carr's art. The fact that these conceptual paradigms are evident not only in The Pines but in numerous works from all periods of the composer's career suggests that Carr's influence represents much more than an inspirational symbol, but also a constant stimulus which has continually exerted its presence upon a musical style which is at once expressive, intensely personal, and intrinsically bound to the majestic imagery and mystical spirit of the British Columbia landscape. Indeed, Carr's thoughts on the inspirational power of this landscape might well be considered an appropriate credo for both artists:
Here are themes everywhere, something sublime, something ridiculous, or joyous, or calm, or mysterious. Tender youthfulness laughing at gnarled oldness. Moss and ferns, and leaves and twigs, light and air, depth and colour chattering, dancing a mad joy-dance, but only apparently tied up in stillness and silence. You must be still in order to hear and see.37
1. The occasion of this first meeting was an impromptu visit by Coulthard and her husband, Donald Adams, to Carr's St. James Street home.
2. The terms Coast Salish, Kwakiutl, and Nootka all refer to Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Klee Wyck, or "the laughing one," is the name given to Carr by the villagers of the Nootka reserve at Ucluelet, on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. It later became the title of her award-winning collection of short stories. See Doris Shadbolt, Emily Carr (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1990), 87-88.
3. Brian Foreman, "Carr's Influence on Other Artists," in Emily Carr (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1992), 43.
4. Robin Laurence, "Emily Carr: A Feminist Reading," in Emily Carr (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1992), 25-26. See also Roseanne Kydd, "Jean Coulthard: A Revised View," SoundNotes 2 (Spring/Summer 1992): 14-24.
5. Lawren Harris, "The Paintings and Drawings of Emily Carr," in Emily Carr: Her Paintings and Sketches (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1945), 22-24.
6. Kerry Mason Dodd, Sunlight in The Shadows: The Landscape of Emily Carr (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1984), 8-9.
7. Ibid., 188 (my italics).
8. Max Wyman, Vancouver Sun, 26 September 1969.
9. Coulthard, Biographical Sketch No. 4.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Coulthard was well aware of the inherent discrepancies between the creative acts of painting and music: "It [musical composition] is a strictly inward process and is not necessarily dependent on visible or tangible things for inspiration. Whereas an artist sees a splendid rose and to him it suggests a composition in paint in some form or another, a composer is dealing in a more illusive kind of substance, the combinations of sound." (Jean Coulthard, "A Year in France." Unpublished lecture to the Vancouver Women's Musical Club, 1956.)
13. Carr writes: "Surely the woods are God's tabernacle. We can see Him there. He will be in His place. It is God in His woods' tabernacle I long to express. Others prepare a tabernacle for Him here and there, in a church, a flower or vegetable garden, a home, a family. Everyone has his own special tabernacle set aside for God in the place where He seems nearest." (Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr [Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Co., 1966], 201.)
14. The Native presence in Carr's art, dating from an early trip to Ucluelet in 1899 and influenced by many subsequent visits to Native reserves, served as a persistent undercurrent throughout her artistic life. (Shadbolt, 83-89.)
15. Emily Carr, Fresh Seeing (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Co., 1972), 37.
16. The words "lifting to mystery" are depicted by an ascending chordal progression. The phrase culminates with a C#9 chord on the word "mystery," occurring at the melodic and dynamic apex of the phrase.
17. Shadbolt, 143.
18. The text of "A Birthday," the final of the four Christina Songs (based on texts by Christina Rossetti), creates an explicit correlation between spiritual growth and rebirth and the cyclical qualities of growth and regeneration inherent in nature. Rossetti's text begins with the following words: "My heart is like a singing bird whose nest is in a watered shoot/ My heart is like an apple tree whose boughs are bent with thickest fruit."
19. See David Gordon Duke, "The Orchestral Music of Jean Coulthard," Ph.D. diss. (University of Victoria, 1993), 122.
20. The cello, viola, and first violin enter successively in the first two measures of this section with a reiterated descending scalar passage outlining the notes of a D# major triad (with neighbor tone motion on B and G#). The piano plays an extended D# major pedal point (of three measures duration), while the timpani enters with an extended trill on D#.
21. I wish to thank Jean Coulthard for her permission to reproduce the musical examples contained in this paper. All such examples are taken from Coulthard's original manuscripts. The Pines of Emily Carr may be obtained in manuscript form from the Canadian Music Centre.
22. Dodd, Caption to Plate 19.
23. Carr, Hundreds and Thousands, 193. This quotation reinforces the notion of sound imagery as an integral component of Carr's creative vision. This sound imagery, moreover, is used to emphasize the theme of nature as a vital, animated life force.
24. Ibid, 185.
25. Shadbolt, 185.
26. Ibid.
27. It is reminiscent of Maynard Solomon's perception of dotted rhythms evoking a sense of "irresistible motion." See Maynard Solomon, Beethoven (New York: Schirmer, 1977), 296. This "dance motive" is stated with voice in the cello line at m. 14, and subsequently by the cello and viola in imitation at mm. 15-18.
28. This motive, introduced by the first violin at m. 13 and imitated by the second violin, is reiterated by the alto at m. 17.
29. Shadbolt, 171.
30. Both of these sections contain explicit textual references to movement and animation in nature. The following excerpt from Variation of "Quiet Woods Music" for "Dream Music" further illustrates that Carr's concept of movement was intrinsically linked to sound imagery: "The steep bank above is covered with arbutus trees...monstrous ones with orange scarlet boles twisting grandly in a regular, beautiful direction that sings."
31. Coulthard writes, "To develop this imagery, first is the rippling lyrical nature of sunlight glinting on the watered stone of a small brook. The other is more brooding-the depth of one's being reflected in the deep fiords of our west coast. Many works have, of course, elements of both styles." Jean Coulthard, quoted in Ian L. Bradley, Twentieth Century Canadian Composers (Agincourt, Ontario: GLC Publishers, 1982), 7.
32. Both works employ smoothly flowing triplet figuration as a representation of nature.
33. Shadbolt, 191.
34. Carr, Hundreds and Thousands, 61.
35. Several other factors conspire to reinforce this sense of connectivity. Melodically, the D# alto note on the first measure of "The Quiet Woods Theme" represents the completion of the final phrase of "The Green Sea." The importance of this note as a gesture of resolution is affirmed through agogic stress and registral placement. Similar gestures of melodic connectivity may be observed in the stepwise resolution of the violin parts. At m. 69, four measures prior to the completion of "The Green Sea," Coulthard employs subtle modifications in articulation, dynamics, and tempo which foreshadow the "smooth flowing, serene motion" of "The Quiet Woods Theme."
36. Analogous cyclical tendencies are exploited for the symbolic representation of the same theme in the Sketches from the Western Woods. Like "The Quiet Woods Theme" in The Pines of Emily Carr, a germinal chromatic motive undergoes a process of transformation whereby modifications in rhythm, harmony, dynamics, and expressive character are used to convey the contrasting moods suggested by the titles of its three constituent movements: "Revelation in the Forest," "The Silent Pool," and "Elements."
37. Carr, Hundreds and Thousands, 193 (my italics).
Glenn Colton, a pianist and musicologist, received a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Victoria with a dissertation on the piano music of Jean Coulthard. He has contributed articles to The Canadian University Music Review, The Canadian Music Centre Newsletter, and Fermata, among other publications, and is currently a lecturer at the Memorial University School of Music in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada.