Sir Ernest Alexander Campbell MacMillan (18 August 1893 – 6 May 1973) was a Canadian conductor, composer and organist. He was Canada's only "Musical Knight", and is widely regarded as being Canada's pre-eminent musician from the 1920s through the 1950s. His contributions to the development of music in Canada were sustained and varied, as conductor, performer, composer, administrator, lecturer, adjudicator, writer, humourist, and statesman.
Biography
Early life and education (1893–1914)
Ernest Alexander Campbell MacMillan was born in Mimico (Etobicoke), Ontario, the first-born of Reverend Alexander MacMillan (1864-1961), and Wilhelmina "Minnie" Ross (1870-1932). His parents had moved to Mimico the previous December, when Rev. MacMillan, educated in Edinburgh, Scotland, was called to be the first resident minister of Mimico Presbyterian Church, that had been formed in 1889. His mother, was a third generation of ministers daughters from Scotland, and in her case from Pictou, Nova Scotia.
His first musical influences were his parents. From a very young age, he became fascinated while watching his mother play piano and decided to learn music. His father, who became minister at Toronto's St. Enoch's Presbyterian Church in 1895, bought an organ for a new house the family moved to in 1898. The house had an adjoined drawing room and study room, with enough space for both an organ and piano. Thereafter, Macmillan was officially hooked.
Macmillan started studying the organ at the age of 8 with Arthur Blakely. A child prodigy, he gave his first organ recital at the age of ten. His talents astonished the public and critics alike in 1904 when he performed in the "Festival of Lillies", which "firmly established him a prodigy". 4000 people were known to attend. Moreover, he was the appointed organist at St. Enoch's, which gave him a sense of importance and great experience in accompanying singers. Between 1908 and 1910, MacMillan held his first professional appointment as an organist and choirmaster in Toronto at Knox (Presbyterian) Church. In 1910 he had his first official organ recital. After that, he performed elsewhere in Toronto and environs until 1914, including St. Paul's Presbyterian Church (Hamilton, Ontario). He earned the associateship and fellowship diplomas of the Royal College of Organists, and from 1911 to 1914 studied modern history at the University of Toronto, earning his BA. He was a member of the Canadian fraternity, Phi Kappa Pi.
Internment in Germany (1914–1919)
MacMillan travelled to Paris in the spring of 1914 and began to study piano privately with Thérèse Chaigneau. He was visiting Bayreuth, Germany, to attend performances of the Bayreuth Festival, when the First World War began in August, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June. MacMillan was initially detained by the German police, and then imprisoned as an enemy alien, as Canada had declared war on Imperial Germany on 5 August. MacMillan was subsequently interned for the duration of the war at Ruhleben, a British civilian detention camp, located on the site of a former horse racing track, on the outskirts of Berlin. During this period, he became a prominent member of the Ruhleben Musical Society and directed performances of The Mikado (with orchestra) and a pantomime version of Cinderella. MacMillan transcribed the music for the former from memory with the help of four other musicians, including Benjamin Dale. Among those attending these performances was James W. Gerard, the United States Ambassador to Germany. MacMillan was also a member of the Ruhleben Drama Society and acted in productions of Othello, Twelfth Night, and The Importance of Being Earnest.Hart, Harold B. "Life in Ruhleben – Stories of Returned Civil Prisoners", The Scotsman, 9 January 1918, pp. 5 and 11. MacMillan gave lectures on each of the nine symphonies of Beethoven; at the end of each lecture, MacMillan and Dale would perform a four hand piano arrangement of the symphony under discussion.Nevins, Maureen (1994). Sir Ernest MacMillan (1893–1973): Portrait of a Canadian Musician, Ruhleben. Library and Archives Canada (electronic collection). Retrieved 12 September 2011. MacMillan was later interviewed about his experiences as an internee at Ruhleben, as part of a series of CBC interviews with Canadian First World War veterans."Sir Ernest MacMillan Recalls Being a POW", CBC Radio
Career
As a conductor
Upon return to Canada in 1919, MacMillan was appointed organist and choirmaster in Toronto at the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church (then Methodist), where he served until the consummation of the United Church of Canada in June 1925. He was especially known there for his performances of Handel's Messiah and Brahms' Requiem His career as a conductor truly began when he conducted a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in 1923. MacMillan conducted annual performances of this work for the next 30 years. Another annual tradition Macmillan initiated during his career includes the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir's Christmas-time performance of Handel's Messiah.
Throughout his time with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, MacMillan accomplished many of the major achievements of his conducting career. His authority as a composer influenced some major changes within the orchestra. During the Depression, he changed the concert times from 5 pm to a more "evening hour".
As many theatre musicians were out of work during the Depression era, MacMillan hired them to play in these evening concerts on a regular basis. As a result, MacMillan was able to select much more ambitious repertoire for this stronger performing force, as well as lengthening its season, and increased their number of concerts.
MacMillan tried to make concerts fun and entertaining. The Christmas Box Symphony Concerts were a great example of this. Not only did MacMillan conduct, but he dressed up as Santa Claus and had the audience participate by singing along. He also "appeared in overalls with a monkey wrench for a baton to conduct Alexander Mosolov's Iron Foundry".
The entry of Canada into WWII proved to be "a difficult period", but it was during the post-war years that his conducting was regaled as being "the most successful in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's history". MacMillan innovations in his repertoire changed yet again. He included Canadian music, as well as works by Hungarian and Russian composers Béla Bartók, and Dmitri Shostakovich.
During World War II, he gained fame as a guest conductor in the United States. He conducted many Hollywood Bowl concerts, and the National Broadcasting Company Symphony Orchestra in NYC. In Canada, he guest-conducted the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. By the end of the 1940s, he had conducted the Vancouver Symphony on 45 different occasions, and 25 different occasions in Montreal. MacMillan toured Australia as well for three months and conducted 30 concerts in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Later in his career (1948–1953), MacMillan introduced Canada to entirely new prospects of recording and broadcasting. A good number of performances he conducted were recorded for Beaver Records; these were also broadcast nationally by CBC Radio. However, his silence over the Symphony Six issue prompted criticism.
As a composer
While a prisoner in Ruhleben, MacMillan wrote what is seen to be his most significant composition, titled String Quartet in C-minor. Influenced by the "war-time style and themes", the first performance of this piece was heard on 8 February 1925, by the Hart House String Quartet, and was conducted by MacMillan himself. Although MacMillan's composing abilities were much praised during this performance, he stated composition was not his main preoccupation; he preferred conducting to composing.
Nevertheless, not only did the musical language of the 19th century romantic period influence MacMillan, but he was interested in Folklore music also. In 1927, he travelled alongside Marius Barbeau to the Nass River region of British Columbia to "hear, record and notate music of the Tsimshian People". As a result, he composed Three Songs of the West Coast, arranged for voice and piano.
MacMillan composed less during his commitment to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Still, he managed to compose Scottish and French songs for the ballad opera "Prince Charming". In addition, he composed Te Deum Landamus in E Minor (1936) and Song of Deliverance (1944), both choral works.
His only work composed strictly for the organ was named Cortège académique. In 1953, he was asked both to compose and to perform it at the University College in Toronto.
Apart from composing his own works, MacMillan made arrangements of works by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Handel, and Tchaikovsky, all of whom he said had great influence on his style. Both Canadian and US orchestras have performed his orchestra arrangement of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C Minor.
As a performer
MacMillan became well known in Toronto music circles after he first started giving performances in his earlier career. Upon returning to Canada after the war, MacMillan relaunched his later career as a performer by giving 5 organ recitals commissioned by the Canadian Academy of Music from November 1919 to March 1920. In addition, he gave recitals at the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church after each Sunday service. MacMillan gave "all Bach recitals" which attracted members of the congregation and Toronto musicians.
CBC Radio in the 1920s helped to heighten MacMillan's talent as a performer. Thus, he became acknowledged as far west as Vancouver. He was frequently asked to perform there, as well as in the United States, and at the 1935 Convention of the Royal College of Organists in Toronto.
In the early 1940s, MacMillan formed "The Canadian Trio". Alongside musicians Zara Nelsova (cellist) and Kathleen Parlow (violinist), MacMillan often performed in Toronto and occasionally elsewhere. Amazingly, they once performed Beethoven's Triple Concerto in C Major with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Massey Hall. Furthermore, MacMillan founded "The Canadian Duo" with Kathleen Parlow; their performances were broadcast on CBC Radio as well.
MacMillan gave 100 concerts and recitals between the 1920s and 1950s. He eventually stopped performing due to his other responsibilities as a conductor, composer and an educator.
As an educator
Throughout his professional life, MacMillan put emphasis on music education, and "contributed to the foundations of the development of music in Canada." In the year 1919, MacMillan was selected for a staff position at the Canadian Academy of Music, though he had little training in teaching. He taught theory, harmony, counterpoint, piano and organ. MacMillan was sent to lead examination tours at McGill University in Southern Ontario, and in various parts of the west coast on the Academy's behalf.
Eventually, MacMillan was appointed the Dean of the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto. He made many innovations during his tenure with its music department. He then established a conservatory choir in 1927, because he felt that the vocal students "needed experience in choral singing". He also started the first opera classes at the conservatory in 1920, with performances of Hansel and Gretel, The Sorcerer, Dido and Aeneas and Hugh the Drover. He improved the library, made improvements to the college's sight reading/ear tests, and prepared teaching materials which include "The Modern Piano Student" in 1931 and "On the Preparation of Ear Tests" in 1938.