My friend Malcolm

Well, I have not been active on this blog for nearly 10 months. Reviewing my most recent post, it was a brief commentary on some dear friends who had passed away in the previous few weeks. Today, I find myself again wanting to write concerning this city's (Edmonton) and country's (Canada) loss of one of its most illustrious and influential composers, musicians and academics, Malcolm Forsyth. Last September he was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer. In typical Malcolm style, he fought his illness with courage and determination, but succumbed to it earlier this week.

My main contact with Malcolm was through our being colleagues in the Department of Music at University of Alberta. Malcolm was appointed to the U of A in 1968, having recently emigrated from his native South Africa. He was on the faculty here for 34 years, teaching in numerous subject areas, including composition, theory and aural skills, trombone (he held a position as principal trombonist in the Edmonton Symphony for a number of years), and conducting the University Symphony Orchestra and its predecessor the St. Cecilia Orchestra. I remember my first meeting with him during my candidacy for the choral position at U of A in 1981, at which he left an indelible first impression as a brilliant and somewhat intimidating presence! Quickly though, I'm happy to say, our friendship grew in those first years as colleagues, and I remember with great fondness the many times we lunched or supped at the Faculty Club (where he frequently teased me for my preference for two desserts rather than one). I also remember vividly the experience of premiering with the Madrigal Singers several choral works he had written a number of years earlier for another choir in the city, which had not yet been premiered for some reason - The Sea (SSAA) and In the Dying of Anything (SATB) - and how pleased and gratified he was for these first performances. Although he was much better known for his orchestral and instrumental chamber compositions (3 JUNO awards), he continued to write choral music as well, and I think it is especially significant that his final major work, A Ballad of Canada, was his first and only work written for orchestra and chorus. Despite his declining health, Malcolm was able to travel to Ottawa in early June to hear this work's premiere with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and a 180 voice chorus comprised of several Ottawa-area choirs. All reports attested to this new work's compelling emotional content, and it received a tumultuous reception from audience and performers at the NAC.

As with other choral and vocal works Malcolm had written over the years, I was flattered that he called on me again here to peruse his vocal writing in this work for its idiomatic and singable qualities. The Richard Eaton Singers will have the good fortune to perform A Ballad of Canada with the Edmonton Symphony and their conductor Bill Eddins in November, and it is just very sad that he will not hear it again.

I was fortunate to be involved with performing two other choral works by Malcolm. He was commissioned by the International Society for Music Education to write a work for the National Youth Choir of Canada, to be performed at the ISME 2000 conference in Edmonton in July 2000. The work, Blow Bugle Blow, is a setting for chorus and wind ensemble of the famous Tennyson poem that begins with "The splendour falls on castle walls". It is a brilliant but very challenging work, and my regret is that it has not subsequently been performed by any other ensemble. I hope to fulfill a promise I made to Malcolm a few years ago that I would record this work for a future CD project. The other work which the Madrigal Singers did record several years ago (with harp duo Julia Shaw and Nora Bumanis) is his Hesperides, a cycle of settings of poetry by the 18th C English poet Robert Herrick. This is a delightfully colourful work, commissioned and premiered in 2003 by the Elora Festival Singers and Noel Edison, which explores the themes of love and lust from the unique perspective of an 18th C cleric who also enjoyed the more ribald and lascivious side of life!

As a colleague at U of A, I came to respect greatly Malcolm's deeply held views on what he perceived to be declining standards of musical training of students for professions in music, and his unerring commitment to raising those standards. Examples of this commitment were numerous, from his development of an excellent aural skills program to his uncompromising approach to his performances of orchestral works with the USO. But my friend Malcolm will also be remembered for his love of life, his raucous laughter, and his fondness for great food and drink (especially wine and scotch). Parties at his house were numerous and legendary for his generosity and sporting good times!

Malcolm, you will be missed! But your music and spirit lives on in those you influenced and touched.