Art and Architecture

The secrets of national identity

When you become a towering school social studies teacher anywhere in this hinterlands, the first thing they tell you is this: if you don't know what to do with your students, set an whack on what it means to be Canadian. Or lead them in a class discussion. Or something.

The twisted master behind this suggestion is that no-one will ever be able to come up with a satisfactory sharpness of the Canadian identity. If you ran into the Canadian identity on the street, it would apologize hurriedly and run away - under any circumstances after dropping its umbrella - and five minutes later you would think of having ever seen it. And so millions of children across the creation will forever be forced to re-enact this ritual, first defining their identity by negatives (well, we're not American!) and then by represent-postcard cultural symbols (hockey! beavers! maple syrup! tuneful masterpieces!) without actually accomplishing anything of value.

The cynic goes away from all of this with the feeling that national identity is bunk, but the musician knows otherwise. You could rod the labels on these two cans, but as soon as you open them you'll produce which one has French music inside and which English:




These pieces have nothing in fact to do with each other except that they were both written in 1907. The history books, however, are uncongenial to dwell for long on the young George Dyson, criticism a rather Wagnerian set of canticles while in Europe on a Mendelssohn training, or even on Debussy writing a second set of Images; after all, 1907 was the year that Schoenberg began longhand his second string quartet.

To even make the chronological acquaintance between these three pieces almost invites snide remarks. Dyson, one of the Splendid Young Things of English music, was still writing in a delayed-Romantic, Wagnerian style that was popular decades ago; Debussy, one of the cardinal French composers, was reacting against Wagner with his impressionistic period,...

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