Arnold Walter (music teacher)

Arnold Maria Walter (born August 30, 1902 in Hannsdorf / Moravia ; † October 6, 1973 in Toronto ) was a Czech-Canadian composer, music teacher and writer.

Walter attended grammar school in Brno and earned money with tutoring so that he could take composition lessons from Bruno Weigl , a student of Bruckner . At his father's request, he studied law in Prague, but then went to Berlin, where he studied at the university with Hermann Abert , Curt Sachs and Johannes Wolf and also took private piano lessons with Rudolf Breithaupt and Frederic Lamond and composition lessons with Franz Schreker .

He became the author of the music magazine Melos and, in the early 1930s, a columnist for the Weltbühne and music critic for Vorwärts . In 1933 he fled from the National Socialists to Mallorca and went to England when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, where he was active in the field of folk music research.

In 1937 he was given a teaching position at Upper Canada College , where he taught until 1943. In 1945 he was appointed to the Royal Conservatory of Music to implement the results of the Ernest Hutcheson Report on the reorganization of higher music education. Here he founded the Senior School as a department for advanced studies and the Royal Conservatory Opera School , for which he led the conductor Nicholas Goldschmidt and the director Felix Brentano . In 1947 the Opera School had great success with the performance of Smetana's Bartered Bride .

In 1946, Walter introduced Canada's first teaching program for elementary and secondary school music teachers. With Doreen Hall he introduced the first courses in North America for the Orffian teaching method at the Royal Conservatory in 1955 . Between 1952 and 1968 he worked with Hall on an English-language edition of the Orff school work .

From 1952 to 1968 Walter was director of the University of Toronto's Music Faculty . His most famous students were Paul McIntyre , Phil Nimmons and Clermont Pépin . In addition to his teaching activities, Walter u. a. President of the Canadian Music Council (1965–66) and the Canadian Music Center (1959 and 1970) and editor of the Canadian Music Journal (1956–62).

In his compositions, Walter remained stylistically connected to the late Romanticism embodied by Mahler , Strauss , Debussy and the young Schönberg . In addition to symphonic works, he wrote piano and chamber music.

In 1972 Walter became an officer in the Order of Canada . In 1974 the University of Toronto named the Edward Johnson Building Concert Hall after him and donated the Arnold Walter Award for students. His stepdaughter Trudi Le Caine , wife of the composer Hugh Le Caine , was named a member of the Order of Canada for her contribution to promoting children's music education .

Works

• Sonatina for Cello and Piano , 1940
• Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano , 1940
• Sonata for Violin and Piano , 1940
• Symphony in G Minor for large orchestra, 1942
• Suite for Piano , 1945
• For the Fallen for soprano, mixed choir and orchestra, 1949
• Concerto for Orchestra , 1958
• Sonata for Pianoforte , 1950
• Summer Idyll for tape, 1960