Water and music

The gurgling of a stream, the thunderous crashing of waterfalls, and the quick dripping of a spring thaw – this blend of sound is nature's music. These water sounds form the backdrop to the outdoor environment. Although they may go unnoticed by the casual visitor, if you sit by a stream or river and concentrate on listening, an orchestra of sound can be heard.

There have been many songs written about water but one can only imagine the even greater number of compositions which have been influenced by the various intonations of moving water. Perhaps this is due to our instinctive human reactions to the sounds of water. Water ballads can range from the powerful crashing of waves and waterfalls to the playful meandering of a flowing stream; both extremes can be inspirational, one because of its force and the other because of its gentleness.

The explorers who mapped the new land travelled by water in canoes of birch bark propelled by extraordinary men – the voyageurs. For many years their songs were the only music considered to be distinctively Canadian. Peter Newman provides a glimpse of them:

Because they could boast of their exploits to no one but themselves, the voyageurs had to concoct their own sustaining myths. To offset the tedium of paddle strokes, they sang. The melodies were work songs, a way to ease the tedium of repetitive labour while endowing it with a comforting cadence. ²¹

Music, says Newman, was in the canoeists' souls. Many songs were made up and most were not written down. The water-borne songs of the voyageurs often contained an assortment of English, French, and Aboriginal words. They may not have been technically sophisticated but they left an enduring impression on those who heard them. British subject John MacTaggart's encounter with the voyageurs' music was recounted in his work entitled Three Years in Canada: An Account of the Actual State of the Country in 1826-7-8. He states:

Many of their canoe-songs are exquisite; more particularly the air they give them. . . . We must be in a canoe with a dozen hearty paddlers, the lake pure, the weather fine, and the rapids past, before their influence can be powerfully felt. ²²

"A Canadian Boat Song" was written in 1804 by Thomas Moore after paddling down the St. Lawrence from Kingston to Montreal. According to the song:

Faintly as tolls the evening chime,
Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time . . .
Soon as the woods on the shore look dim,
We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn.
Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near and the daylight's past . . . ²³

The canoe, the paddle, and the stream, which stimulated so many of the songs of the voyageurs, inspired other music too. More than 170 years after Moore wrote "A Canadian Boat Song," Montreal composer André Gagnon recorded his tribute to the mighty St. Lawrence in a symphonic poem fittingly entitled "Le Saint Laurent." It evokes many moods of the stream which, though sadly abused, is still central to the life and commerce of central and eastern Canada.

During most of the early 19^th century, European music was dominant in Canada. But after the Second World War, composers and performers turned again to Canadian themes and to the natural world for inspiration. Composer Claude Champagne said "I was always much impressed with nature. . . . [it] was the strongest influence in my life . . . so far as my work was concerned." ²⁴ His "Symphonie gaspésienne" evokes the waves and the gulls and the mists of river and rock-bound shore.

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