Profiles of Alberta Women
Violet Archer
Violet Archer at the piano, 1948. Image courtesy of the University of Alberta Archives. Public domain.
Personal life
Violet Louise Archer (born Violet Balestreri – in 1940 her family changed their name to Archer) was born on April 24, 1913 in Montreal, Quebec to Italian immigrant parents Cesare and Beatrice Balestreri. Cesare, who had apprenticed as a pastry chef, and Beatrice, who attended a convent school, grew up within walking distance of each other in Italian villages near Lake Como. Some years after they were married, in 1912, Cesare decided to move his family to Montreal, after hearing good reports about job prospects for his line of work. The couple left their two sons, Fernando Giordano and Bruno Giovanni, in Italy with their maternal grandmother, as Beatrice was planning to return after a year to retrieve them.1
However, Violet’s birth disrupted the family’s plans, and Beatrice had to postpone until July 1914 to return to Italy, taking the infant Violet with her when she went. Soon after their arrival, the Great War broke out, forcing Violet, her mother, and her brothers to stay in Italy for the next five years. As a result, Violet’s first language was Italian, and she spent her early years surrounded by her extended Italian family.2 Although it was a period of economic hardship and scarcity, it was also the time when Violet was first exposed to music, an exposure that would spark the passion she carried throughout her life.
“We had a room in a hotel, so there was a bed for the two boys, and I slept with my mother … But there was a piano downstairs in the dining room, and whenever the daughter of the landlady – the lady who ran the hotel had a daughter who played the piano – it was something! It just mesmerized me – the sound of the piano. I considered the sound of the violin … if I had a violin, I would burst into tears. It would make me cry.”
Brenda Dalen, “The Composer’s Voice: ‘What Women Can Do,’” Canadian University Music Review/Revue de musique des universtiés canadiennes 16, no. 1 (1995): 22.
For a time during the war, Violet and her family stayed at a hotel in Italy which had a piano in the dining room. Although she was only a few years old, Violet found herself enraptured by the sound of it being played. She would also occasionally be brought to the opera by Beatrice, who was herself a lover of music, opera in particular. Although Violet never got any musical training, when she was about five her cousin Gisella began to take piano lessons, something of which Violet was very jealous. When Violet and her family returned to Montreal after the war, she found herself greatly missing Gisella and her piano.3
In July 1919 Violet, her mother, and her siblings found passage on a warship back to Montreal, where her father had been working in an Italian restaurant. After only a few months back, in September 1919 Violet started school, spending her first two years attending a neighborhood school for immigrant children run by the Presbyterian church her family attended. It was through the church that Violet’s exposure to music continued, as she sang alto in the church choir and befriended the daughter of the minister who would play her piano after school.
After a few years learning English in her neighborhood school, Violet enrolled in public school, there expanding her language studies to include French and Latin. In January 1921, when Violet was eight, her family was able to purchase an upright piano, and Violet was able to start taking piano lessons, which she continued through high school.4
“Oh, when that piano came, I was absolutely in heaven. I thought it was the most tremendous thing to have happened.”
Brenda Dalen, “The Composer’s Voice: ‘What Women Can Do,’” Canadian University Music Review/Revue de musique des universtiés canadiennes 16, no. 1 (1995): 25.
As a teenager Violet attended the Montreal High School for Girls. There she was involved in the school French club, and made friends whom she kept in touch with throughout her career. She continued her work in music at school, playing piano solos at school concerts, and earning a prize in music when she graduated. Her high school was located across from the McGill University music building, which Violet resolved to attend in pursuit of a career in music.
Education
After graduating high school in 1930, Violet began her musical education at the McGill Conservatory, pursuing both a Bachelor of Music and a Licentiate in Pianoforte. As it was soon after the outbreak of the Great Depression, Violet’s family was struggling financially, and were unable to help her with the costs of school. To pay her way, with the help of her high school music teacher Violet found a position working as a piano accompanist for a vocal teacher, earning enough to allow her to start attending school part time.5 In her second year, she began to offer piano lessons, allowing her to drop her accompanist work for the more flexible schedule of a private instructor.6 Although it meant she could only attend school part time, Violet persevered, working and studying, until she earned her Licentiate in Pianoforte in 1934 and her Bachelor of Music in 1936.
“To me, it was an exciting part of my studying to be going to all of the rehearsals for each concert … I would go to the rehearsal and I would have a chance to hear the soloists more than once and became acquainted with the orchestra, so to me, to compose is to compose for orchestra, and that’s the first kind of composing I did really.”
Brenda Dalen, “The Composer’s Voice: ‘What Women Can Do,’” Canadian University Music Review/Revue de musique des universtiés canadiennes 16, no. 1 (1995): 25.
While at McGill, Violet had opportunities to experience music in a wide range of styles and formats, and began her study of composition. She studied piano under Dorothy Shearwood-Stubington and organ under J. J. Weatherseed, and learned composition from Canadian composer Claude Champagne and McGill’s Dean of Music Douglas Clarke, a composer who was also a founder and conductor of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (MSO).7 It was through Clarke that Violet got the opportunity to attend the MSO’s rehearsals, exposing herself to a diversity of composers, including Milhaud, Vaughan Williams, John Ireland, and William Walton.8 Clarke and the MSO also gave Violet her orchestral composition debut, performing her Scherzo Sinfonico in 1940.
After her studies at McGill, while still living in Montreal, Violet became involved in the Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra (MWSO), the first women’s symphony orchestra in Canada, founded in 1940. She was introduced to the MWSO by May Fluhmann, a classmate from McGill who played timpani with the symphony. Violet joined as a percussionist, playing all kinds of instruments including drums, cymbals, glockenspiel, and whatever else was required. As it was composed entirely of women, many of whom who had daytime commitments and responsibilities such as housewifery, office work, childcare, etc., the MWSO met in the evenings. They played both classical and contemporary music, and put on many concerts throughout the year. As percussionist, Violet was able to use the time in between her parts to study the scores of the music they played and to memorize the principal themes, reproducing them when she returned home to test herself. She played with the MWSO for almost eight years, from 1940 to 1947.9
“It was as if I were a writer and I had not learned how to spell but had these wonderful ideas. It wouldn’t be until I could write properly and spell and know my grammar that I could put down my ideas adequately.”
Brenda Dalen, “The Composer’s Voice: ‘What Women Can Do,’” Canadian University Music Review/Revue de musique des universtiés canadiennes 16, no. 1 (1995): 25.
It was also while living in Montreal that Violet found the opportunity to study under Béla Bartók. In 1942 Bartók was supposed to travel to Montreal to play with the MSO, but was unable to visit due to issues with his visa. Violet was disappointed, as she had hoped to study under him, so she took matters into her own hands. She wrote to the journal Musical Courier asking for an address for Bartók, and sent him a letter asking for the opportunity to come to New York and study composition under him. Bartók replied, asking for her to send him some of her compositions, which she did. Bartók then offered to give her lessons, so Violet traveled to New York for a summer. While there she took weekly classes with Bartók, focusing on harmonies and harmonizing melodies, and giving Violet exposure to Hungarian and German folk tunes.10
In addition to Bartók, another important figure in Violet’s musical education was the composer Paul Hindemith. In 1947 Violet enrolled in composition at Yale where Hindemith taught. Hindemith, notorious for his rigorous and critical teaching approach, instilled in Violet a discipline and technique that she carried through her career, and taught her the importance of playing compositions on the instrument, and to work with those who would be performing the pieces.
“I didn’t have any discipline of that kind, but I got the full force of Paul Hindemith. When I was with Paul Hindemith, I learned how to do it the right way for Hungarian or whatever – for any kind of folk melody.”
Brenda Dalen, “The Composer’s Voice: ‘What Women Can Do,’” Canadian University Music Review/Revue de musique des universtiés canadiennes 16, no. 1 (1995): 25.
Violet was able to give the lessons of Hindemith and the other Yale instructors her full attention, because, thanks to a series of scholarships from Yale and the Québec government, for the first time in her education Violet was able study without also working to support herself. It also allowed her to continue to contribute as a performer, as she played percussion with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra from 1947 to 1949. She earned a Bachelor of Music from Yale in 1948, and a Master of Music the following year.
While at Yale, Violet began to get recognition for her compositions, and see them performed. Her composition The Bell was awarded the 1949 Woods Chandler Memorial Prize for a large choral-orchestral work, and was performed four years later by the Montreal Bach Choir. Also in 1949, Violet’s Fanfare and Passacaglia was premiered at the International Student Symposium of Music in Boston, and she was given an award from the Ladies’ Morning Musical Club of Montreal which allowed her to travel to Europe in 1950 and perform piano pieces in England, France, Switzerland, and Italy.11
Career
Over the course of her career, Violet produced over 330 compositions that have been performed in over 30 countries. She composed in a variety of styles, drawing influence from disparate traditions including Western classical, modernist, parallelism, and folk, and worked on both traditional and contemporary compositions. Her works covered a wide range of formats, including comic opera, film scores, educational and pedagogical works, and works written for beginning performers, particularly children. While piano was her dearest instrument to compose for, her works also encompassed clarinet, percussion, strings, bass, flute, choir, etc.12
In addition to composition, Violet devoted much of her time to teaching a new generation of musicians and composers. After teaching piano lessons to help pay for her time at McGill, she spent a few years teaching at the McGill Conservatory between 1944 and 1947, before moving to attend Yale. While studying at Yale, she spent the summers of 1948 and 1949 teaching at the summer school at the University of Alberta. Her teaching in post- secondary institutions continued into the 1950s, when she took the position of composer-in-residence at the University of North Texas, where she had the opportunity to study musicology with Otto Kinkeldey, who was there as a visiting professor. She also taught for a year, 1952, at Cornell. After 1953 she continued her work in the United States, taking a position as an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma from 1953 to 1961, when she returned to Canada.13
Violet returned to Canada to enroll in a doctoral program at the University of Toronto, but was forced to leave the program to tend to her ailing mother. Violet then took a position with the music faculty at the University of Alberta, serving there as the chair of the music theory and composition department. Violet stayed with the University of Alberta until her retirement in 1978. Post-retirement, Violet continued her relationship with the university as professor emeritus, returning to various courses in the music program, as well as traveling to lecture at other institutions including the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Alaska. She also continued to offer private lessons in music and composition, still taking on new students into her 80s. She passed away on February 21, 2000 in Ottawa, Ontario.
Throughout her career, Violet participated in a wide variety of organizations and events in the Canadian music community. While at the University of Oklahoma, she hosted radio and television programs on 20th century music, and acted as a state and national judge for composition competitions. From 1965 to 1969 she was involved with the Western Board of Music, an examining body that worked to standardize musical examination across Canada. In 1975 she was elected to the council of the Canadian League of Composers. Two years later, after moving to Edmonton, she helped to co-found the Alberta Composers’ Association. She also helped to organize multiple events in Alberta, including the Canadian Music Week in Edmonton and a celebration of women in the arts in 1988 for which she served on the advisory board.
In Edmonton, three separate events, a 1985 Violet Archer Festival, a 1993 gala celebrating her 80th birthday, and a 1998 farewell concert marking her departure to Ottawa all speak to her importance to the city and its music community. In Parkallen, the community in Edmonton where Violet lived, one of the parks has been renamed Violet Archer Park to commemorate her.14 Her name is also commemorated through the Violet Archer Graduate Scholarship in Musical Composition at the University of Alberta and the Violet Archer Library, a library of music scores held at the Prairie Region of the Canadian Music Centre at the University of Calgary.
Violet and her hundreds of compositions stand as a realization of the marriage of a broad and diverse range of musical techniques, styles, genres, and influences, brought together in a diversity of formats from film and opera to pedagogical works and pieces for children. Her pursuit of knowledge produced an expertise that has been shared in Alberta through her many years of work at the University of Alberta and her active participation in the culture and community of the province.
Footnotes
1 Brenda Dalen, “The Composer’s Voice: ‘What Women Can Do,’” Canadian University Music Review/ Revue de musique des universités canadiennes 16, no. 1 (1995): 19.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., 23.
4 Ibid., 25.
5 Elaine Keillow, Betty Nygaard King, and Helmut Kallmann, “Violet Archer,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, March 4, 2015, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/violet-archer.
6 Dalen, “The Composer’s Voice,” 27.
7 Keillor, King, and Kallmann, “Violet Archer.”
8 Dalen, “The Composer’s Voice,” 28.
9 Ibid., 28-30.
10 Ibid., 35-36.
11 Keillor, King, and Kallmann, “Violet Archer.”
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
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