Carleton University Creates Helmut Kallmann Chair for Music in Canada

December 12, 2017

Carleton University is pleased to announce the creation of the Helmut Kallmann Chair for Music in Canada, which will work with undergraduate and graduate students and research topics of Canadian music. This endowed Chair is established thanks to a transformational commitment of $2 million from Carleton Distinguished Research Professor Elaine Keillor. The Koerner Foundation, one of Canada’s most generous supporters of arts and culture, has also given to the initiative.

“I’m thrilled to be doing this,” says Keillor, whose giving includes leaving a bequest in her will to the Chair and Carleton’s music students. “I asked that we name the Chair to honour Helmut Kallmann, the former head of the music division at Library Archives Canada. He was a wonderful influence in my life, as he was for so many during his long career. I’m thankful to Helmut’s family and friends for being so supportive of the naming.”

“Endowed Chairs are a powerful way to ensure that research into and public engagement with a particular area of study continues well into the future,” says Carleton Interim President Alastair Summerlee. “It’s wonderful to create this Chair during Canada’s 150th celebrations and Carleton’s 75th anniversary year. On behalf of the university, I want to offer my deepest thanks to Elaine and the Koerner Foundation for creating this position. I know Elaine has spent her own long and storied career advocating for Canadian music, and Carleton’s alumni and future graduates are made better because of her work.”

“The Kallmann Chair will take advantage of the unique archival research resources in the Ottawa area and will play a leadership role in bringing insights from Canada’s music history to students, music professionals and the public.” says Brian Foss, director of Carleton’s School for Studies in Art and Culture. “In many ways, the Chairholder will follow in Mr. Kallmann’s footsteps, acting as a national and international ambassador for Canadian music.”

Recruitment of the Chair’s inaugural holder will begin soon.

On December 11, Carleton recognized Keillor with a Leadership in Philanthropy Award, recognizing her long support of students and music in Canada. The university is also honoured to offer the Helmut Kallmann Graduate Scholarship in Canadian Music, endowed by Keillor in 2014.

The announcement of the Helmut Kallmann Chair for Music in Canada adds to an exciting week for music at Carleton. On December 5, the university’s Board of Governors approved a motion to begin negotiating the potential purchase of Dominion-Chalmers United Church for use as a multi-purpose performance space for Carleton students and faculty, and as a hub for artists and community groups.

Gifts toward the Helmut Kallmann Chair, Helmut Kallmann Graduate Scholarship and many other Carleton music initiatives count toward Carleton’s $300-million Collaborate Campaign. This campaign is dedicated to Carleton’s Here for Good ethos—raising funds so that together we can contribute more to the good of society, its economy and institutions, and the health and well-being of people around the world. Thanks to donors, the campaign is now more than 80 per cent of the way toward its goal.

About Elaine Keillor
Elaine Keillor made her first public appearance as a pianist before her third birthday. At the age of 10, she completed requirements for the associate degree in piano from the Royal Conservatory of Music, and before she was a teenager, she had performed concertos with orchestra and was giving full recitals. In her teens, she did a Canadian tour and performed in the United States and Europe. In 1976, Keillor became the first woman to graduate with a doctoral degree in musicology from the University of Toronto. She joined Carleton in 1977 as music’s first woman professor and, as an academic, she has made many contributions to the study of Canadian and Indigenous music. Keillor was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2016 for her work as a musicologist and historian of Canada’s musical heritage.

About Helmut Kallmann (1922-2012)
Helmut Max Kallmann was born in Berlin, Germany on August 7, 1922, and showed a keen interest in music from a young age. Kallmann left Germany for Britain in 1939, part of a rescue movement to remove Jewish children and youth from the country, and he was the only member of his family to survive the Nazi regime. Kallmann spent much of the war in internment camps in Canada. In 1944, sponsored by a Canadian Jewish family, he found himself in Toronto working in a bookstore and taking piano lessons. It was the beginning of a decades-long music career in his adopted home country. Kallmann was a librarian at the CBC, head of the music division at the National Library of Canada (now Library Archives Canada), and co-founder of the Canadian Music Library Association (now Canadian Association of Music Libraries). Kallmann co-edited the 1981 and 1992 editions of The Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, and he was a Member of the Order of Canada. In 1960, Kallmann published his book, a History of Music in Canada 1534-1914. It was the subject’s first comprehensive treatment, established the field of Canadian music and encouraged other researchers. The book solidified Kallmann as a pioneering music historian and Canada’s foremost scholar of Canadian music history. Beyond history, Kallmann’s interest in Canadian music, its creation and dissemination, was as broad as it was contemporary: he published studies on Canadian composers, musical instruments, histories of music periodicals and music publishing, and on the uses of audio-visual media in music education. He was also a leader in planning and executing music exhibitions.

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