Book Review

Of twenty-seven book-length biographies and nine autobiographies listed under "Musicians Biographies" in the most recent Canadian bibliographic guide to Canadian music (Morey 1997), this work is one of a handful of seriously researched items. A strong successor to the author' s study of the pioneer U.S. conductor Theodore Thomas (Schabas 1989), it well deserves the success it has enjoyed, including publication in both hard-cover and paperback editions and the 1995 Toronto Book Award (a first for a publication on music). In fleshing out our sense of MacMillan and his era, it valuably fills a gap in Canadian-music studies. Although a selection of MacMillan's writings is announced for 1997 publication by Dundurn Press, his incomplete memoirs have never been published, and none of the previous treatments by other writers popular and scholarly articles, birthday tributes, and the like has exhibited this kind of historical and cultural scope.