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Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
As I lugged the box up from the basement, dust flew everywhere. My father looked at it saying, “Not another one. I don’t think I can face it. We should just pitch them and be done with it.”
We had gone through 10 boxes already, pacing ourselves over the summer.
“Just think, Dad, after this, we’re done.”
I took it to the back step, so the dust wouldn’t land on the furniture. Lifting up the worn flaps, I pulled out the sheet music one piece at a time. My father would tell me whether or not to keep it. My father, his parents and grandparents were musicians. The box hadn’t been opened since it had come to my dad’s house after my grandmother’s death.
Near the bottom, I came across several large pieces of yellowing heavy paper that looked different from the rest.
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“Introduction and Gavotte for Orchestra by Teck Culley,” I read. The title was elegantly written on the front. I turned the page carefully. “Did great-grandfather Teck copy out music for the orchestra?” He had been a flautist with the Toronto Symphony.
“Not that I know of. Let me look at it.”
We went inside to set the large folio on the dining room table.
“What’s a gavotte?” I asked.
“A formal dance.”
After a while, Dad figured out that this was his grandfather’s own composition. My great-grandfather was the son of an impoverished boot-maker, who had come to Canada from London to make a better life for his family. Somehow, Teck had pulled himself out of poverty to become a professional musician.
“I had heard that he was working on something, but I never knew if he’d completed it,” Dad mused.
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The edges of the more-than-a-century-old pages crumbled as I touched them. Each page had 12 staffs drawn by hand, marking the lines and spaces of the treble and bass clef parts for the instruments in the orchestra, flute, oboe, clarinets and so on. It was a sea of notes, but I pointed out to my father that the end of the first line was marked “flute cadenza,” a virtuoso solo passage where the player could demonstrate their prowess.
“Well, he did have an ego,” my father laughed.
The neatly placed tiny eighth, quarter and 16th notes, with phrase and dynamic markings, were all written with a nib pen dipped in ink. There were no crossed-out errors that I could see. If there had been, he would have had to write out the whole page again perfectly.
Underneath that piece, there were other compositions: Dancing Dolls, Mazurka and a French dance. Then we saw three flute trios.
“I imagine he played these with his colleagues at the conservatory,” said my father.
“You’ve never heard them?” He shook his head.
I asked if I could take them home. He agreed.
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I’m not a professional musician but I played what I could on the piano, starting with the Introduction and Gavotte for Orchestra. I did my best to follow the “Maestoso con Gusto” instruction, meaning that it was to be played in a dignified and majestic manner. Next, the Mazurka was quite spritely, in three movements with parts written out for all the instruments, as well as a piano transcription at the end. Then I moved on to the flute trios and there were some beautiful musical phrases.
I never heard Teck play, as he had died before I was born. So I decided to find out what I could about him. I visited the music library at the University of Toronto, which holds the papers for the Royal Conservatory of Music, and its precursor, the Toronto Conservatory of Music. From its syllabi, I learned that he taught there from the 1890s until his death in 1948. I also discovered that he was one of the founding members of what is now the Toronto Musicians’ Association, originally called the Toronto Orchestral Association, and was its president in the early years.
But what was I to do about these original scores?
After mulling it over, I contacted three flautists at our local symphony to see if they would be interested in playing Flute Trio no. 1, which appeared to be complete. They were, and I hosted a concert in my home. Alas, by this time my father had died but my brothers and aunts were as amazed as I was to hear Teck’s lyrical music. I enlisted my son’s friend to record it.
I cried when I heard the second movement, the Andante Pastorale, which has one of the most captivating, harmonious melodies I have ever heard. I felt like he was communicating with me across the century that divided us. Days afterward I found myself humming the tune in my head.
I am thankful we discovered his creation and brought it to light. I will be donating the scores to the University of Toronto music library so that others can play and enjoy them, too.
Joanne Culley lives in Peterborough, Ont.