Song Of A Nation : The Untold Story of Canada's National Anthem - Robert Harris

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Song Of A Nation

The Untold Story of Canada's National Anthem

By: Robert Harris

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Hardcover | 4 October 2018

At a Glance

Hardcover
272 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.5 x 15 x 2

Hardcover

$65.75

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The greatest story never told, this formidable and gorgeously written biography documents the amazing and controversial short life of Calixa Lavallee--the composer of "O Canada"--and the tumult of 19th-century North America.

He was a composer, a performer, an entrepreneur, and an educator; played pop and classical music; and appeared in his quasi-colonial society, tragically, just ahead of his time. Calixa Lavallee, the French Canadian composer of "O Canada," has a compelling, almost unbelievable personal story. He left home at 12 and worked as a blackface minstrel, travelling throughout the United States for more than a decade; he fought and was injured in the American Civil War in perhaps the most important battle of that war, at Antietam Creek; performed for President Lincoln several times; produced the first opera in Quebec and wrote two of his own; became a leading figure in American music education, representing American music in London; journeyed to Paris to study for two years; tried and failed to create a Quebec national conservatory. And he wrote our national anthem.
But Lavallee also represents all the contradictions and confusions of Canadian identity as our country came together in the last half of the nineteenth century. To understand "O Canada," and to understand the man who wrote it, is to return to the Canada of the mid-nineteenth century, a Canada just forming as a nation, bringing together ancient racial hatreds and novel political possibilities, as culture faced culture, religion faced religion, economy faced economy. Calixa Lavallee is the most famous Canadian you have never heard of, living a life and ultimately composing a song that stands the test of time.

Industry Reviews

Praise for Song of a Nation

Shortlisted for the 2019 Vine Award for History

"[Song of a Nation] is a well-written, well-researched account of the successes and travails of Lavallee's life and of the genesis and evolution of O Canada." --Winnipeg Free Press

"Song of a Nation is a bravura performance with all the dramatic elements of Grand Opera--war, patriotism, loyalty, ambition, family, politics, and enchantment. Robert Harris explains how we became our national song. It makes you want to stand up and sing." --Michael Enright, host of CBC's The Sunday Edition

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