Our Canada (Music for Radio No. 1)
Commissioned by the CBC Feb. 1943. A concert suite from incidental music for the historical documentary radio series "Our Canada." First performed in Toronto on CBC under Samuel Hersenhoren.
In three movements with descriptive content:
1. Wheat---"When harvest time draws near, a great rippling sea of green and gold, warm and fragrant under the summer sun, stretching from the wooded lake in the East to the foothills of the Rockies in the West, from the border in the South far into the North........."
2. Bonds of Steel-----"Trains make sweet and stirring music in the night. They sing for those that have the ears to hear and in the swift chatter of their metallic song, they tell a story; a great story of the past and a greater story of the present......"
3. The Land----"Dawn on the Eastern shores. The sun, a golden disc of pale fire rises from the sea. It moves and throws a glow across the land where men live, amidst rocks and trees, wind and rain, rivers and lakes ....speeding over towns and villages....across a boundless Prairie world. In its swift majestic passage through the Rockies it pushes back the shadows...flooding valleys and streams. Dawn on our Western shores. The light sweeps on....out over the broad pacific Ocean.
Written by John Weinzweig, appears on Canadian Music Centre website