Paul McIntyre

Education

Paul McIntyre studied with Eileen McManamy (piano) and Eric Rollinson (theory) in Hamilton and with Oskar Morawetz and Arnold Walter (composition) and Bela Böszörmenyi-Nagy and Alexander Uninsky (piano) at the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto. He also studied piano with Claudio Arrau at Stratford in the summer of 1955.

On a Canadian Amateur Hockey Association scholarship (1953–54), McIntyre attended the Paris Conservatory, where his teachers were Tony Aubin and Olivier Messiaen (composition), and the Salzburg Mozarteum, where he studied conducting with Igor Markevitch, Sixten Ehrling, and Wolfgang Sawallisch. In the summers of 1960 and 1961, he studied conducting with Pierre Monteux.

Career Highlights

Paul McIntyre was assistant conductor of the Opera Festival of Toronto in 1954 and of the Opera Summer School at the University of British Columbia in 1955. He was conductor of the Regina Symphony Orchestra 1959–60. During the 1950s he was heard as a solo recitalist and accompanist on CBC radio and was accompanist to Jan Rubes 1955–57 for Community Concerts. While head of the music department at the University of Alaska 1961–64 and a Carnegie visiting associate professor, he conducted the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra.

McIntyre 1963 he was awarded premiere mention in the Prince Rainier of Monaco International Competition for his Jean de Brébeuf symphony, and the same year he received a resident fellowship from the Huntington Hartford Foundation, Los Angeles. He taught at the University of Minnesota 1964–67, and was chairman of the music department of the College of St Catherine, St Paul, Minnesota, 1967–70, prior to a term 1970–77 as head of the music department at the University of Windsor. He then served 1977–80 as director of the School of Music at that university and continued to teach there after that.

He has been active on the executive of the Canadian League of Composers and was the host of its 30th anniversary conference at the University of Windsor in 1981. In 1986 he conducted a concert performance of Calixa Lavallée's The Widow with his own orchestration. He also organized the “Largely Canadian” series of chamber concerts presented 1984–87 in Windsor.

McIntyre has employed various styles and techniques in his compositions. Beginning in the mid-1960s he has used 12-tone serialism as the sole basis for determining pitch. His cantata Judith, which won the $1,000 prize in the 1958 Vancouver International Festival Competition, had its premiere at that festival with Lois Marshall as soloist and William Steinberg conducting. The Little Red Hen, a “cantata buffa” that includes parts for speaking animals, was performed by the NACO under Mario Bernardi in 1977. McIntyre conducted the premiere of his Seven Serial Psalms, for soloists, chorus, and instrumental ensemble, as part of the “Largely Canadian” series in 1987. His short symphony Matins for the Vigil of Assumption, written in reaction to the accidental killing of an innocent man by police in the Windsor area, was performed by the Windsor Symphony Orchestra under Dwight Bennett in 1990. His studies of the music of black communities resulted in Black Pentecostal Music in Windsor (1976).

He was an associate of the Canadian Music Centre, a member of the CLC, and a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. His earlier manuscripts were deposited at the National Library of Canada.

Personal Life

Paul McIntyre was married to the pianist and organist Phyllis McIntyre (née Runge). Two of their daughters are accomplished violinists, and their son Stephen (born 1961) is an actor and singer who has appeared on Broadway and elsewhere.

Selected Compositions

• The Death of the Hired Man (1961)
• This Is Not True (1966)

• Judith (1957)
• Symphonia sacra (1958)
• Jean de Brébeuf (1961)
• The Little Red Hen (1976)
• Seven Serial Psalms (1986)
• Lamentations Jeremiae Prophetae (1987)

• Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1952)
• Song of Autumn (1955)
• Commedia (1978)
• Matins for the Vigil of Assumption (1989)

• Fantasy on an Eskimo Song (1962)
• Abstract (1963)
• Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (1966)
• Permutations on a Paganini Caprice (1966)
• Encounters (1971)
• Sandwich Music (1977)
• Remembering Vince (1988)
• Two Pieces for Oboe and Tuba (1988)
• Euphonisms (1991)
• Trio Serenade in E (1949)
• String Quartet in A Minor (1951)

• Four Poems of Walter de la Mare (1950)
• Five works for piano (1950–63)
• Fantasy for Organ (1977)
• Three Preludes to Hymn Tunes of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1979)
• Praeludium, Blues and Toccata (1980)
• Prelude & Fugue (1985)
• A Suite of Sweets (1989)