My Carnival Overture was written a few months after
I received my Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Toronto. The premiere performance took place in 1946 in Montreal on Dominion Day under the baton of Sir Ernest MacMillan. I should mention that the title of this work - which leads many listeners to all kinds of fanciful association - was not given by me but by Sir Ernest.
I still remember vividly that in those years it was almost impossible to have a Canadian work performed by our Symphony orchestras. Realizing these conditions I went very timidly to the secretary of Sir Ernest, but I was told before I even entered her room that the chances that Sir Ernest would have time to look at the score were extremely slim. It was the greatest surprise to me when she called me back about two weeks later to make an appointment to see Sir Ernest. He said: "I would like to premiere this work at my next concert in Montreal, but you did not give it any title!" I answered that it never occurred to me that a performance would really take place and therefore I never went as far as to think about a title. Sir Ernest took the score and said: "Well, it is a work which has a tremendous rhythmic vitality and most colourful orchestration, let's call it "Carnival Overture"."
I did not particularly like the title, but as I did not expect that it would be played again, I thought for the one performance the title might be good enough. But it soon became one of the most frequently performed Canadian compositions, which has been performed up to date nearly 170 times by such distinguished conductors as Sir Adrian Boult, Rafael Kubelik and Walter Susskind. It has been programmed not only by all Canadian orchestras, but also by many orchestras in the USA, Australia and Europe. Now it would obviously be too late to change the title without confusing the audiences and the conductors.
Those listeners who have heard my works of such tragic content as my Memorial to Martin Luther King and
From the Diary of Anne Frank, or my two works of symphonic structure, premiered in Montreal by Zubin Mehta (Piano Concerto No 1 and
Sinfonietta for Winds and Percussion) may find it hard to believe that the
Carnival Overture is from the pen of the same composer. It is a work of joyous nature and written in the harmonic language of the late 19th century. In order to explain the style of this work I would like to say that I have always been fascinated by the question how, for instance, Bach would write if he had lived today, or Bartók if he had lived in the baroque period? Therefore I made up my mind in two of my works to imagine myself living in the past - in the
Carnival Overture in the late 19th century, and in my Passacaglia on a Bach Chorale in the Baroque period. Of course, I did not try to imitate any particular composer, but rather to inject my own personality into the harmonic and contrapuntal style of these two periods; personally I found this approach and link with the past much more fascinating and creative than to orchestrate Bach's keyboard works with effects of a modern orchestra, as for instance was done by Webern or Schoenberg.
When Rafael Kubelik - who conducted in 1952 in Chicago the USA premiere of the Carnival Overture - was asked by a local critic to comment on this work, he said: "I do not programme works according to style or the year they were written but merely on their merit, quality and inspiration. Though this work belongs harmonically to the late 19th century, I cannot think of any other composer of that period who would have written it the way Oskar Morawetz did."
