HISTORY

Strange bed fellows, not.

When it comes to the trials and tribulations of Canadian sport and music, these two have been sonically collaborating ever since the first puck hit the ice in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1828.

From skiing to sleighing, from hockey to curling, and from skating to bobsledding, all have been topped out with a snow covered and icy musical cavalcade of song, dance and rhapsody. Canadian musicians have crafted and with equal zealous today iconic musical imagery to celebrate the greatest of games and their players.

But to be fair and appreciate the bigger picture, the Canadian music business has changed in many ways much more than the canons of competitive and recreational sport.

Long before Edison’s Victrola became a common appliance of the Canadian home, the only way to experience music was to play an instrument or listen to it being played.

To be a gainful musician, one’s choices were to performer, compose, publish, teach, or like many...all of the the above.

If you had the gift of being a productive tunesmith and could add some lyrical prose on top, the prospects of making some good money were excellent.

In the nineteenth century, the main music economic engine was publishing. Most compositions were written for piano and/or voice so it was a natural that leading piano manufacturers also became competitive music publishers to promote their products.

Good playable music was the fuel that drove the piano to become the most essential items When Samuel Nordheimer from Bavaria, Germany set up shop in Canada in 1840 his business and entrepreneurial acumen catapulted him to become the leading Canadian music Publisher and retailer of 19th and early 20th centuries.

In fact his reverse strategy was to publish first, import fine pianos second, and manufacturer third.

He was the “Sam The Record Man” in his day and was the darling of emerging Canadian composers as well as established composers, Lavellee ‘O Canada’ and Muir’s The Maple Leaf for Ever’.

His mansion ‘Glenedyth’ was built on Davenport Hill near Casa Loma, and today the Nordheimer Ravine is honoured with his name.

So going back to Canadian Sports and music, one of the pioneer Canadian composers of significant merit and in the Nordheimer’s roster, was William Braybrooke Bayley whose family incidentally took up summer residence in Long Branch.

Although only in his early twenties, W. Braybrooke Bayley in the 1870s, was churning out popular parlour hits for Nordheimer including ‘La Belle Canadienne’ and ‘The Canadian Lancers’.

Bayley’s most financially rewarding piano piece was ‘Belle of the Rink’ which happily tuned the exponentially popular recreational sport of skating.

Interestingly, Nordheimer put emphasis on Bayley’s second given name ‘Braybrooke’, to help patrons distinguish his works from all the other ‘Williams’ at the time.

Well, it worked then and even today. W. Braybrooke Bayley’s piano sheet music has become highly collectable. During the last decades, major music Universities have acquired original copies to add to their music libraries throughout Canada and the United States.

Bayley’s exhaustive creativity was later explored with his up-taking of photography in the 1890s. His most iconic photos of Long Branch ‘The Quiet Game’ and ‘Woman with Churn’ where published in 1983 ‘Private Realms of Light’. The rest of his photography plates are at the Public Archives Ottawa .

You can hear some of Bayley’s piano music online by logging into the Toronto Public Library and search W. Braybrooke Bayley.

So just for fun, next time you’re at a piano establishment ask the pianist to play some Canadian sports songs. More than likely it will be Dolores Claman’s ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ or one of the many Gord Downey’s stories about ‘the great game’ - but then again, it just might be ‘Belle of the Rink’

BILL ZUFELT

Long Branch Resident and Chair of the History and Culture Committee Long Branch Neighbourhood Association bill.zufelt@lbna.ca