Obituary of Kenneth Peacock

Born in Toronto in 1922. Died in Ottawa November 22, 2000

After two years being bedridden with cancer in an Ottawa Hospital, the outstanding Canadian musicologist and folklorist died in his sleep from pneumonia. His most recent honors came in 1998 when the Folklore Studies Association of Canada awarded him the Marius Barbeau Award for his major contribution to folklore and ethnology in Canada.

In 1982 his pioneering contribution was recognized with an Order of Canada :

Ken Peacock's formal musical training began at the age of five when his parents discovered him at the piano playing tunes he had heard on the phonograph. At the age of twelve he had a juvenile dance combo which played at local school dances and lodge banquets. But classical music was his main interest and he continued playing, composing, and teaching while attending university. At fifteen he graduated from the Conservatory in Toronto [1947: The Royal Conservatory of Music] and four years later completed the Bachelor of Music course at the University of Toronto. He later studied philosophy, English and anthropology and continued his music studies in Boston and Montreal. His String Quartet #1 won the McGill Chamber Music Society Award in 1949.

In 1949 he met Marius Barbeau, Dean of Canadian folklorists, and worked with him on a number of projects including the transcription of Indian music from old Edison cylinder recordings housed in the National Museum. Indigenous music and literature provided the basis of much of his composition during this period. His cantata Songs of the Cedar, based on West Coast native poetry, was among the compositions chosen to represent Canada for the Art Competitions at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki.

Working for the National Museum of Canada from 1951 up to 1971, Kenneth Peacock's work took him from one end of Canada to the other, often pioneering in areas where folklorists had yet to venture. When Marius Barbeau invited him to go to Newfoundland and begin to record the folk music of the people there, Peacock told Dr. Barbeau: "I don't know anything about recording." To which Barbeau replied: "Neither do I. You can improvise as you go along." And Peacock did exactly that.

With tape recorder in hand and a music notation pad, his work in Newfoundland launched him as a multicultural folk-song collector. After more than 10 years of research (1951-1961), during six field visits, Peacock collected 766 songs and melodies from 118 singers in 38 communities. About two-thirds of this work was published in 1965 (see below).

In between visits to Newfoundland, Barbeau invited Peacock to collect music of Cree, Blackfoot, and other natives of the Canadian Plains. Some of these songs along with Newfoundland material were released in the 1950s on two albums (above): Indian Music of the Canadian Plains (1955) and Songs and Ballads of Newfoundland (1956) by Ken Peacock, based on rare material taken down by hand in remote areas where lack of electricity prevented the use of a tape recorder.

At the end of his Newfoundland research in 1961, a West German film company hired him to make a one-hour documentary on the folk music of Newfoundland which was later broadcast on European television.

He was founding member of the Canadian Music Council and was commissioned to write an orchestral composition Essays on Newfoundland Themes for a special concert devoted to music based on indigenous folk tunes.

In 1962 Peacock set out across Canada to see if it would be feasible to study the folk music of immigrants from Europe and Asia. In his 11,000 mile journey he discovered a goldmine of rich materials and he spent the following 10 years crossing the country digging for traditional music of almost forty cultures. He also began photographing and collecting the rich variety of musical instruments and folk artifacts of these cultures. His pioneering efforts formed the basis for the vastly expanded research and display programs of the National Museums of Canada. To help others to do what he was doing, he compiled his advice into a 184-page book: A Practical Guide for Folk Music Collectors (1966).

When he first dropped into the Russian Doukhobor communities in western Canada he was touched by the warmth, cooperation, deep faith, and uniqueness of the singers and their voices. He published some of their singing in Twenty Ethnic Songs from Western Canada (1966) (added to the online Internet Archive in Feb. 2024) and then devoted a full book on singing in Songs of the Doukhobors: An Introductory Outline (1970) (27 songs, Russian/ English, 167 pages, online at the Canadian Museum of History in 9 PDFs).

In Twenty Ethnic Songs (91 pages), covering Doukhobor, Mennonite, Hungarian, Ukrainian and Czeck, Ken devoted 42 of 91 pages (46%), including 12 photos and a complimentary 7-page introduction, explaining USCC Doukhobors and their song traditions. As the first musicologist who transcribed the motifs of Doukhobor psalms into musical notes, he found that their traditional oral literature and music goes back to many centuries and continues to unite all Doukhobors today with beauty, culture, and spirit. One of the psalms he transcribed explains it best: "The singing of psalms beautifies our souls."

In 1965, about two-thirds of his Newfoundland material collected in the 1950s, was compiled and published by the Canadian Museum of History into a monumental three-volume collection totaling 1035-pages, Songs of the Newfoundland Outports (1965) (above). He documented British, French, Irish, Newfoundland and Gaelic songs, capturing and era when many people were still singing widely as the distraction of radio and television was beginning to affect their cultures. News of his work to this remote area inspired many musicians and singers to seek out, learn and preserve their own works; and it stimulated a folk-music revival in Newfoundland. 

In 2019 these 3 volumes were posted for you to read on the Internet Archive. You need a free account to borrow these and thousands of other books. (Search for Doukhobor and find nearly 400 items.)

Another project, A Garland of Rue: Lithuanian Folksongs of Love and Betrothal (1971) edited by Ken, is a collection of Lithuanian matchmaking songs about "the sad state of marriage." For Peacock the songs were particularly interesting because the Lithuanian people were Christianized only in the 13th century; many of their songs still contained powerful references to pre-Christian beliefs when trees, stones, the sun and the moon were gods and goddesses. He was fascinated with mystical folk culture. 

The Canada Music Week newsletter (Nov. 19-26, 1989) made this assessment of Kenneth Peacock:

Kenneth Peacock was an avid reader who enjoyed the company of intellectual and creative peoples. He and composer Harry Somers were students of John Weinzweig. Although he did not personally know Glenn Gould, the two probably passed each other in the music conservatory's halls at the University of Toronto. Peacock recalls being in Marshall McLuhen's home in Toronto around 1953 when several professors were deeply engrossed arguing the merits of Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1951). As he was leaving, McLuhen, the master of "the medium is the message", said: "Do you know that there is a new toilet paper for executives? It is green in color and smells sweet with chlorophyll. Why? 'For kissing sweet'".

During his teens, Peacock recalls when the famous Northrop Frye invited him and other students for classes in his home. "He was a very kind person," Ken told me, "but people were afraid of him. He was intelligent and precocious. When dealing with literary criticisms at the table, he often quoted lengthy paragraphs by memory."

Along with colleagues Marius Barbeau (1883-1969), Helen Creighton (1899-1989) and Edith Fowke (1913-1996), he is considered a pioneer in terms of his efforts to research and disseminate music in Canada. In terms of this, he was also influential in the Canadian folk revival movement. His musical talents were greatly appreciated by Helen Creighton who employed him to do most of the transcriptions of her Nova Scotia collection. He also provided musical transcriptions for Robert Klymasz for some of his Ukrainian publications. His work was readily used by such professional folk song interpreters as Tom Kines (1922-1994) and Alan Mills (1913-1977). Alan Mills autographed a copy of his book Favorite French Folk Songs (1965) "To Ken who knows so much more about our songs, then I do, and whose kindness in sharing his knowledge with others is deeply appreciated."

Although he was not interested in organized religion, Peacock was always interested in spiritual matters, the search of the inner and outer spaces, and Chinese Tao. As time permitted in the 1980s, he went on retreats with a Tibetan Buddhist on top of a mountain near Lincoln, Vermont, USA. His search for simplicity, sincerity, depth of meaning, and beauty were revealed here as they were in his photographic interests which he developed from his youth and later used in his fieldwork.

For many years he made his own horoscopes and often threw I Chings using coins for himself or his friends. He once threw one for me to determine whether I ought to go to Smith Falls or Ottawa for an operation on a ripped Achilles tendon. The choice was Smith Falls and the operation was successful.

His personal library was rich with spiritual, occult, and paranormal information, including such authors as Edgar Cayce, Carlos Castaneta, G.I. Gurdieff, Jane Roberts, Bertrand Russel, George Bernard Shaw, Plato, Aldus Huxley, Henry David Thoreau, Noam Chomsky, Robertson Davies, Northrop Frye, and many others. Many of these volumes have since been donated to local hospitals. He was friends with singer k.d. lang.

By the end of his collecting career Peacock had made over 3300 recordings on 560 tapes. His correspondence, essays, and visual and auditory materials of 2,500 songs from the field collections of 552 tape recordings recently formed the Fonds F 669 - Kenneth Peacock fonds at the Provincial Archives Saskatchewan, Regina; and the Kenneth Peacock Fonds, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA), with 144 audio reels (1951-1961). Earlier his full photographic and audio collection was catalogued and is housed at the Canadian Museum of Civilization [2013: Canadian Museum of History] in Hull [now in Gatineau], Quebec. He willed most of his estate to the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto which sponsors the "Kenneth H. Peacock Lecture Series", and to the Main Branch of the Ottawa YMCA-YWCA [National Capital Region]. The legacy of this talented musician, composer, and folklorist lives on.

As the only child, his mother Goldie died in 1975 and father Aubrey in 1978.

1. Kenneth Howard Peacock: 1922-2000 (PDF). Obituary by Guigne, Anna K. Ethnologies, Volume 22, Number 2, 2000, p. 289–294 — Reprinted (HTML) in The Free Library, 2014. — Error in last sentence: Order of Canada awarded in 1982, not 1984.
   
   
2. In Memoriam: Kenneth Howard Peacock, Composer and Folkmusic Specialist 1922-2000, The Canadian Folk Music Bulletin, Volume 35.1, May 2001, pages 22-25. — Dissertation on "Negro Folk Music" (1943). Error in last sentence, page 25: Order of Canada awarded in 1982, not 1984.
   
   
3. Tarasoff, Koozma. 'Kenneth Peacock: Outstanding Canadian Musician, Musicologist and Folklorist., Iskra [Grand Forks, B.C.] No. 1902 (2001): Pages 15-17. — The above is an enhanced version, with images and links.
   
   
4. Anna Kearney Guigne', 'Kenneth Peacock's Songs of the Newfoundland Outports: The Cultural Politics of a Newfoundland Song Collection', Ph. D. thesis, Department of Folklore, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, 10 May 2004. PDF 864 pages.
   
   
5. Kenneth (Howard) Peacock. Ethnomusicologist, composer, pianist ... by Denise Ménard and Betty Nygaard King, The Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, 2007.
   
   
6. Anna Kearney Guigné. Folksongs and Folk Revival: The Cultural Politics of Kenneth Peacock's Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, ISER, Institute of Social and Economic Research, 2008, 331 pages — Interviews and biography.
   
   
7. Kenneth Peacock, Canadian Music Centre, Music Library — Links to: Works, Centrestreams, Products.
   
   
8. Kenneth Peacock, Wikipedia (English), 2011.
   
   
9. Kenneth Peacock, Wikipedia (German), 2015.
   
   
10. Anna Guigné. The Forgotten Songs of the Newfoundland Outports: As Taken from Kenneth Peacock’s Newfoundland Field Collection, 1951–1961, Mercury Series, Cultural Studies Paper 87, November 2016, 460 pages, 17 illustrations, ISBN 978-0-7766-2384-9
    —— Book launch (video  56 min.) held at The Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media, and Place, Memorial University of Newfoundland, November 30, 2016.
    —— Book Review by Peter G. Toner, The Acadiensis Blog, May 19, 2017.
    —— Book Review by Heather Sparling, Cape Breton University, Newfoundland & Labrador Studies, Vol. 33 No. 1, 2018.
    

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