Rosemary Smith Mountain's life has been characterized by
exploration and adventure, in the geographical/cultural realms as well as in
the intellectual/creative sense. Her father's pioneering work in the field of comparative
religions was crucial in stimulating these explorations, and her husband Harry
Mountain (sculptor and Celtologist) has proved the perfect companion for
continuing them.
Rosemary was born in 1954 in Montreal, Canada. Her musical training began at home, the
youngest of five children who each received music lessons on piano and one
other instrument; Rosemary started the piano at age 4 (at her own insistence)
and violin at age 9. Listening to
"classical" music, both live and recorded, formed an important and
extensive part of her daily life. At the
age of 9, a year in India exposed her to the richness of music of that country
-- an experience which profoundly affected her future perceptions of musical
sounds and structures. In the late sixties, rock music became another
important influence, again in live as well as recorded formats, as the family
were then living in Cambridge, Massachusetts where Sundays on the
"Common" were a favourite venue for the new American subculture.
In 1970, Rosemary moved back to Canada and was introduced
to jazz and the more complex instrumental rock forms. The distance between these contemporary
musics and those which she perceived as the mainstay of formal musical training
in the conservatories propelled her towards the field of visual arts, and in
1975 she enrolled in the prestigious Nova Scotia College of Art &
Design. There, luckily, she met the
sculptor Harry Mountain (recently graduated from NSCAD), who urged her to take
advantage of her many years of musical training and enrol in a composition
course. In 1976, therefore, she and
Harry moved to London, Ontario where she began the 4-year BMus programme in
theory and composition, studying with Peter Paul Koprowski, and continuing her
study of violin in lessons with the renowned Yuri Mazurkevich. By 1978 she was having her compositions
performed, not only in concerts but also in multidisciplinary collaborations.
Since then, her time has been spent in a variety of
activities within the musical world, juxtaposed with travel, first within
Canada and finally into Europe. Formal
study included a Master's in composition with Rudolf Komorous and a PhD in
music theory with Harald Krebs. As well
as teaching (in secondary schools, colleges and universities), Rosemary spent
many years as a freelance music copyist, working for clients including the CBC,
Oxford University Press, the Canadian Music Centre, and (primarily) R. Murray
Schafer. She has also enjoyed work in
the areas of arts administration, hosting of a weekly radio show on
20th-century music, and occasional performing.
Compositional activities were increasingly complemented by in related
fields, including the study of the role of music in multi-disciplinary
contexts, perceptual & cognitive issues of music perception, and
appropriate methods of analysis to reflect the growing diversity of musical
styles.
In January 1994, having
just completed her Ph.D. in rhythmic theory, Rosemary became a professor of
music at the new, developing Department of Communication & Art at the
University of Aveiro, Portugal, where she taught a wide variety of courses,
helped develop curriculum and research programmes, and worked in administrative
roles. She moved back to Montreal in the
fall of 1999 to take up a position in the Department of Music at Concordia
University, where her teaching was also in diverse areas of music from general
courses for non-music majors to composition, analysis, 20th century history,
sound for animation, electroacoustics and supervision of various students in
interdisciplinary masters and doctoral programmes. [See courses taught]. She also helped build Hexagram, the
inter-university Institute of Research/Creation in Media Arts & Technology,
of which she was Scientific Director for Concordia from 2004-2006. Since then,
her time has been dedicated more to sorting out the various strands of her
research into manageable projects, and to managing the expansion of IMP-NESTAR. She is currently taking advantage of a
"gradual retirement" plan at Concordia to consolidate her many
research findings and begin the process to disseminate them through
conventional & unconventional means, while preparing for a move back to
Europe and return to more composition, performance, research and exploration.
see also: influences
formal
music education:
Longy School
of Music, Cambridge, Mass. (1965-1970) -violin, piano, solfege, ensembles
Royal
Conservatory of Music, Toronto, Ont. (1970-72)
-violin, piano, chamber ensembles
Nova Scotia
College of Art & Design, Canada (1975, 77) – sculpture (BFA programme, incomplete)
B.Mus.
honours (1980) University of Western Ontario, Canada (theory & composition)
M.Mus.
(1986) University of Victoria, B.C., Canada (composition)
Ph.D. (1993)
University of Victoria, B.C., Canada (interdisciplinary: rhythmic theory – psychology - philosophy)
music teaching
1999-2014 Concordia
University, Montreal, Canada
1994-99 University of
Aveiro, Portugal
1992-93 Manor
& High Tunstall Schools, Hartlepool, England
1992 Arthur
Mellows Village College, Glinton, England
1989-90 Northern
Lights College, Fort Nelson, B.C., Canada
1983-88 University
of Victoria, Victoria, B.C., Canada (part-time)
affiliations
/ memberships:
national music archive &
promotion organization
2003-
Canadian Music Centre –
Associate composer
research institutes
2012- CIRMMT
- Centre for Interdisciplinary Research
in Music Media and Technology
2002-2012 Hexagram
– Institute for Research / Creation in Media Arts & Technologies
1998-2002 UnICA
- Communication & Art Research Unit, U. of Aveiro, Portugal
research
teams
2002-
IMP - Interactive Multimedia
Playroom / Thesaurus / NESTAR [P.I.]
2004-
EARS - Electroacoustic
Resource Site Consortium
scholarly
organizations
2009-
International Society for
the Study of Time
1999-
Systematic and Cognitive
Musicology Association
1986-2003 Canadian
Electroacoustic Community (CEC)
1996-2005 European
Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM)
2000-2009 Society
for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC)
1998-2001 Society
for Music Theory (SMT)