François Brassard

François Joseph Brassard (born October 6, 1908 in Saint-Jérôme , † April 26, 1976 in Québec ) was a Canadian ethnomusicologist , organist, composer and music teacher.

Brassard studied piano with Rolland-Georges Gingras , organ with Omer Létourneau and harmony with Robert Talbot . As a scholarship holder of the Académie de musique du Québec , he was a student of Léo-Pol Morin and Claude Champagne in Montreal in 1930 . He completed his training from 1933 to 1934 in Paris with Albert Bertelin and Guy de Lioncourt and in 1935 at the Royal College of Music with Ralph Vaughan Williams .

From 1930 to 1970 Brassard was organist in St-Dominique in Jonquière . Since 1940, while traveling through Canada, he collected more than one thousand two hundred French-Canadian folk songs , which he harmonized and published. He has also published a number of articles, analyzes and essays. In two series (1958 to 1961 and 1965 to 1967; Au bois du rossignolet ), the CBC presented folk songs from its collection.

Since 1946 Brassard taught at Laval University , where he was in charge of the publications of the Archives de folklore . From 1964 he was visiting professor at the University of Montreal , in 1966 he lectured at the Museo del Pueblo Español in Madrid .

Brassard was traditionally shaped in his compositions; he relied on "renewal through simplicity". His Panis angelicus was awarded in 1942 by the Société des musiciens d'église de la province de Québec . The concert hall of the Collège de Jonquière was named Salle François-Brassard in 1965 .