Jean-Josaphat Gagnier

Jean-Josaphat Gagnier (born December 2, 1885 in Montreal , † December 16, 1949 there ) was a Canadian conductor and composer.

Life

Gagnier had first clarinet lessons with his father Joseph Gagnier , then with Jacques Vanpoucke , Louis van Loocke , Léon Medaer and Oscar Arnold , learned trombone with Émile Barbot and Carl Westermeier and piano with Alexis Contant and Romain-Octave Pelletier and studied music theory with Romain Pelletier , Charles Tanguy and Orpha Deveaux .

At the age of fourteen he performed in Sohmer Park and soon afterwards was choirmaster and trombonist of the Orchester symphonique de Montréal . In 1910 he founded the Montreal Concert Band . In 1913 Frank Stephen Meighen appointed him head of the Canadian Grenadier Guards Band ; he held this position until 1943. From 1917 to 1919 he led the Sohmer Park Concert Band .

In the following years he also went on concert tours through the USA , preferably with the Goldman Band . In 1920 he founded the Montreal Little Symphony Orchestra , which he directed until 1931. In 1927 he founded the (third) Orchester symphonique de Montréal .

In 1931 he played twenty-six concerts for the radio with the Canadian Grenadier Guards Band . From 1934 until his death he was music director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation . In 1942 he founded the Gagnier Wind Quintet with four of his brothers and his son Roland .

Gagnier taught from 1925 to 1930 at Mont-St-Louis College and at the Collège de Montréal ; He also taught at the National Conservatory , the McGill Conservatory and the Collège de musique Dominion . He created the first catalog of the works of Canadian composers, which appeared in 1947.

Of the numerous works by Gagnier that can be assigned to the late Romantic period, the opera Le Dame de Coeur in particular has remained famous.

Gagnier came from a musically gifted family; In addition to his father Joseph Gagnier, his brothers Guillaume , René , Armand , Ernest , Lucien and Réal and, in the next generation, Roland , Claire , Gérald and Ève Gagnier were well-known musicians.