François Brassard

François Joseph Brassard (6 October 1908 – 26 April 1976) 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 student of the Académie de musique du Québec he was a student of Léo-Pol Morin and Claude Champagne in Montreal in 1930. He finished his training in 1933-34 in Paris with Albert Bertelin and Guy de Lioncourt and in 1935 at the Royal College of Music with Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Brassard was an organist from 1930 to 1970 in a church in Jonquière, Quebec. Starting in 1940, he collected more than 1200 French-Canadian folksongs on journeys throughout Canada, and published a series of articles and essays. His arrangements were broadcast in two series on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He also taught at Université Laval beginning in 1946 and worked at the folklore archives there.

His composition "Panis angelicus" won a prize in 1942 from the Société des musiciens d'église de la province de Québec. The concert hall of the Cégep de Jonquière was named Salle François Brassard in his honour in 1965.

References

* [http://www.canadianencyclopedia.ca/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU0000418 Encyclopedia of Music in Canada – François Brassard]
* [http://www.pianopedia.com/w_5580_brassard.aspx Pianopedia – François Brassard - Suite "Orléanaises"] Piano solo