Choral Music in Montreal Circa 1900: Three Composers

JOHN BECKWITH Choral Music in Montreal Circa 1900: Three Composers Concerts devoted to the staples of the European choral-orchestral repertoire (Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn) were a feature of Canadian musical life in the era between Confederation and the First World War. Typically the chorus was a local one comprising 150 to 400 voices, while in the absence of any local instrumental ensemble of sufficient size and competence the orchestra more often than not was brought in from Boston or Pittsburgh or Chicago. Toronto had three or four societies thriving on this sort of operation, and is often cited as one of the main centres of choral-music cultivation in North America during the period. But similar activities prevailed in Hamilton, Ottawa, and other Canadian cities - including the country's largest city at the time, Montreal. Not only did Montreal have well-organized large choirs (as elsewhere, always at least two rival organizations at a given time, it seems), and a number of gifted and energetic choral-music directors; it was also - and virtually uniquely for Canada - a centre of choral-music composition, and of the production of locally written new works in the large genres of concerted mass, cantata, and oratorio. Three outstanding composers who presented new works before the Montreal public between 1890 and 1913 - Guillaume Couture, Alexis Contant, and Charles A.E. Harriss - are the subject of this short study. Guillaume Couture (1851-1915), a native of Montreal, spent periods of study in Paris (1873-5 and 1876-7), during which he became associated with an influential circle of composers, including Theodore Dubois (Couture's main teacher), Camille Saint-Saens, and Cesar Franck. Appointed to succeed Dubois at Sainte-Clothilde Church, where Franck was the organist, Couture decided instead to return to Montreal, where he pursued a multifaceted career as composer, church musician, critic, teacher, and above all as director of large performing ensembles, the most significant being the Montreal Philharmonic Society/La Societe philharmonique de Montreal. Couture led the Society 1880-99. The range of repertoire covered during his tenure would be challenging to any choral organization today: bigchoir 'standards' such as Judas Mtlccabeus (HandeD, The Seasons (Haydn), St Paul (Mendelssohn), and La Redemption (Gounod); nineteenth-century favourites, now seldom heard, such as the Requiem (Cherubini), Paradise UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 63, NUMBER 4, SUMMER 1994 CHORAL MUSIC IN MONTREAL 505 and the Peri (Schumann), and The May Queen (Sterndale Bennett); and a catholic choice of then-current works, among them The Spectre's Bride (Dvorak), The Golden Legend (Sullivan), La Deluge (Saint-Saens), The ErlKing 's Daughter (Nils Gade), and Olaf Tryguason (Grieg); on one occasion the U.S. composer George W. Chadwick appeared as guest conductor of his own music. The Society also mounted Montreal's first full performances of the operas Samson and Delilah (Saint-Saens) and The Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser (both Wagner), in concert versions. (The absence of J.S. Bach from this summary may be surprising; but his B . Minor Mass, Christmas Oratorio, and two great Passions were not attempted by Canadian choirs before the 19205). Other directorial assignments of Couture - he was well depicted as 'l'un des beaux exemples de polyvalance qu'a connu la musique canadieIUle' (Quenneville, 1: 418) - included eight productions, 1891-8, by the Montreal Amateur Operatic Club, mostly of stage works by w.s. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan; the first two seasons of what would later become the Montreal Symphony Orchestra; a series of Sunday afternoon concerts by a smaller choir, the Montreal Church Music Society, accompanied by a local string orchestra which he also organized; and, after the demise of the Philharmonic Society, annual concerts, 1898-1909, by theChceur de la Cathedrale. In contrast to the broad repertoire of his Philharmonic and MSO seasons, the programs of the Chceur de la Cathedrale concentrated on choral music by contemporary French composers. The annual Holy Week presentations of Les Sept Paroles du Christ, the best-known composition of Couture's teacher, Dubois, became a Montreal tradition; Franck, Saint-Saens, and Massenet were among others whose music figured notably. Couture's second wife, Mercedes Papineau, was a grand-niece of LouisJoseph Papineau, protagonist of the Lower...