Gabriel Charpentier

Education

Gabriel Charpentier studied piano with Estelle Letarte in Richmond and Joseph-Antonio Thompson in Trois-Rivières; with Hervé Cloutier and Fernand Graton at Jean-de-Brébeuf College in Montreal (1940–45), and with Jean Papineau-Couture. While pursuing his academic studies he discovered the music of Berg, Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern.

During a stay with the Benedictines of St-Benoît-du-Lac (1945–47) Charpentier studied Gregorian chant with Dom Bergeron. He completed his studies in Paris from 1947 to 1953 with Andrée Bonneville, Nadia Boulanger (composition), Annette Dieudonné (solfège), and Norbert Dufourcq.

Société Radio-Canada

From 1953 to 1980 Gabriel Charpentier was Music Programs co-ordinator and artistic consultant for the television service of Société Radio-Canada. In this dual capacity he collaborated with Françoys Bernier, Pierre Mercure, Pierre Morin, and other producers on the development and production of such series as Concerts pour la jeunesse, L'Heure du concert, Musiques folles des années sages, and Les Beaux Dimanches. The last-named series presented many contemporary works, and one of its programs — Loves, featuring Serge Garant’s “… chant d'amours” and the Brian Macdonald-Harry Freedman ballet “The Shining People of Leonard Cohen” — received an honourable mention in the 1975 Prix Italia competition.

Theatre

Gabriel Charpentier was drawn to the theatre, to which he contributed several works and incidental pieces, notably for the Stratford Festival's Shakespeare, Webster and Molière productions, and for the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, where he was resident music director from 1959 to 1972. In Charpentier’s work, all of the performing arts converge. He divided his musical ability into three categories: vocal and instrumental music, musical theatre, and music for the theatre.

A one-time member of the theatrical troupe the Compagnons de St-Laurent, Charpentier defined himself as a “theatre musician” and understood actors. In more than 60 productions, he developed a personal concept of the role of music in theatre. He felt it should be not “incidental” but integral to the production. He requires his actors to sing, beat out rhythms, and play instruments. For example, in Euripides' Electra and Shakespeare's Pericles or Molière's Le Malade imaginaire, he asked the actors to produce extremely complex rhythmic counterpoints that created a mood favourable to a better understanding of the profound nature of these works.

Charpentier composed the massive Messe de Saint Jean Baptiste et de Sainte Cécile for soloists, choir and orchestra in 1997. He composed extensively for the stage. Other works include compositions for chamber ensembles, solo instruments, voice and choir.  In 1979 New Music Concerts presented three of his works in Toronto.

Klondyke

On 14 February 1965 in Montreal's Orpheum Theatre, the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde premiered Klondyke (book by Jacques Languirand, music by Gabriel Charpentier, directed by Jean Gascon). It was presented in the same year in London's Old Vic for the Commonwealth Festival of the Arts.

Francean Campbell wrote of Charpentier: “He has never embraced serialism or any other strict system but welcomes new sounds and techniques whether natural in origin, or electronic” (Canadian Composer, November 1970).

Operas

Gabriel Charpentier’s opera Orphée I was commissioned for the inauguration of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa (1969). In Orphée I and Orpheus II, an English-language adaptation for the 1972 Stratford Festival, Charpentier combined voices, instruments, and 12 actors.

His miniature operas An English Lesson or Clara-Teacher (premiered in Stratford in 1968), A Tea Symphony or The Perils of Clara (Banff, 1972), Clara et les philosophes, (Quebec City, 1976), Clarabelle-Clarimage, (Toronto, 1979), and Claracello ou Répertoire (Kindersley, Saskatchewan, 1985), reflect Charpentier's creative imagination, his sense of humour and of detail, and his mastery of composition; they also reveal his passionate love for the theatre. These works are part of a projected series of 10 short operas, for which he has written most of the libretti, under the title Clara 91.

Voice

Gabriel Charpentier's vocal and instrumental scores reveal his contrapuntal skills and his profound attachment to Gregorian melisma, a consequence of his time with the Benedictines of St-Benoît-du-Lac. He himself has said: “This [Gregorian chant] is my folklore; this is the basis of all my work. Chant, for me, is a line. If an actor or a singer can trace a line that lives and is meaningful, it is perhaps the most beautiful thing that can happen to a man” (Montreal Star, 18 January 1969).

Poetry

Equally drawn to music and to poetry, he has written, among other verse, the words for Pierre Mercure's Cantate pour une joie and “Dissidence” and for Jocelyne Binet’s Trois Poèmes. His collection of poems Aire won the Prix de la poésie moderne (Paris, 1948). He translated R. Murray Schafer's operas Loving (Toi) and Beauty and the Beast.

Other Roles

During the summers of 1955 and 1956 Gabriel Charpentier gave courses in the history of music at McGill University. He also taught that subject and rhythm at the National Theatre School from 1961 to 1964.

Charpentier was a member of the artistic committee for a performing artists' centre in Brussels and an executive member of the Comus Music Theatre Foundation in Toronto. Charpentier served on the administration council of the Canada Council 1965-75, COMUS Music Theatre in Toronto (1975–88), and MUDRA (1975–78), a performing artists' improvement and research centre directed by Maurice Béjart in Brussels. He also served as artistic director of the Pro Musica Society (1980–81). Charpentier was an associate of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the CLComp.  

Honours

In 1983, Gabriel Charpentier was awarded the Victor M. Lynch-Staunton scholarship by the Canada Council for the Arts.

A version of this entry originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada.