Please note: This site will look much better in a browser that complies with web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
(born: Montreal, 1851 - died: there, 1915)
Music critic, composer, organist, choirmaster, conductor, teacher and singer
Guillaume Couture studied music in primary school and at the young age of thirteen he became choirmaster in his home church of Ste-Brigide. From ca. 1868-73 he taught solfège in the school system and also served as choirmaster at St-Jacques Church. With the help of a scholarship from his home parish, Couture went to Paris in 1873 and completed the entrance examinations for foreign students at the Paris Conservatoire. He studied voice at the conservatory and completed the regular three-year programme in just one year. By the end of the second year Couture had already begun to compose. In 1875 his orchestral work entitled "Rêverie" was premiered in Paris by the Société nationale de musique.
At the end of that year Couture returned to Montreal and resumed his teaching and his position at St-Jacques, while also becoming a music critic. One year later he returned to Paris, where he taught, composed and published. He assumed a position as choirmaster at Ste-Clotilde Church, at which several famous musicians, such as Camille Saint-Saëns and César Franck had served in the past. Despite the fact that he was highly regarded by many prominent Paris musicians, Couture decided to return to Canada.
As a demanding musician with very high expectations, Couture often clashed with other musicians in Montreal, and this caused him to move from one choir to another in the city. In 1896 he took up teaching at Boston's New England Conservatory. Couture taught at several institutions, including the McGill Conservatorium of Music, founded in 1904. In addition to his teaching, Couture served as a conductor of the Montreal Philharmonic Society and of the Société des Symphonistes, which he founded in 1878. Other musical groups that Couture founded included the Montreal Amateur Operatic Club, the Montreal Ladies' Vocal Society and the first Montreal Symphony Orchestra. In 1910 he became an affiliated composer-member of the Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music in France.
One of his major works was a three-part oratorio entitled "Jean le Précurseur," based on the life of John the Baptist. The oratorio was to have been premiered in November 1914, but due to the outbreak of World War I the premiere was postponed. Unfortunately the oratorio was never performed publicly during Couture's lifetime.
Couture has been described as "the first great musician in the history of Canadian music" (as described by Léo-Pol Morin, as cited in the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada). In 1900 Couture was honoured in France when he was named Officier d'Académie and Officier de l'Instruction publique et des Beaux-Arts. A square in the Notre-Dame-de Grâce district of Montreal was named after Couture in 1951, on the occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary of his birth. Eleven years later an avenue in northeast Montreal was named after him and in 1985 a park was renamed Guillaume Couture Park, which joins Guillaume Couture School. The Canadian Music Centre (founded 1959) named Couture an Associate Composer posthumously.
Sources: