François Morel

François Morel

Biography

François Morel (b. 14 March 1926, Montreal, Que.) is a French Canadian pianist, conductor, educator and composer.

Morel studied at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal from 1944–1953. His teachers included Claude Champagne (composition), Isabelle Delorme (harmony, counterpoint, fugue), Gérald Gagnier (conducting), Arthur Letondal (piano), Germaine Malépart, Jean Papineau-Couture (acoustics), and Edmond Trudel (piano). He was a founding member of the Canadian League of Composers in 1951. From 1956–1979 he worked for CBC Radio as a composer of incidental music, music consultant, and researcher.

Morel taught music analysis and composition at the Institut Nazareth from 1959–1961. In 1972 he was appointed director of the Académie de musique du Québec, a position he held through 1978. From 1976–1979 he taught at the Bourgchemin Cegep in Drummondville and from 1979–1997 he taught at Université Laval. He also served on the faculty of the Université de Montréal in 1979–1980. His work for guitar Me duele España, played by and written for guitarist Michael Laucke, was recorded on the Radio Canada International label (RCI 457) and won the Grand Prix du Disque of the Canadian Music Council in 1979 for the best Canadian recording.

An associate of the Canadian Music Centre, he was made a Knight of the National Order of Quebec in 1994 and was awarded the Prix Denise-Pelletier in 1996. He has had his works premiered by the CBC Symphony Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Works for Winds

• De Subitement Lointain (1989)
• Diptyque (1954/1999)
• Neumes d’Espace et Reliefs (1967)
• Requiem for Winds (1966)
• Strophes, séquences, mouvements (1999/2002)

Resources

• Alain Cazes, personal correspondence, 2 October 2016
• François Morel, Wikipedia Accessed 2 October 2016