Léo-Pol Morin facts for kids
Léo-Pol Morin (born July 13, 1892 – died May 29, 1941) was a talented Canadian musician. He was a great pianist, a music critic who wrote about music, a composer who created music, and a music educator who taught others.
He sometimes used the secret name James Callihou when he composed. His most famous pieces include Suite canadienne and Three Eskimos for piano. He also wrote music inspired by Canadian and Inuit stories and folk songs. He even arranged many old French-Canadian folk songs. A musician named Victor Brault helped turn his Inuit-inspired Chants de sacrifice into music for a choir and two pianos.
Léo-Pol Morin was very interested in music of Canada. He loved using different folk traditions in his music. He wrote many articles about music for Canadian newspapers and magazines. He also published a book and a collection of essays. As a pianist, he helped introduce music by French composers to Canada. He was the first in Canada to play works by famous composers like Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Erik Satie. He also helped Canadian composers get their music heard in France. He played pieces by Claude Champagne and others. The composer Rodolphe Mathieu even dedicated two of his works to Morin.
Early Life and Learning (1892–1914)
Léo-Pol Morin was born in Cap-Saint-Ignace, Quebec. He began his music studies in Quebec City. He learned about solfège (singing notes) and music dictation (writing down music he heard). He also studied piano with Gustave Gagnon and piano and organ with Gustave's son, Henri Gagnon.
Morin gave his first public piano concert in 1909. In 1910, he moved to Montreal. There, he continued to study harmony (how notes fit together) with Guillaume Couture. He also studied piano with Arthur Letondal. In 1912, he won a special award called the Prix d'Europe. This award allowed him to study in Paris, France, from 1912 to 1914.
In Paris, Morin learned more about harmony, counterpoint (combining melodies), and fugue (a type of musical chase). He studied with Jules Mouquet. He also took piano lessons from Isidor Philipp and Raoul Pugno. He gave his first Paris concert in late 1912. On May 29, 1913, he went to the first-ever performance of Igor Stravinsky's famous ballet The Rite of Spring. In January 1914, his teacher Pugno passed away. Another famous Spanish pianist, Ricardo Viñes, then became Morin's teacher. Pugno had played the first performances of many pieces by Ravel and Debussy. He taught Morin to love the music of these two composers very much.
Starting His Career (1914–1925)
When World War I began in 1914, Morin returned to Canada. He stayed there for five years. He lived in Montreal and worked as a teacher and a concert pianist in Quebec province. In 1918, he helped start an arts magazine called Le Nigog. He created it with an architect named Fernand Préfontaine and a writer named Robert de Roquebrune.
Morin went back to Paris in 1919 after the war ended. For the next six years, he was very active in the music scene there. He worked with famous artists like Ravel and Ricardo Viñes. During these years, he would visit Canada sometimes to see his family and perform. But he spent most of his time in Paris. In 1920, he went on a concert tour in England, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The money from these concerts helped build a monument to honor Debussy. He toured those countries again in 1923 with Ravel. In 1926, the Conservatoire de Paris invited him to join a special committee called the Comité d'honneur. Other famous musicians like Manuel de Falla and Arthur Rubinstein were also part of this group.
In the early 1920s, Morin performed many important new works in Paris. This included Alban Berg's Piano Sonata in 1922. Composer Rodolphe Mathieu dedicated his Trois Préludes to Morin. Morin played this piece for the first time in 1921. A music critic named Paul Le Flem wrote about Morin's concert in 1923. He praised Morin for being able to play many different kinds of music so well. He said Morin understood each composer's style perfectly and played with great skill and feeling.
Later Life and Work (1925–1941)
In the fall of 1925, Morin moved back to Montreal from Paris. He quickly started promoting new French music through his concerts and writings. Sometimes, his ideas were very new, and some people didn't agree with them. In 1927, he began to include his own music in his concerts. He used the secret name James Callihou for these pieces.
In December 1927, he and Victor Brault organized the first festival in North America dedicated to the music of Debussy. Famous singers like Cédia Brault and violinists like Robert Imandt performed there. A critic for La Patrie newspaper, Marcel Valois, wrote about Morin's performance at the festival. He said Morin was "always the amazing performer of Debussy." He added that everyone who heard Morin play Debussy's "Cathédrale engloutie" would remember it forever.
In 1926, Morin became the secretary for the Montreal branch of the Pro-Musica Society of New York. In 1928, he performed with Ravel in concerts in Montreal. From 1926 to 1929, he was a music critic for La Patrie. From 1929 to 1931, he taught at the Conservatoire national in Montreal. He also wrote articles for other Canadian magazines. Andrée Desautels wrote in The Canadian Encyclopedia that Morin's writings and concerts showed he was ahead of his time. She called him a "sharp mind" and an "original" person.
In 1931, Morin moved back to Paris. He stayed there mostly until the spring of 1936. In Paris, he performed concerts, gave talks about music, and wrote as a music critic. He came back to Montreal for a few months in 1933. During that time, he performed a concert of modern French music. He returned to Montreal again in 1935 to perform with the new Montreal Symphony Orchestra. In 1934, he toured the United States. In 1936, he gave concerts in Spain and Morocco.
Morin moved back to Montreal in 1936 for good. He joined the teaching staff at the École de musique Vincent-d'Indy. He taught there until his death in 1941. He died in a car accident in the Laurentians mountains. During this time, he also worked as the music critic for Le Canada newspaper. Some of his notable students included Jean Papineau-Couture. He made one last trip to Europe in the summer of 1939. This trip was cut short when World War II began. He performed in several concerts and gave talks for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in the late 1930s. He was a regular guest on the CBC Radio quiz show S.V.P.
