This day in music history - 17 July 1976

No. 341 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast341

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This week's Blog and Podcast marks the 44th anniversary of the opening ceremonies to the Summer Olympic Games held in Montreal for a fortnight in July 1976. The remnants of these games, including the famous stadium designed by French architect Roger Taillibert, also includes its deficit, which has become a legend in the field of public finances in Canada, leaving a mixed memory of this event.

The musical look offered today, including the soundtrack of the official ceremonies sold commercially at the time, is an opportunity to reflect on the music of the Quebec composer André Mathieu (1929-1968) and its place in Quebec cultural folklore, including the renewed interest inspired by Alain Lefèvre's recordings over the last twenty years.

In an article in La Presse devoted to the 40th anniversary of the games, I retain the recollections of the legal adviser to the organizing committee, François Godbout (quote amended for this post):

The person in charge of the opening ceremony was André Morin, a Radio-Canada director who played an important role in the cultural component of Expo 67. He wanted a musical score similar to that of a film, an innovation for the Olympic Games. He naturally turned to the work of composer and pianist André Mathieu, for whom he had immense respect. And he asked Vic Vogel to adapt this music.

But above all, it was necessary to obtain the rights to the works of André Mathieu, who died in 1968. The committee negotiated with his widow and when the deal was done, she retrieved an old suitcase: it was the composer's complete work!

In 2012, weproposed a reflection on André Mathieu's career and music, and the section devoted to him in theCanadian Encyclopedia suggests an precocious talent, a career affected by the Second World War, an unhealthy family dynamic and alcohol that will undermine his success. It is difficult to speculate whether, if properly managed, his progress would have been more like that of, for example, Jean Papineau-Couture (fifteen years his senior) or François Dompierre (fifteen years his junior).

If one puts aside the "tragic" aspect of Mathieu's story, and if one concentrates solely on his musical production, one must recognize his genius (especially in his juvenile work), but also the lack of "finish" of these works. We can overlook those things in the work of a child, but we cannot in a young adult; in my opinion, Mathieu must not have been a very good student, because you don't feel maturity in his style - the melodies are there, but their development is quite weak at times.

Quebec lore has not been fond of André Mathieu's music, which in the 1950s and 1960s is considered "a drunk", who earns his living by giving private lessons and who offers himself in performance only in "pianothons" which he promotes himself. Aside from a handful of TV appearances, Mathieu is relegated to oblivion, and will die before reaching his forties.

Vic Vogel (1935-2019) represents a page in the history of Canadian heritage. After working until the late 1950s in the world of bars and cabarets, Vogel led his first band around 1960. It was during this period that Vogel met Mathieu, who frequented the various nightclubs in the Montreal area.

He directed, composed, arranged and orchestrated the music presented at Expo 67, Terre Des Hommes in 1968, the 1976 Montreal Olympics (including a recording for Polydor that became Platinum with more than 200,000 copies sold) and the 1985 Canada Games. For the commercial recording of the ceremonial soundtrack, he acted as music director and teamed up with two local choral groups – les disciples de Massenet and les petits chanteurs du Mont-Royal.

If you listen to the soundtrack carefully, you will recognize the three works proposed in the second part of the montage, all performed by Alain Lefèvre. The lullaby is omnipresent in the athletes' march and in the closing ballet, snippets of the  Concerto de Québec are scattered here and there, and the Olympic cantata is inspired by the Rhapsodie Romantique,which Lefèvre and his orchestrator Gilles Bellemare repurposed as the slow movement of their reconstruction of Mathieu's fourth concerto.

I think you will love this music too!