Roger Matton, OC

Order of Canada

The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...

 (18 May 1929 - 7 June 2004) was a Canadian composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, ethnomusicologist, and music educator. As a composer his works are characterized by their association with folklore and folkmusic. In 1965 he was awarded the Prix de la création at the Congrès du spectacle. In 1966 the Montreal Symphony Orchestra

Montreal Symphony Orchestra

Orchestre symphonique de Montréal is a symphony orchestra based in Montréal, Québec, Canada, with Montréal's Place des Arts as its home.-History:...

 included his Mouvement symphonique II in their concert repertoire for their 1966 tour of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, making it one of the first symphonic works by a Canadian composer to be performed in that nation. He was awarded the Calixa-Lavallée Award

Calixa-Lavallée Award

The Calixa-Lavallée Award is a music award created in 1959. It is granted by the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society of Montreal to a Quebecer having distinguished himself or herself in the field of music...

 in 1969 and in 1984 he was named a Officer of the Order of Canada.

Born in Granby, Quebec

Granby, Quebec

Granby is a city in southwestern Quebec, located east of Montreal. The population as of the Canada 2006 Census was 47,637. Granby is the seat of La Haute-Yamaska Regional County Municipality. It is the fifth most populated city in Montérégie after Longueuil, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Brossard and...

, Matton was trained at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal where he was a pupil of Claude Champagne

Claude Champagne

Claude Champagne was a Canadian composer.Born in Montreal, Quebec, he studied violin with Albert Chamberland, organ with Orpha-F. Deveaux, and piano with Romain-Octave Pelletier I and Alexis Contant at the Conservatoire national de musique. In 1921 he went straight to Paris to study music...

 (composition), Isabelle Delorme

Isabelle Delorme

Isabelle Delorme was a Canadian composer, pianist, and music educator. As a composer, her works are lyrical in nature and follow more traditional ideas of harmony as opposed to the avant-garde music that was in vogue in her day...

 (music theory), and Arthur Letondal (piano). He pursued further studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...

, Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...

, and Andrée Vaurabourg

Andrée Vaurabourg

Andrée Vaurabourg was a French pianist and teacher. She was the wife of Swiss-French composer Arthur Honegger , whom she met at the Paris Conservatoire in 1916. Honegger married her in 1926 on the condition that they live in separate apartments...

. He then studied ethnology

Ethnology

Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...

 at the National Museum of Canada with Marius Barbeau

Marius Barbeau

Charles Marius Barbeau, , also known as C. Marius Barbeau, or more commonly simply Marius Barbeau, was a Canadian ethnographer and folklorist who is today considered a founder of Canadian anthropology...

.

Matton started his career working for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...

 as a composer in both radio and television. In 1956 he joined the staff of Université Laval

Université Laval

Laval University is the oldest centre of education in Canada and was the first institution in North America to offer higher education in French...

 where he worked as a researcher and ethnomusicologist in the UL's folklore archives through 1976. He notably transcribed roughly 300 Acadian

Acadian

The Acadians are the descendants of the 17th-century French colonists who settled in Acadia . Acadia was a colony of New France...

 songs between 1957-1959. Among his notable students was composer Alain Gagnon

Alain Gagnon

Alain Gagnon is a Canadian composer and music educator. He joined the music faculty of the Université Laval in 1967 where he has taught music theory, music analysis, and music composition for more than 40 years. A member of the Canadian League of Composers and an associate of the Canadian Music...

.

Source

• Roger Matton at The Canadian Encyclopedia
  The Canadian Encyclopedia
  The Canadian Encyclopedia is a source of information on Canada. It is available online, at no cost. The Canadian Encyclopedia is available in both English and French and includes some 14,000 articles in each language on a wide variety of subjects including history, popular culture, events, people,...