Adélard Joseph Boucher

Adélard Joseph François-Arthur Boucher (28 June 1835[1] – 16 November 1912) was a Canadian publisher, importer, choirmaster,[2] organist, conductor, writer on music, composer and numismatist.

[4] He composed several works for solo piano, of which his most well known are Coecilia, a mazurka caprice; Les Canotiers du St-Laurent, a 'quadrille canadien'; Jolly Dogs Galop; and Souvenir de Sabatier, a suite of waltzes.

He spent the next six years living and studying at the St. Joseph's College and Mother Seton Shrine in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

[6] He was particularly influenced by his music teacher at the school, Henry Dielman, who instructed him in the organ, piano, flute, violin, and singing.

[5] During the 1850s, Boucher spent time studying genealogy, music, and numismatics, all of which remained lifelong interests.

He taught part-time at the Collège Sainte-Marie de Montréal and the school at the Villa-Maria Convent as an instructor in piano and voice.

At that time published French music was difficult to obtain in Canada and Boucher joined the company in hopes of remedying this problem.

Among the Canadian composers Boucher published were Calixa Lavallée, Alexis Contant, Ernest Gagnon, Jean-Baptiste Labelle, Eugène Lapierre, Roméo Larivière, Alfred Mignault, Albertine Morin-Labrecque, Joseph-Julien Perrault, and Charles Wugk Sabatier.

He presented performances of Gioachino Rossini's Stabat Mater (1860, 1868), Sabatier's Cantata (1862), David's Le désert (1866), Vincenzo Bellini's La sonnambula (1867), Michael William Balfe's The Bohemian Girl (1867), Gaetano Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment (1867, 1882), and Charles Gounod's Gallia (1879).

In December 1870 he conducted a concert commemorating the centenary of Ludwig van Beethoven's birth at St-Patrice Hall with a 100 voice choir and an orchestra of 30.

Having never retired, Boucher died in Outremont, Quebec in 1912 and was entombed at the Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery in Montreal.