François Joseph Brassard (6 October 1908 – 26 April 1976) was a Canadian ethnomusicologist, organist

Organist

An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...

, 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...

 and music teacher.

Brassard studied piano with Rolland-Georges Gingras, organ with Omer Létourneau and harmony with Robert Talbot. As a scholarship student of the Académie de musique du Québec he was a student of Léo-Pol Morin

Léo-Pol Morin

Léo-Pol Morin was a Canadian pianist, music critic, composer, and music educator. He composed under the name James Callihou, with his most well known works being Suite canadienne and Three Eskimos for piano. He also composed works based on Canadian and Inuit folklore/folk music and harmonized a...

 and 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...

 in Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 in 1930. He finished his training in 1933-34 in Paris with Albert Bertelin and Guy de Lioncourt and in 1935 at the Royal College of Music

Royal College of Music

The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...

 with Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...

.

Brassard was an organist from 1930 to 1970 in a church in Jonquière, Quebec

Jonquière, Quebec

Jonquière was a city on the Saguenay River in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec, Canada, near Chicoutimi. In 2002, Jonquière became an arrondissement, or borough, of the merged city of Saguenay....

. Starting in 1940, he collected more than 1200 French-Canadian folksongs on journeys throughout Canada, and published a series of articles and essays. His arrangements were broadcast in two series on 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...

. He also taught at 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...

 beginning in 1946 and worked at the folklore archives there. One of his notable pupils was composer Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux

Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux

Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux was a Canadian composer and music educator who played an important role in the contemporary classical music scene of Canada and France from the late 1960s through the mid 1980s...

.

His composition Panis angelicus won a prize in 1942 from the Société des musiciens d'église de la province de Québec. The concert hall of the Cégep de Jonquière was named Salle François Brassard in his honour in 1965.