Joseph Bonnet
Encyclopedia
Joseph Bonnet was a French 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 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...

.

One of the major French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 pipe organ
Pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...

 players, Joseph Bonnet was born in Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...

. He first studied with his father, an organist at St. Eulalie. At the age of 14, he became official organist, first at St. Nicholas and almost immediately at St. Michael. Bonnet also attended classes with Alexandre Guilmant
Alexandre Guilmant
Félix-Alexandre Guilmant was a French organist and composer.- Short biography :Guilmant was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer...

 at the Conservatoire de Paris
Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...

. A few years later he finished with a first prize and, in 1906 was selected to become the organist at St. Eustache, Paris
Église Saint-Eustache, Paris
L’église Saint-Eustache is a church in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, built between 1532 and 1632.Situated at the entrance to Paris’s ancient markets and the beginning of rue Montorgueil, the Église de Saint-Eustache is considered a masterpiece of late Gothic architecture...

. In 1911 he had the privilege of succeeding Guilmant as concert organist at the conservatoire. He was actively teaching at this time and one of his notable students from his earlier years was Canadian organist Henri Gagnon
Henri Gagnon
Henri Gagnon was a Canadian composer, organist, and music educator. He spent 51 years playing the organ at the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré where, according to music historian François Brassard, he earned "a prestige similar to that of the famous organists of Europe"...

.

On 28 January 1917 he moved to the United States, where he gave more than 100 concerts around the country until 1919. He was elected an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity in June 1917. Bonnet founded the organ department of the Eastman School of Music
Eastman School of Music
The Eastman School of Music is a music conservatory located in Rochester, New York. The Eastman School is a professional school within the University of Rochester...

 in 1921. He composed a large number of organ pieces and compiled the six-volume Historical Organ Recitals.

A few years later, Bonnet returned to Paris, where Denise Restout
Denise Restout
Denise Restout - keyboard teacher; expert on German and French Baroque performance practice for the keyboard; and protégé, assistant, editor, biographer and domestic partner of noted harpsichordist Wanda Landowska....

 attended one of his master classes in 1933. Four years later, he took Louis Vierne
Louis Vierne
Louis Victor Jules Vierne was a French organist and composer.-Life:Louis Vierne was born in Poitiers, Vienne, nearly blind due to congenital cataracts, but at an early age was discovered to have an unusual gift for music. Louis Victor Jules Vierne (8 October 1870 – 2 June 1937) was a French...

's position as organ teacher and specialist at L’École César-Franck.

In 1940, due to the outbreak of World War II, he was forced to leave France and returned to North America. He was organist at the Worcester Art Museum
Worcester Art Museum
The Worcester Art Museum, also known by its acronym WAM, houses over 35,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day, representing cultures from all over the world. The WAM opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is the second largest art museum in New England...

 1942-1943 and was appointed professor at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal in 1943. In Paris Bonnet had taught a student from Québec named Conrad Bernier who studied with him 1923-26, who eventually became one of the premier advocates of French organ music in the United States as both professor of organ and head of the Organ Department at Catholic University of America.

Bonnet died on 2 August 1944, while vacationing in St. Luce-sur-Mer, near Rimouski, Quebec
Rimouski, Quebec
Rimouski is a Canadian city in the central part of Bas-Saint-Laurent region in eastern Quebec. It is located on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River at the mouth of the Rimouski River, north-east of Quebec City....

. He is buried at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, near Magog (Québec).

Compositions for organ

  • Variations de concert, 1906
  • Poèmes d'automne, 1906
  • Douze pièces (3 volumes: 1909, 1910, 1913)
  • Chant triste, 1925

Sources

  • William Self, For Mine Eyes Have Seen (Worcester, Massachusetts: Worcester Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, 1990)
  • Norbert Durourcq, La musique d'orgue française, 1949

Free scores

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