Music of Canada in 17th Century

The French immigrants and explorers to New France brought with them a great love songs, dance and fraud playing. Starting in the 1603’s French and Aboriginal children at Quebec City were taught to compose and play European instruments such as viols, violins, guitar, transverse flutes, drums, fifes and trumpets. Ecole des Ursulines and the Ursuline Convent are among North America’s oldest schools and the first institution of teaching of the women in the North America, were both founded in 1639 by the French nun Marie of the Incarnation (1599-1672) alongside with the laywoman Maries Madeline de Chauvigny de la Peltrie from 1603 to 1671 and are the first Canadian institutions to have music as the parts of the program.

source of picture: ceudmilefailteband.webs.com

The first written record of violins in Canada came from the Jesuit Relation of 1645; the Jesuits additionally have the first record of organ sale, which was imported for their Quebec City chapel in the year 1657. Notre Dame de Quebec Cathedral which was built in 1647 as the primate church of Canada and seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Quebec, this is the oldest Catholic Episcopal seen in the recent world north of the Mexico and the site of the first documented choir in Canada.

Canada, New France, which is the first formal ball that was given by the Louis Theandre Chartier de Lotbiniere from 1612 to 1688 on 4 Feb 1667, Louis Jolliet from 1645 to 1700 is on the record of the explorer, the hydrography and voyageur. Jolliet is said to have played the organ, harpsichord, flute, and trumpet. The French priest, Rene Menard, that sang motets around 1640 and a second Canadian born priest, Charles Amador Martin, is attributed with the plainchant music for the Sacrae familiar Felix spectacular in the celebration of the Holy Family feast day in 1700.