Victoria Cartier

Cartier, Victoria

Victoria (Prudença Victorine) Cartier. Pianist, organist, teacher, b Sorel, Que, 4 Apr 1867, d Montreal 1 Jan 1955. She was a niece of Sir George-Étienne Cartier. She took her academic studies with the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame in Sorel and was a pupil of Romain-Octave Pelletier in piano and organ. She gave her first recital in Sorel, where she also taught piano and was the organist at St-Pierre Church. In 1896 she went to Paris to study organ with Eugène Gigout, piano with Élie Delaborde, theory with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, and pedagogy with Hortense Parent. While in Paris she met Théodore Dubois, Raoul Pugno, and Camille Saint-Saëns. On her return to Montreal in 1898 she founded the École de piano Paris-Montréal, at which the teaching methods of her French masters were to be propounded for some 25 years. On 27 Oct 1898 at Karn Hall she gave the Canadian premiere of the Rhapsodie sur des airs canadiens for organ (Durand ca 1898), which Gigout had dedicated to her.

Cartier broadened her knowledge of the workings of European institutions during several other trips. Her contribution to music education was remarkably stimulating at the time, as was her participation in the numerous concerts produced at her school, in public, and later on the radio. She taught in several institutions, such as Villa-Maria Convent and the Institut pédagogique de Westmount. Among her pupils were Alfred Lamoureux, Jean Leduc, Éviola Plouffe, and Esther Wayland. In addition to her own teaching and her work in education she was the organist at several Montreal churches - first at St-Louis-de-France, then at St-Viateur d'Outremont where she inaugurated the Casavant organ in 1913, and finally at Immaculée-Conception. In Paris she was named an officer of the French Académie in 1901 and of the Instruction publique in 1912.