Juliette Gaultier de la Verendrye

Gaultier de la Vérendrye, Juliette

Juliette Gaultier de la Vérendrye (b Gauthier). Mezzo-soprano, ethnomusicologist, violinist, b Ottawa 7 Aug 1888, d there 21 Aug 1972. She was a younger sister of Eva Gauthier, and her professional name was derived from that of her supposed forebears. She attended McGill University and won a four-year scholarship to Europe, where she studied violin with Jenö Hubay at the Royal Academy in Budapest and voice with Vincenzo Lombardi in Florence. She made a debut with the Boston Opera, but her career (ca 1910-30) was confined mainly to recitals of Acadian, Inuit, and Indian folk music, much of which she herself collected and arranged. She learned the language of the Inuit and dialects of the Pacific Coast Indians to sing the songs of the Nootka, Carrier, and Kootenay. She was known to have taught singing at Greenwich House Music School in New York 1922-5. At the 1927 Canadian Folk Song and Handicraft Festival (CPR Festivals) in Quebec, she sang songs from the Ernest Gagnon and Marius Barbeau collections, some arranged by Marion Bauer with viola accompaniment, and at the 1928 festival she added pastourelles of the 15th century. In the late 1920s she sang in Town Hall, New York, and elsewhere in the USA and England. A member of the Author's Club of Canada, she served 1949-53 as director of Gatineau Museum in Kingsmere. Her clear voice is preserved on a few Canadian Victor Black label records made about 1921.