Paul Massie participates in the Christmas lights’ ceremony on Parliament Hill earlier this month.
Local music teacher Pierre Massie had an original composition and two other musical arrangements performed on Parliament Hill’s Peace Tower carillon on Dec. 5 at noon. Dominion Carillonneur Andrea McCrady, performer of the historic Peace Tower bells that can be heard daily across the downtown area, played Massie’s original composition, entitled Mourning Dove.
Massie, who has been teaching music at Glebe Collegiate Institute since 2001 and is the school’s director of fine arts, says he was inspired to write the tune after his bird died.
McCrady also performed Massie’s arrangements of the traditional Wassail Song and Ça, bergers, assemblons-nous.
Massie is the director of the Stairwell Carolers, an award-winning choir group he founded in 1977.
“What happens with me is over the years I get kind of tired of singing the same version (of Christmas songs) over and over. Ça, bergers, assemblons-nous was quite traditional, so what I did was I wrote a really different arrangement of it,” he says.
The unique take on a traditional carol appealed to McCrady. She did an all-Canadian Christmas program as one of her regular recitals, and she says she was tired of hearing the Huron Carol again and again.
Massie and McCrady first collaborated in 2012. McCrady discovered the Stairwell Carolers when she was searching for Canadian Christmas music on Youtube.
“I came across the Stairwell Carolers and listened to it and said, 'Oh, this is a really good group and this is a nice piece. I wonder who they are?'” said McCrady. “I clicked on their website and said, my gosh, they’re in my own backyard, right here in Ottawa.”
McCrady then emailed the Carolers asking if anyone could send her the Mourning Dove score so she could adapt it for the carillon. Massie responded right away.
“We were all electronically doing this: I had never met him, he had never met me,” McCrady said.
“I spent a weekend working on the piece and said, 'You know, this is going to work.' ”
McCrady and Massie finally met in person when McCrady went to a Stairwell Carolers’ performance in Almonte, outside of Ottawa, a week before Mourning Dove was going to be played on the carillon. The choir didn’t know she was in the audience.
“Just before the intermission, somebody from the carolers stepped out and said, ‘Thank you all for coming, and we’re so excited because one of Pierre’s piece is going to be played on the Peace Tower carillon,’ and the audience broke into applause,” she said. “Pierre was grinning ear-to-ear.”
McCrady then went up to Massie and introduced herself as the carillonneur who was adapting his music.
For the 2013 Christmas season, McCrady requested “some spicier stuff” to play along with Massie’s softer and gentler Mourning Dove composition.
Massie will be retiring from his Glebe duties at the end of the school year.
“I’ve done everything I’ve pretty much wanted to do,” Massie says. “I enjoy the students the most, teaching the classes and being with the kids.” He says he will miss it but feels ready to retire.