Person

Helmer, Paul

1938-

Biographical Sketch
Dr. Paul Helmer is a Canadian pianist and musicologist, and a former associate professor of musicology at the Schulich School of Music, McGill University. Born October 18, 1938 in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Paul Helmer’s principal piano teachers were Alberto Guerrero and Béla Böszörmeny-Nagy. He holds a certificate in piano performance from the University of Toronto (A.Dip. ’58), a Bachelor of Arts in German from the University of Toronto (B.A. ’66), as well as two degrees in historical musicology from the ColumbiaUniversity (M.A. ’68, Ph.D. ’75). An accomplished performer, Dr. Helmer made his debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the age of fifteen, and has since appeared with numerous Canadian orchestras. He participated in the Canadian premieres of Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie (1964) and Boulez’ Structures for Piano, Book II (1966, with Bruce Mather), as well as the North American premiere of Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s Premier Fragment Symphonique, Étude sur les mouvements rotatoires, and the world premieres of John Weinzweig’s Piano Concerto (1966) and Istvan Anhalt’s La Tourangelle (1975). Dr. Helmer has collaborated with Cathy Berberian, Victor Braun, Angèle Dubeau, Rivka Golan and Moshe Hammer, as well as the Orford String Quartet, the Tudor Singers of Montreal, the Elmer Iseler Singers, and the Festival Wind Soloists. He has also made numerous recordings for CBC radio and television. Dr. Helmer’s research interests include medieval music – specifically Western liturgical chant – and the influence of European immigration on the musical landscape of Canada. He published an edition of Le Premier et le secont livre de Fauvel (1997), a reconstruction of the twelfth-century mass Missa Sancti Iacobi (1988), and the monograph, Growing with Canada: The Émigré Tradition in Canadian Music (2009).