Claude Vivier

Claude Vivier (14 April 19487 March 1983) was a Quebecois composer.
Early life and education.
Vivier was born to unknown parents in Montreal. He was adopted at the age of three by a poor French-Canadian family. From the age of 13, he attended boarding schools run by the Marist Brothers, a religious order that prepared young boys for a vocation in the priesthood. In 1966, at the age of 18, Vivier was asked to leave the novitiate for “lack of maturity”. His earliest works date from this period. He was always openly gay.
In 1971, following study with Gilles Tremblay, he studied for three years in Europe, first with Gottfried Michael Koenig at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht, and then in Cologne with Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Career.
Vivier learned much from Stockhausen, and his early works have aspects that are derivative of his teacher, though his later works bear little resemblance. In 1974, he returned to Montreal and began to establish his reputation. He spent some years travelling in Japan, Bali and Iran.
Vivier's opera "Kopernikus", to his own libretto, was premièred on 8 May 1980 at the Monument-National in Montreal.
In 1982, Vivier moved to Paris. He was murdered there on 7 March 1983 by Pascal Dolzan, a homeless 19-year-old "truqueur" (a trickster who pretends to accept sexual advances in order to gain the opportunity to rob or harm the victim) he had met that evening at a bar. His body was discovered at home much later on 12 March.