Claude Vivier was murdered

Claude Vivier (b. Montreal, April 14, 1948, d. Paris, March 7, 1983) was a Canadian composer. Born to unknown parents, Vivier was adopted at the age of two and a half by a poor French-Canadian family. From the age of thirteen he attended boarding schools run by the Marist Brothers, a religious order that prepared young boys for a vocation in the priesthood. The young Vivier's religious inclinations were supplanted by a love of modern poetry and music. Upon being asked to leave the noviciat at the age of eighteen, he enrolled the following year at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal, where his main teacher was the composer Gilles Tremblay. His earliest works date from this period. In 1971 he began a period of three years' study in Europe, first at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht, and then in Köln with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Vivier learned much from Stockhausen, even though his later works bear little audible resemblance. In 1974 he returned to Montreal and began to establish his reputation.
Lonely Child (1980) for soprano and orchestra, has become his best-known work. In June 1982, Vivier left Montreal for Paris, where he began work on an opera based on the death of Tchaikovsky. In March the following year he was murdered by a young Parisian male prostitute. His last work was the unfinished Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, which contains a disturbing premonition of his untimely death.