Joseph Jongen

Joseph Marie Alphonse Nicolas Jongen (14 December 1873 – 12 July 1953) was a Belgian organist, composer, and music educator. Biography Jongen was born in Liège, where his parents had moved from Flanders. He was the elder brother of Léon Jongen. Because of his precocity for music, he was admitted to the Liège Conservatoire at age of seven and spent the next sixteen years there. Jongen studied composition with Jean-Théodore Radoux. In 1892 he was awarded the gold medal in the piano competition, and later that same year he joined the organ class of Charles-Marie Danneels. He won a First Prize for Fugue in 1895, an honors diploma in piano the next year, and another for organ in 1896. In 1902 he returned to Belgium, and in 1903 he was named a professor of harmony and counterpoint at his old Liège college. With the outbreak of World War I, he and his family moved to England, where he founded a piano quartet with violinist Désiré Defauw, violist Lionel Tertis, and cellist Émile Doehaerd. His String Quartet No 2, op. 50, was composed there in 1916. After the end of the war, he returned to Belgium and was named professor of fugue at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. From 1925 until 1939,