Vic Nees

Victor Nees () (8 March 1936 – 14 March 2013) was a Belgian (Flemish) composer (mainly of choral music), choral conductor, musicologist, and music educator. Early life and education Vic Nees’s father was Staf Nees, a famous Belgian carillonist, composer and organist. Vic Nees was born in Mechelen. His early musical education was intense but informal. He had piano and organ lessons, and after taking a preparatory course of solfège by Paul Gilson he became a member of the cathedral choir of St. Rumbold’s, then conducted by Jules Van Nuffel, who greatly impressed him. Of equal importance in his education were his father’s musical friends and acquaintances; they included Marinus de Jong, Jef van Hoof, and Arthur Meulemans. But until 1956 he was mainly self-taught, using his father’s library of scores and recordings. His interest in classical and romantic music was short-lived; very quickly it turned to the moderns of the day, like Milhaud, Hindemith, Bartók and especially Stravinsky; later also Britten. As a young teenager he already substituted for his father, away on concert tours, at the organ of the Basilica of Our Lady of Hanswijk. His father also drafted him as an accompanist at