Belgium on Music Theory Print

Abraham van den Kerckhoven

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Abraham van den Kerckhoven (c. 1618 – c. 1701) was a Flemish organist and composer. He was active in Brussels, working as organist at the local Saint Catherine’s Church and as court organist. He was held in high regard by his contemporaries. A single collection of his works survives, containing numerous short versets and several longer works for organ, displaying his mastery of counterpoint and revealing the influence of various other composers, particularly Peeter Cornet. Biography The exact date and place of van den Kerckhoven’s birth is unknown. It is likely that he was born around 1618. The van den Kerckhoven family, which was active in Brussels as early as the late 16th century, included many distinguished artists, singers, and organists. Several van den Kerckhovens served at the royal chapel, and many were organists at local churches. From about 1632 Abraham was working in Brussels as second organist at the Saint Catherine’s Church (Sint-Katharinakerk or Sint-Katerijnekerk), and in 1634 he became first organist of the same church, succeeding one François Cornet. Van den Kerckhoven held the position for almost 70 years, until his death in late 1701. He was apparently able to c

Adolphe Biarent

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Adolphe Biarent (16 October 1871 – 4 February 1916) was a Belgian composer, conductor, cellist and music teacher. Biarent studied at the conservatories of Brussels and of Ghent, and was a pupil of Émile Mathieu. He won a Belgian Prix de Rome with his cantata Oedipe à Colone in 1901, after which he remained near his home in Charleroi, composing, conducting and teaching (or more accurately, engaging in pedagogy, for example the writing of manuals as well). He was the teacher of Fernand Quinet. Although still little known now, Biarent composed music that successfully combines “the structural solidity” of César Franck and Vincent d’Indy with “something of the orchestral brilliance and clarity” of Emmanuel Chabrier. Selected works *Orchestral works **Trenmor, after Ossian (1905) **Rapsodie wallonne (für Klavier und Orchester) (1910) **Deux sonnets pour violoncelle et orchestre – d`après José-Maria de Hérédia (1909-1912) ***I Le réveil d’un dieu ***II Floridum Mare *Chamber music **Piano Quintet in B minor **Cello Sonata in F minor *Vocal **Song Cycle Huit mélodies pour mezzo-soprano ***I Lied ***II Désir de mort ***III Le chant de ma mère ***IV Il passa ***V Chanson ***VI La lune blanch

Adrianus Petit Coclico

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Adrianus Petit Coclico (1499 in Flanders – after September 1562 in Copenhagen) was a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance. Biography Like many Renaissance composers, very little is known about Coclico’s early life. He was raised Catholic but became a Protestant and left Flanders for Germany. The earliest known reference to him in official documents is at Wittenberg University in 1545, and though he later claimed to have been a pupil of Josquin des Prez and to have worked for Henry VIII, the French royal court, and the Pope, scholarship has not been able to substantiate any of these claims. In 1546, Coclico applied for a position as chair of music at Wittenberg, composing a lost piece on a text by Philipp Melanchthon, and was denied the position. He married around this time, though his wife soon left him, and his attempts to have the union dissolved failed. He then moved to Frankfurt an der Oder and founded a musicians’ society with members of the circle of humanist Jodocus Willich. In poor financial straits, Coclico left Frankfurt for Stettin in 1547, where he was again denied a position; in September of that year he graduated from Königsberg University and entered into the se

Adrien-François Servais

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Adrien-François Servais (6 June 180726 November 1866) was one of the most influential cellists of the nineteenth century. He was born and died in what is now Halle, Belgium. He is one of the founders of the Modern Cellistic Schools of Paris and Madrid, which began through collaboration with his friend Auguste Franchomme and his disciple Víctor Mirecki Larramat. His compositions are still studied, performed and recorded all over the world. Two of his sons also had musical careers and performed his music. Biography Servais was originally trained as a violinist before switching to cello. Known by his contemporaries for his virtuosity and excessive vibrato, he was given the gift of a Stradivarius cello from 1701, which today bears his name. He is also known as the first cellist to adopt the bassists’ use of an endpin because of the large size of his Stradivarius. (The use of the endpin was, however, not generally adopted by most cellists until the early 20th century. For instance, Carlo Alfredo Piatti never used an endpin, though Lisa Cristiani’s use of it in the 1840s and 1850s popularized the practice for female cellists.) had several children, including two sons who also pursued mus

Aimée Van de Wiele

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Aimée Van de Wiele (8 March 1907 – 2 November 1991) She began her music studies at the Brussels Conservatory, where she studied with E. Bosquet and won the Laure van Cutsem prize for piano, as well as prizes for harmony, counterpoint, composition, and music theory. Wiele then moved to France to study harpsichord at the Paris Conservatory with Wanda Landowska and musicology with Andre Pirro. After Landowska’s death in 1959, Wiele began teaching at the Paris Conservatory, where she had several notable students, including Elisabeth Chojnacka and Marketta Valve. Wiele’s compositions include “Poem,” a piece for orchestra, as well as inventions for harpsichord, piano pieces, and transcriptions of various cantatas and sonatas for keyboard. However, she is best remembered today as a performer. Wiele gave solo recitals on harpsichord and performed with orchestras in Belgium, England, France, Italy, and the United States on harpsichord, piano, and organ. She was well known for her interpretations of Bach (particularly the Goldberg Variations) and Couperin, and especially praised for her performance of Poulenc’s Concerto Champetre. Poulenc had originally composed the piece for Landowska, who

Alain Crépin

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Alain Crepin (born 28 February 1954) is a Belgian saxophonist, composer, music educator and conductor. Crepin was born in Mettet near Dinant. He began his studies for saxophone, cello and piano at the Music Academy of Dinant. He studied at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, and studied under François Daneels, Roland Cardon, Yvon Ducène and Jacques Leduc From 1975 to 1981 he was solo saxophonist in Musik Corps of the Gendarmerie and from 1981 to 1983 he also worked as a saxophonist in the Large Band of the Belgian Guides in Brussels. In 1984 he became conductor the band Chasseurs Ardennais. In 1985 he became music director of the Band of the Belgian Air Force. He has performed with the saxophone quartet Dinant. From 1986 to 1997 he was vice president of the International Association for the Promotion of the Saxophone. He was also professor of saxophone at the University of Gap, France and in Alicante, Spain. Since 1981 he has been a professor for saxophone at the Royal Conservatory of Music Brussels. As a composer, he has written numerous works for symphonic bands and orchestras and as a soloist or composer has featured on over 60 albums. Works * 1991 Relâche * 1991 Temptations * 2

Albert Huybrechts

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Albert Huybrechts (12 February 1899 in Dinant – 21 February 1938 in Brussels) was a Belgian composer. Life Albert Huybrechts was born into a musical family. His father, Joseph-Jacques, was a double bassist in the orchestra of the Royal Theatre of La Monnaie, and his great grand-uncle was the cellist Adrien-François Servais. Huybrechts enrolled at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels at age 11, where he studied under Joseph Jongen, P. Marchand, and Léon Du Bois. In 1915, Huybtechts won an award for oboe playing at the Conservatory. In 1920, Huybrechts’ father died; he left the composer a small inheritance. He won a prize for fugue with Jongen in 1922, and in 1926 his String Quartet No. 1 won first prize at the Frost-Coolidge Music Festival in Ojai, California. A few days later, his Violin Sonata won the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge award. The Wall Street crash of 1929 depleted Huybrechts’ inheritance; a thwarted love affair in the 1930s added further stress. In January 1938, at Jean Absil’s recommendation, Huybrechts was appointed as a junior lecturer in harmony at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. On 21 February, he died unexpectedly of kidney failure. Works ;Stage * Agamemnon, Incid

Alex Otterlei

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Alex Otterlei (born 17 September 1968) is a Belgian composer who writes music for orchestra, concert band and other ensembles. Otterlei has created music and sound effects for theatre, short films, video games, roleplaying games and art installations. His music appears on various albums. Biography In the 1990s Otterlei pioneered the art of writing soundtracks for roleplaying games, resulting in popular rpg-soundtracks such as “Battlethemes”, “Arthur” and “Where Evil Lurks”. His Cthulhu-inspired orchestral soundtrack “Horror on the Orient Express” achieved international acclaim. Between 2003 and 2018 Alex Otterlei scored music and/or created sound effects for various videogames including the award-winning series Monkey Tales . Starting from 2009 Otterlei also began to write concert music for orchestra, concert band and other ensembles. Although considered mainly autodidact, Otterlei was later on mentored by Hans Lamal and prominent composer Luc van Hove. Style Best described as neo-tonal, Otterlei does not shun recognizable melodies. He employs modern as well as traditional harmonies, integrating consonance and dissonance in a fluid and logical way. His rhythmic structures can be co

Alphonse Hasselmans

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Alphonse Jean Hasselmans (5 March 1845 – 19 May 1912) was a Belgian harpist, composer, and pedagogue. Biography Hasselmans was born in Liège, Belgium. He studied initially at the Conservatory in Strasbourg, which was led since 1854 by his father Joseph Hasselmans (1814–1902). He continued his studies with Gottlieb Krüger (1824–1895) in Stuttgart and with Ange-Conrad Prumier (1820–1884) in Paris. He began his performing career in the orchestra of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. A series of eight solo concerts in Paris in 1877 resulted in contracts for performances as a soloist with several Paris orchestras. At the death of Prumier in 1884, Hasselsmans succeeded him as professor of harp at the Conservatoire de Paris where he had Caroline Luigini as assistant, a position he held until his sudden death in Paris at age 67. Hasselmans trained a generation of the most important French harpists of the 20th century, including Henriette Renié, Marcel Tournier, Carlos Salzedo, Marcel Grandjany, Lily Laskine, and Pierre Jamet. He became a French citizen in 1903. Hasselmans’ daughter, Marguerite Hasselmans (1876–1947), was a concert pianist; she was also the mistress of Gabriel Fau

Amélie Nikisch

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Amélie Heussner Nikisch (28 December 1862 – 18 January 1938) was a Belgian soprano, actress, voice teacher, and composer. Early life Amélie Augusta Heussner was born in Brussels. Career As a young woman, Heussner played soubrette roles in operas in Kassel and Leipzig. While her husband, Arthur Nikisch, was conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1890 to 1893, she frequently performed with the orchestra as a soprano soloist. “If anything, Mme. Nikisch’s work as a vocalist might be characterized as too finished for the appreciation of the general public”, noted an American newspaper in 1891, “free from all the tricks and devices that are too frequently resorted to for effect and applause”. Nikisch wrote music and lyrics for light operas. Her compositions included the operettas Prinz Adolar und das Tausendschönchen (1907, with Ilse Friedlaender), Meine Tante, deine Tante (1909), Daniel in der Löwengrube (1914, with Friedlaender), and Immer der Andere (1915). One of her voice students was American soprano Eleanor Painter Strong. Personal life Amélie Heussner married Hungarian conductor Arthur Nikisch (1855–1922) in 1885. Amélie Nikisch died in 1938, in Berlin, aged 75 years. Her

André Grétry

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André Ernest Modeste Grétry (; baptised 11 February 1741; died 24 September 1813) was a composer from the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (present-day Belgium), who worked from 1767 onwards in France and took French nationality. He is most famous for his opéras comiques. His music influenced Mozart and Beethoven both of whom wrote variations on his works. Biography He was born at Liège, his father being a poor musician. He was a choirboy at the church of St. Denis (Liège). In 1753 he became a pupil of Jean-Pantaléon Leclerc and later of the organist at St-Pierre de Liège, Nicolas Rennekin, for keyboard and composition and of Henri Moreau, music master at the collegiate church of St. Paul. But of greater importance was the practical tuition he received by attending the performances of an Italian opera company. Here he heard the operas of Baldassarre Galuppi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, and other masters; and the desire of completing his own studies in Italy was the immediate result. To find the necessary means he composed in 1759 a mass which he dedicated to the canons of the Liège Cathedral, and it was at the expense of Canon Hurley that he went to Italy in March 1759. In Rome he went t

André Laporte

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André Laporte (; born 12 July 1931) is a Belgian composer. Biography Laporte was born in Oplinter, near Tienen in Flemish Brabant. He studied music with Edgard de Laet, Flor Peeters, and Marinus De Jong at the Lemmens Institute in Mechelen, and musicology and philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven from 1953 to 1957. From 1960 to 1964 he participated annually in the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, where he came into contact with Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Luciano Berio, György Ligeti, and Mauricio Kagel, amongst others.( In addition, he attended the Second and Third Cologne Courses for New Music organized by Karlheinz Stockhausen, in 1964–65 and 1965–66 where, in addition to Stockhausen, he had the opportunity of meeting the composers Henri Pousseur and Luciano Berio, as well as the conductor Michael Gielen. Starting in 1953, Laporte taught music at a secondary school in Brussels. In 1963 he helped to establish the SPECTRA work group at the Institute for Psycho-Acoustic and Electronic Music (IPEM). In 1972, together with Herman Sabbe, he founded the Belgian section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), and has been its chairp

André Souris

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André Souris (; 10 July 1899 – 12 February 1970) was a Belgian composer, conductor, musicologist, and writer associated with the surrealist movement. Biography Souris was born in Marchienne-au-Pont, Belgium, and studied at the Conservatory in Brussels from 1911 to 1918, winning first prizes in music history (1915), harmony (1916), counterpoint and fugue (1917), and the violin (1918). Following postgraduate studies in composition and orchestration with Gilson, he won the Rubens prize in 1927. This enabled him to move to Paris, where he sought out the leaders of the avant garde. He took conducting lessons with Scherchen in 1935, and was a conductor for the Belgian radio from 1937 to 1946 . Up until 1923 Souris composed a great deal of music under the strong influence of Claude Debussy, but after discovering other musical styles at the Pro Arte Concerts, he repudiated these early works and adopted Erik Satie and Igor Stravinsky as his models. Joining the Belgian surrealists of the group Correspondance around Paul Nougé, he wrote deliberately banal music, beginning with the Choral, marche et galop for four brass instruments (1925), which became his op. 1—a work clearly indebted to L’Hi

Annelies Van Parys

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Annelies Van Parys (born 5 June 1975) is a Belgian classical composer of chamber music, symphonic music, music for theatre productions and opera. Life Born in Bruges, Van Parys studied at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent, piano with Johan Duijck and composition with Luc Brewaeys. She composed in 2001 Phrases V for guitar, harp, piano and percussion. The piece of about 9 minutes was written for the Ictus Ensemble and premiered in Bruges by the ensemble Contr’Art. It was awarded the prize Vlaanderen/Quebec and was performed in Montreal on 15 May 2002. In 2005, she wrote Méditation, a piece of about 7 minutes for a double wind quintet. It was premiered by at a festival in Antwerp’s centre for the arts deSingel on 23 October 2005. Her first symphony, written on a commission by deFilharmonie (now Antwerp Symphony Orchestra) and dedicated toLuc Brewaeys and subtitled “Carillon”, was premiered at the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (BOZAR), on 26 October 2006 by deFilharmonie conducted by Sian Edwards. She composed Poème for solo voice for the mezzo-soprano Els Mondelaers, who premiered it at the Academia Belgica in Rome on 30 March 2006. Van Parys wrote Stanza for solo harp on a commission

Annette Vande Gorne

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Annette Vande Gorne (born 6 January 1946) is a Belgian electroacoustic music composer currently living in Ohain, Belgium. Biography Annette Vande Gorne was born in Charleroi, Belgium. She initially studied music at the conservatories of Mons and Brussels, and privately with Jean Absil. After discovering the acousmatic music developed by Pierre Schaeffer, she became interested in the music of Schaeffer as well as François Bayle and Pierre Henry. She moved to Paris in order to study at the conservatoire with Schaeffer and Reibel. On returning to Belgium she founded the Association de Musiques et Recherches and the Métamorphoses d’Orphée studio. She also launched a series of concerts and an acousmatics festival called L’Espace du son in Brussels in 1984. Since 1986 she has taught in Liège, Brussels, Mons. Recordings * Vox Alia (empreintes DIGITALes, IMED 25196, 2025) * Exils (empreintes DIGITALes, IMED 0890, 2008) * Impalpables (empreintes DIGITALes, IMED 9839, 1998) * Le ginkgo; Architecture nuit; Noces noires (SONARt, IMSO 9504, 1995) * Tao (empreintes DIGITALes, IMED 9311, 1993) List of works * Action / Passion (1987), ballet music for a choreography by Patricia Kuypers * Aglavaine

Arie Van de Moortel

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Arie Van de Moortel (17 July 1918 in Laeken – 1 May 1976 in Brussels) was a Belgian viola virtuoso, composer and music teacher. Van de Moortel studied at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels receiving first prize in viola and chamber music in 1937. He continued his studies on viola with François Broos receiving a further degree in 1939. He then went on to study counterpoint at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent and composition with Prosper Van Eechaute. He performed in several ensembles including the Trio of the Court of Belgium (Trio van het Belgisch Hof), the London Piano Quartet, the M. Raskin String Trio, a viola-piano duo with his wife Lydie Lequeux, and was violist in the Orchestra of the National Institute for Radio Broadcasting (NIR; Nationaal Instituut voor de Radio-omroep). He taught chamber music at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent (1946–1976) and was director of the Music Academy in Anderlecht (1957–1976). Van de Moortel won awards for his compositions including the Staf Nees Prize in 1951 for Variations on the Flemish Folk Song “There Was a Little Snow Bird”, a composition for carillon, the Società del Quartetto G.B. Viotti composition prize in 1954 for his Trio for Reed Ins

Armand Limnander

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Baron Armand-Marie Ghislain Limnander van Nieuwenhove (born 22 May 1814 in Ghent – d. 15 August 1892 at the Château de Moignanville, a village in the department of Seine-et-Oise, France) was a Belgian composer of choral and orchestral works and church music. Knight of the Order of Leopold, he was the founder and conductor of the choral chamber ensembles Société Symphonique and Réunion Lyrique in Belgium. Biography Born to a family who formerly belonged to the bar of the late Council of Flanders, ennobled in 1683, Armand Limnander van Nieuwenhoven was raised in the village of Malines. He studied in Freiburg with Louis Lambillotte and in Paris with François-Joseph Fétis, director of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. From 1838 to 1847 he conducted with great distinction the direction of an amateur choral society entitled Réunion Lyrique composed of 25 members, which premiered there on 31 March the following year, was very well received along with his Le Château de la Barbe-Bleue (1851). In the course of 1853 the composer was working on two books, one for the Opera House and the other to the Opéra-Comique of Paris. His opera Yvonne (1859), set to a libretto by Eugène Scribe, premiere

Arthur De Greef (composer)

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Arthur De Greef (10 October 186229 August 1940) was a Belgian classical pianist and composer of the romantic era. Life and career Born in Louvain, he won first prize in a local music competition at the age of 11 and subsequently enrolled at the Brussels Conservatoire. His main teacher there was Louis Brassin, a former pupil of Ignaz Moscheles, although he also took lessons from other staffers at the institution, including Joseph Dupont, François-Auguste Gevaert and Fernand Kufferath. After graduating with high distinction from the Conservatoire at the age of 17, De Greef went to Weimar to complete his studies under Franz Liszt. He was a pupil of Liszt for two years. Following the Weimar sojourn, De Greef embarked on a career as a concert pianist, travelling widely. He was a friend of Edvard Grieg, whose Piano Concerto he had played publicly in 1898, and who called him “the best performer of my music I have met with”. In addition, he enjoyed the endorsement of Camille Saint-Saëns. British critic Jonathan Woolf has written: “De Greef was, in all respects, an intensely musical, non-sensationalist, eloquent and impressive musician and whilst not being averse to some of the intervention

Arthur Hoérée

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Arthur Hoérée (16 April 1897 in Brussels – 2 June 1986 in Paris) was a Belgian musicologist, critic, conductor and composer. He studied at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels from 1908 to 1912, then at the Conservatoire de Paris. He was a lecturer and a professor at the École normale de musique, École de la radio à Montrouge and the Sorbonne University. He wrote music reviews in many French periodicals including the prestigious and famous La Revue Musicale of Henry Prunières. A specialist in French music, Hoérée has transcribed and produced several works by François Couperin, and he has published two monographs on Albert Roussel (Paris, 1938, 1969). His activities as a composer extend to film and stage music. He often collaborated with Arthur Honegger. He had the composer and organist André Jorrand as student in his course of instrumentation. Film music * 1934: Rapt, by Dimitri Kirsanoff * 1937: Passeurs d’hommes by René Jayet * 1938: Liberty by Jean Kemm * 1938: L’Ange que j’ai vendu by Michel Bernheim * 1939: L’Or dans la montagne by Max Haufler * 1939: Musicians of the Sky (Les Musiciens du ciel) by Georges Lacombe * 1942: À la belle frégate by Albert Valentin * 1942: Eight Men i

Arthur Meulemans

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Arthur Meulemans (19 May 1884 in Aarschot – 29 June 1966 in Etterbeek) was a Belgian composer, conductor, and music teacher. Biography Meulemans’ father was an artisan and a music lover who composed dance music. As a child, Arthur Meulemans received his first music lessons from his father and his uncle Jan, who taught him to play the piccolo. He also got violin classes from a certain mister Single, and piano lessons from Ernest Maréchal. Alfons van den Eynde, a student of Peter Benoit, gave the boy introductory classes in harmony, counterpoint, and fugue. Meulemans studied at the Lemmensinstituut in Mechelen with, among others, Edgar Tinel, Aloys Desmet, and Oscar Depuydt. After completing his final exams, he became a teacher at this institution and remained so until 1914. He got married in 1911 and settled in Tongeren, where he taught music at the Koninklijk Atheneum (a high school). This situation lasted until 1930, the year in which Meulemans was appointed as conductor (together with Fernand Quinet) of the newly founded Vlaams Radio Orkest in Brussels., which nowadays is known as the Brussels Philharmonic. In 1916, he found the Limburge Orgel- en Zangschool in Hasselt. From 1932

August Baeyens

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August Louis Baeyens (5 June 1895 in Antwerp – 17 July 1966 in Antwerp) was a Belgian violist and composer. Baeyens studied viola, harmony and counterpoint with Napoleon Distelmans and August de Boeck at the Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp receiving a first prize in viola in 1916. Beginning in 1911, he was a viola player in Belgian orchestras including that of the French-language opera company in Antwerp, de Royal, and in the orchestra of the Nieuwe Concerten. In 1927, Baeyens founded the Antwerps Kamermuziekensemble (Antwerp Chamber Ensemble). The group performed a wide range of contemporary music before its demise in 1932. The ensemble is credited with many Belgian premieres including works by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Arthur Honegger, Igor Stravinsky, and several Flemish composers including Jef van Durme and Karel Albert. In 1932 Baeyens became secretary of the Royal Flemish Opera (Koninklijke Vlaamse Opera) translating opera libretti into Dutch among other duties. After a long period of illness, he died in Antwerp on 17 July 1966. Selected works ;Stage * De dode Dichter (The Dead Poet), Ballet (1920) * Liefde en

August de Boeck

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Julianus Marie August De Boeck (May 9, 1865 in Merchtem, Belgium – October 9, 1937 in Merchtem) was a Belgian composer, organist and music pedagogue. He was the son of organist and director Florentinus (Flor) De Boeck (1826-1892) Career From 1880 he studied organ at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels under Alphonse Mailly, whose assistant he became until 1902. In 1889 he met the young Paul Gilson who became a close friend and, despite being the same age, his teacher for orchestration. Gilson encouraged De Boeck’s composition work. He became an organist at various churches in Belgian villages (1892-1894 in Merchtem, 1894-1920 in Elsene). His academic career continued in 1907 as professor of harmony at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp (1909–1920) and the Brussels Conservatory, and as director of the Conservatory of Mechelen (1921–1930). His students included Maria Scheepers. In 1930 August De Boeck retired to his birthplace, Merchtem. As with Gilson, De Boeck’s style was influenced by the Russian Five, and especially Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Along with Gilson, he introduced impressionist composition in Belgium. He wrote about 400 compositions including vocal work, operas, religious

Auguste de Peellaert

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Auguste Philippe de Peellaert (Bruges, March 12, 1793 – Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, April 16, 1876) was a Belgian officer who, after his military career, became a painter, composer, and writer. Biography Auguste de Peellaert hailed from an important aristocratic family, members of which had held important offices in Bruges. His father, Anselme de Peellaert, was appointed chamberlain to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1810, and moved with his wife and three children to Paris. Living well above their means, they moved back to Bruges in 1814, where the father died in 1817. From 1809 to 1812 Auguste was boarded in Paris with a man named Lemoine, in the rue Neuve de Berry near the Champs Elysées. In 1815 he began his military career in the Netherlands army. A family member, Pius de Crombrugghe (secretary in the cabinet of Willem I), got him a commission as sous-lieutenant. He also received support from his maternal uncle, , governor of North Brabant (1826–1829) and Antwerp (1830). His brother in law Philippe Veranneman de Watervliet, member of Parliament, was available for support as well. Peellaert was stationed mainly at Kortrijk, Menen and Doornik, where he became friendly with Albert Prisse, who l

Berthe di Vito-Delvaux

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Berthe di Vito-Delvaux (17 May 1915 – 2 April 2005) was a Belgian composer. Biography Berthe di Vito-Delvaux was born in Angleur, Belgium. She studied theory with Désiré Duysens, harmony with Louis Lavoye and piano with Jeanne House at the Royal Academy of Music of Liège, and composition under Léon Jongen at the Brussels Royal Academy of Music. She married at eighteen, but completed her studies and then took a position teaching harmony at the Royal Academy of Music of Liège. In 1949, Berthe di Vito-Delvaux moved to Hasselt, and then in 1964 back to Angleur where she died in 2005. Awards and honors Di Vito-Delvaux received honors and awards including: *Maria Prize from the City of Liège 1938 *Prix de Rome in 1943 *Composition prize from the province of Limburg 1952 *Modeste Grétry Prize from Société d’Auteurs Belge – Belgische Auteurs Maatschappi (SABAM) in 1962 *Consecration Prize from the Province of Liège in 1978. Works Di Vito-Delvaux composed ballets, opera, and theatrical works, as well as works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, voice and instruments. Selected works include: *Sonata for horn and piano, Op. 109 *A Jacqueline op. 157, 1985 for violin and piano *Abandon op. 169, 1

Boudewijn Buckinx

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Boudewijn Buckinx (born 28 March 1945, in Lommel) is a Belgian composer and writer on music. Buckinx attended the Antwerp Conservatory, and from 1964 studied composition and serial music with Lucien Goethals in Ghent, where he also studied electronic music at the IPEM. In 1968 he attended Stockhausen’s composition studio in Darmstadt and participated in the composition of Stockhausen’s Musik für ein Haus, contributing a quintet for flute, oboe, bass clarinet, bassoon, and cello titled Atoom. However, his principal influences are Mauricio Kagel and John Cage. He also studied musicology at the Catholic University of Leuven, graduating in 1972 with a dissertation on Cage’s Variations. Writings *1994. De kleine pomo: of, de muziekgeschiedenis van het postmodernisme. Peer: Alamire. . *1999. (With Yves Knockaert). Muziek uit de voorbije eeuw. Peer: Alamire. . *2001. Aria van de diepe noot: verzamelde commentaren. Peer: Alamire. . Compositions (selective list) * Sløjd, for mixed media (1968) * Piotr Lunaire, for narrator, one singer, and piano (1985) * Ce qu’on entend dans la salle de concert, for orchestra (1987) * In de buurt van Neptunus, for cello and piano (1987) * 1001 Sonatas, for

Brian Clifton (composer)

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Dirk Pilaet (born March 20, 1962, Wilrijk, Antwerp, Belgium), known professionally as Brian Clifton, is a Belgian musician, composer and orchestrator. He composed the music for over 30 films and television series, including De Kollega’s Maken de Brug! (1988), the VRT series Alfa Papa Tango (1990-1991), the American movies Bird of Prey (1995) featuring Richard Chamberlain and Philippe Mora’s Back in Business (1997), Ellektra (2004) starring Matthias Schoenaerts and Axelle Red, and Spike and Suzy: The Dark Diamond (2004). Brian Clifton has been associated with film directors such as Vincent Rouffaer, Robbe De Hert and Nnegest Likké. Clifton is also known for composing the hymn for the Belgian First Division A, the top league competition for association football clubs in Belgium, TV commercials for ICI Paris XL and Christian Dior, and the End Titles for the 2005 Thai historical drama film The King Maker. In recent years, he became a steady guest-lecturer at the Brussels film school RITCS-School of Arts. Selected works Music for movies and series * De Dwaling (1987) (mini) TV Series * Het Ultieme kerstverhaal (1987) by Vincent Rouffaer * A Three-Day Weekend (1988) * Hoogtevrees (1988)

César Franck

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Child and student (1822–1842)#

Franck was born in Liège, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, to Nicolas-Joseph Franck (1794–1871), a bank clerk whose family came from the then German-Dutch border, and Marie-Catherine-Barbe Franck (née Frings, 1788–1860), who was from Aachen, Germany. Although young César-Auguste, as he was known in his early years, showed both drawing and musical skills, his father envisioned him as a young prodigy pianist-composer, after the manner of Franz Liszt or Sigismond Thalberg, who would bring fame and fortune to his family. His father entered Franck at the Royal Conservatory of Liège, studying solfège, piano, organ, and harmony with Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul and other faculty members. César-Auguste gave his first concerts in 1834, one before Leopold I of the newly formed Kingdom of Belgium. In 1835, his father resolved that the time had come for wider audiences, and brought César-Auguste and his younger brother Joseph to Paris, to study privately: harmony and counterpoint with Anton Reicha, piano with Pierre Zimmerman, and solfège with Hippolyte-Raymond Colet. When Reicha died some ten months later, Nicolas-Joseph sought to enter both boys into the Paris Conservatoire. However, the Conservatoire would not accept foreigners; Nicolas-Joseph was obliged to seek French citizenship, which was granted in 1837. In the interval, Nicolas-Joseph promoted concerts and recitals in Paris featuring one or both boys playing popular music of the period, to mostly good reviews. Young Franck and his brother entered the Conservatoire in October 1837, César-Auguste continuing his piano studies under Zimmerman and beginning composition with Aimé Leborn. He took the first prize in piano at the end of his first year (1838) and consistently maintained that level of performance. His work in counterpoint was less spectacular, taking successively third, second, and first prizes between 1838 and 1840. He added organ studies with François Benoist, which included both performance and improvisation, taking second prize in 1841, with the aim of competing for the Prix de Rome in composition in the following year. However, for reasons that are not explicit, he made a “voluntary” retirement from the Conservatoire on 22 April 1842. His withdrawal may have been at his father’s behest. While César-Auguste was pursuing his academic studies, he was, at his father’s demand, also teaching privately and giving concerts. “It was a hard life for him, . . . and not made easier by the ill-tempered and even vindictive behavior of his father . . . .” Concerts performed by young Franck (some with his brother on the violin, some including Franck’s own compositions) were at first received well, but increasingly Nicolas-Joseph’s commercial promotion of his sons antagonized the Parisian musical journals and critics. César-Auguste’s technical abilities as a pianist were acknowledged; his abilities as a composer were (probably justly at this point) felt to be wanting. The whole situation was aggravated by what in the end became a feud between Nicolas-Joseph and Henri Blanchard, the principal critic of the Revue et Gazette musicale, who lost no opportunity to castigate the aggressive pretensions of the father and to mock the “imperial” names of the elder son. This animosity, “undoubtedly personal”, may well have caused Nicolas-Joseph to decide that a return to Belgium was in order, and in 1842 “a peremptory order” to young Franck compelled the latter to leave the Conservatoire and accompany him.

César Thomson

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César Thomson (18 March 1857 – 21 August 1931) was a Belgian violinist, teacher, and composer. Biography He was born in Liège in 1857. At age seven, he entered the Royal Conservatory of Liège, and studied under Désiré Heynberg, Rodolphe Massart and Jacques Dupuis (1830-1870). By age 16, he was considered to have “a technique unrivalled by any other violinist then living”. He was also a student of Hubert Léonard, Henryk Wieniawski and Henri Vieuxtemps. In 1873, he became concertmaster of the private orchestra (52 players) of Baron , a Russian banker and railroad magnate, who, in 1870, had built the Castello di Trevano as a temple to music, in the vicinity of Canobbio, by Lugano, Switzerland. After von Derwies lost his mind and disappeared, Thomson left Lugano in 1877, but not before he had married a local noblewoman, Luisa Riva. César Thomson revived many of the then obscure works of Niccolò Paganini, and he did much work in editing, arranging and transcribing works from the early Italian school, by composers such as Corelli, Handel, Tartini, J. S. Bach, Nardini and Vitali. His own compositions included a Zigeuner Rhapsody for violin and orchestra (1909). Many well-known violinists

Charles Auguste de Bériot

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Charles Auguste de Bériot (; 20 February 18028 April 1870) was a Belgian violinist, artist and composer. Biography Charles de Bériot was born in 1802 in Leuven, France (now part of Belgium) into a noble family but was orphaned at the age of nine. He was given to the custody of his music teacher and friend of his father, Jean-François Tiby (1772–1844). De Bériot began studying violin with Tiby, who trained him in the French style as exemplified by Giovanni Battista Viotti. In 1811 he performed for the first time in public, playing a concerto by Viotti. François-Joseph Fétis says that Tiby sent de Bériot to Paris at the age of 12 (1814), however de Bériot’s own correspondence confirms that he only arrived in Paris in 1821. (This mistake is attributed to the advanced age at which Fétis wrote his final biographical note on de Bériot. ) While in Paris, de Bériot studied briefly at the Paris Conservatory under Pierre Baillot and played for Rodolphe Kreutzer and Viotti. The latter encouraged de Bériot to “..listen a lot…and take what seems good to you, be like the bees and you will create a genre…” After being refused a subsidy by William I of the Netherlands, he returned briefly to B

Charles Houdret

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Charles Houdret (6 July 1905 – 1965) was a Canadian conductor, cellist, radio producer, and composer. He began his career in Belgium and was highly active as a conductor throughout Europe during the 1940s. In 1952 he immigrated to Canada where he ultimately became a naturalized citizen. He was active as a radio producer, cellist, and conductor in Canada up through 1964, after which nothing is known about his whereabouts or activities. Early life and career in Europe Born in Liège, Belgium, Charles Houdret was trained at the Royal Conservatory of Liège where he was a pupil of Sylvain Dupuis in music composition. He also studied in Paris with André Hekking (cello), in Vienna with Felix Weingartner (conducting), and in Brussels with Eugène Ysaÿe (chamber music). Through Ysaÿe he was introduced to Albert I of Belgium and Elisabeth of Bavaria. Impressed with Houdret, the two monarchs appointed him to the post of director of the royal chapel orchestra. With this ensemble, he notably conducted Franz Schubert Symphony No. 5 in B flat major in a 1942 recording on the His Master’s Voice music label. He spent the 1940s conducting this orchestra and others in concerts throughout Europe. During

Charles-Louis-Joseph Hanssens

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Charles-Louis-Joseph Hanssens, known under the name Hanssens the elder (4 May 1777 – 6 May 1852), was a Belgian violinist, composer, conductor and theatre director. His brother Joseph-Jean Hanssens (c1770-1816) was also a conductor. His son was the cellist, conductor and composer Charles-Louis Hanssens (1802–1871). Life Hanssens was born in Ghent. After studying violin in his hometown, Hanssens went to Paris to study harmony with Henri Montan Berton. Back in Ghent, he directed the Theatre of Rhetoric, then followed Mademoiselle Fleury’s troupe to Holland. Called back to Ghent as conductor, he held this position until 1825, then succeeded Charles Borremans as conductor of the orchestra of La Monnaie in Brussels. In 1826, he was one of the founders of the Société d’Apollon with his friend, the composer Joseph-François Snel. In 1827, King William I of the Netherlands chose him to conduct the court music and appointed him inspector of the Royal Music School of Brussels the following year. After a few years of eclipse, he took over the direction of the Monnaie orchestra in 1835, was dismissed in 1838 and returned a third time in 1840. From 1840 to 1847, he shared the direction of La Mon

Chris Mary Francine Whittle

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Chris Mary-Francine Whittle (born 23 May 1927) is a Belgian composer, performer (harpsichord and piano) and teacher. Biography Chris Mary-Francine Whittle was born in Antwerp, Belgium, on 23 May 1927. Whittle studied music at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp, where she won several prizes, including the Albert de Vleeschower prize for composition. Whittle also studied music in France with Alfred Cortot at the École Normale de Musique de Paris. Whittle spent 20 years on concert tours throughout Europe. Works Whittle’s compositions were published by Schott frères. They include: * Trio, Op. 11 (violin, cello and piano; 1949) * Variations for Carillon, Op. 1 (1951) * Woodwind Quintet (1951; won the Albert de Vleeschower prize) Orchestra * Concerto for Piano (1948) * Variations on an Old Scottish Song (1952) Piano * 24 Preludes, Op. 14 (1952) * Ballade, Op 15 (1949) * Berceuse, Op. 4 (1947) * Diurne, Op. 22 (1965) * Impromptu, Op. 27 (1966) * Intermezzi, Op. 32 * Ondine, Op. 12 (1952) * Scottish Dances, Op. 16 (1951) * Sonata, Op. 4 (1947) * Sonata, Op. 9 (1948) * Sonatine, Op. 30 (1967) * Two Nocturnes, Op. 6 (1967-68) * Two Small Pieces, Op. 25 (four hands; 1960) * Two Suites, Op 1 (

Claude Ledoux (composer)

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Claude Ledoux is a Belgian composer, born in 1960. For many years now, the composer has explored the idea of “musical crossing borders” as he attempts to reflect our fragmented world in his musical processes. As a result, his works has been marked by interactions between contemporary sounds and popular musics, non-European idioms and technology. His recent works, accordingly, demonstrate this interest in the “cultural porosity” in which emotion arises from geographical and historical encounters, linking spirituality to the most sensual aspects of our material existence. Biography - early years Passionated by science and art, Ledoux began at 17 y.o. his studies in painting and graphic Art at the Fine Arts School, coupled with music at the Conservatoire de Liège. There, he met Jean-Louis Robert, Philippe Boesmans, Frederic Rzewski, Henri Pousseur and decided for a musical career. He also carried out research into electronic music at the CRFMW studio (today Centre Pousseur) where he met Tristan Murail at the occasion of seminars. Afterwards, Ledoux pursued his education abroad, notably in Hungary (at Béla Bartók seminar), in Italy (in Bolzano and Venice) where he participated in semin

Clément Loret

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Clément Loret (10 October 1833 – 14 February 1909) was an organist, music educator, and composer of Belgian origin, French naturalized. Biography Clément Loret was born in Dendermonde (Termonde) in Belgium. His father Hippolyte, organist (at Notre-Dame de Termonde) and organ builder, introduced him to music and the organ at a very young age. He started playing in church when he was 7 years old, and the following year he occasionally replaced his father at the keyboard. In 1846, his father was appointed organist at Mons, and the young Clément continued his musical studies with Jules Denefve (1814–1877). Admitted to the Royal Conservatory of Brussels in 1851, he was a student of Lemmens for the organ and Fétis for the counterpoint. He won a First Prize in 1853. In 1855, Loret came to Paris. Lemmens had written him a letter of introduction to Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who was so little impressed by the young man that he dared not present him to his acquaintances. However, he linked up with , an harmonium factor, who decided him to stay. He then held organist positions at Suresnes and Notre-Dame des Victoires. Then, he was named titular holder of the new Cavaillé-Coll organ of the Nation

Cornelius Canis

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Cornelius Canis (also de Hondt, d’Hondt) (between 1500 and 1510 – 15 February 1562) was a Franco-Flemish composer, singer, and choir director of the Renaissance, active for much of his life in the Grande Chapelle, the imperial Habsburg music establishment during the reign of Emperor Charles V. He brought the compositional style of the mid-16th century Franco-Flemish school, with its elaborate imitative polyphony, together with the lightness and clarity of the Parisian chanson, and he was one of the few composers of the time to write chansons in both the French and Franco-Flemish idioms. Life No specific records have survived documenting his early life. He was most likely from Ghent, since a surviving letter indicates that his parents lived there, and the earliest records of his career show that he was the singing-master and teacher of the choirboys at the Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-op-de-rade confraternity, part of the Church of St. John in Ghent. He may have been part of a large musical family, since other musicians named d’Hondt, de Hondt, and Canis were active in Ghent, Kortrijk, and other places with connections to the imperial chapel during the 16th century. In 1542, he was given the re

Dan Lacksman

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Dan Lacksman (born 19 May 1950) is a Belgian composer and sound engineer, artist and member of Telex, director of numerous acoustic albums, pop or jazz. He released the album Electric Dreams on 17 May 2013. Biography Dan Lacksman was born in Werl. He started learning music and piano when he was 12 years old. A year later, he received a tape recorder and a guitar for Christmas; he formed a band with school friends. They were playing songs of the Shadows, and some early compositions. He then discovered the music of the Beatles with their huge hit “She Loves You”, and started composing more intensely, recording demo songs in his parents’ dining room, which gradually became his first home studio, with the purchase of a second tape recorder and more instruments like a drumkit and a second-hand Fender Jazz Bass. In those days he composed the music of a song which would become later “Laat me nu toch niet alleen”, made successful by Belgian artist Johan Verminnen, and more recently by the group Clouseau. In 1968, after high school, he decided to become a professional recording engineer. After a few months in a specialised school, frustrated by the slowness of the studies and the lack of pr

Daniel Sternefeld

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Daniel Sternefeld (Antwerp, 27 November 1905 – Brussels, 2 June 1986) was a Belgian composer and conductor. Life and career Sternefeld took private lessons with Renaat Veremans and Paul Gilson at the Royal Conservatory of Flanders in Antwerp, after which he studied conducting under Frank van der Stucken at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He completed his studies with Bernard Paumgartner, Clemens Krauss and Herbert von Karajan. In 1929, he joined the orchestra of the Royal Flemish Opera, and in 1944, he was appointed as its principal conductor. Between 1930 and 1940 Sternefeld was also working for the Koninklijke Nederlandse Schouwburg of Antwerp, for whom he wrote incidental music. He also conducted the Cercle musical juif and several choral societies in Antwerp. During the occupation Sternefeld, an ethnic Jew, was forced into hiding in Antwerp. In 1942, he risked his life by attending the funeral of his teacher Paul Gilson in Brussels. He was arrested in late 1943 and incarcerated in the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen. He stayed several months in this Sammellager but was released. It was during this period that he wrote his first symphony. In 1948, he left the Royal Flemish Opera for the

Désiré Magnus

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Désiré Magnus (né Magnus Deutz; 13 June 1828 – 17 December 1883) was a Belgian concert pianist, teacher and composer of salon music who published under the pseudonym D. Magnus. Biography Magnus was born in Brussels and studied piano with Georg Jacob Vollweiler (1770–1847) in Heidelberg and also at the Brussels Conservatory, receiving the First Prize in 1843. After several successful concert tours in England, Germany, Russia, Spain and other countries, he settled in Paris, and quickly gained a reputation as pianist, teacher, composer, and music critic. Magnus’ performance on the Steinway concert-grand piano at the Exhibition Universelle of 1867 inspired a lithograph by Amédée de Noé. He died in Paris. Selected works ;Opera * La Tolédane (Paris: Salle Taitbout, 1874) ;Chamber music * Les Pleurs de la jeune fille, Nocturne for violin and piano, Op. 13b (1852); original for piano solo * 5ème Nocturne for cello and piano (1877); original version for piano solo * Duo sur des motifs de l’opéra “Paul et Virginie” de Victor Massé for violin and piano (1877); composed in collaboration with Henri Vieuxtemps ;Vocal * O povero garzon! (G. Duprez), Barcarolle vénetienne, Op. 139 (1874) * Sur l’o

Dirk Brossé

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Dirk, Knight Brossé (born 18 February 1960, Ghent) is a Belgian conductor and composer. He has composed over 200 works, including concerti, oratorios, lieder, chamber music and symphonic works. Brossé has also composed extensively for stage, cinema, television. His score for the BBC/HBO series Parade’s End (2012) was nominated for an Emmy Award. Dirk Brossé is currently music director of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and of the Ghent Film Festival. John Williams chose him as Principal Conductor of the Star Wars in Concert World Tour. Brossé is also professor of composition and conducting at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent. Dirk Brossé has conducted international orchestras, both at home and abroad. Amongst them, the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic orchestra, Vancouver Opera, Opéra National de Lyon, BBC Concert Orchestra, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Basel, Madrid, Porto, Birmingham, Ulster, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Queensland, St Petersburg, Los Angeles and Boston. In 2008, he made his first appearance at the Royal Albert Hall in Lon

Edgar Tinel

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Edgar Pierre Joseph Tinel (27 March 185428 October 1912) was a Belgian composer and pianist. He was born in Sinaai, today part of Sint-Niklaas in East Flanders, Belgium, and died in Brussels. After studies at the Brussels Conservatory with Louis Brassin (piano) and François-Auguste Gevaert (composition), he began a career as a virtuoso, but soon abandoned this for composition. In 1877 his cantata Klokke Roeland won him the Belgian Prix de Rome, and in 1881 he succeeded Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens as director of the Mechelen Institute of Religious Music. He devoted himself to a study of old church music, and his ideas gave rise to Pope Pius X’s Motu proprio. Appointed inspector of music education in 1889, he moved to the Brussels Conservatory to become professor of counterpoint and fugue in 1896, and director at the end of 1908. He was made maître de chapelle to the king in 1910, having been elected to the Belgian Royal Academy in 1902. His liturgical music is polyphonic in the Palestrina style, but this technique conflicted with Tinel’s lyrical and mystical temperament, and he had much greater success in his two concert settings of the Te Deum, the oratorio and the religious dramas. Th

Eduard de Lannoy

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Baron Henri Eduard Joseph de Lannoy (3 December 1787 – 28 March 1853), was a Flemish composer, teacher, conductor, and writer on music who spent most of his life in Austria. His compositions bridge the classical and early romantic styles. His full name and title in German was ‘Heinrich Eduard Josef, Freiherr von Lannoy’. Biography Political background The turbulent political events from 1789 include the Belgian Revolution and the French Revolution; during the subsequent French Revolutionary Wars, French troops under Napoléon Bonaparte pushed the armies of the First Coalition as far as the Rhine, and in 1795 the Republic of France formally annexed the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium. See Map of Europe in 1812.) A number of government officials left the country, including Lannoy’s father and Jean Vesque de Puttelange; they both eventually obtained official government positions in Vienna, where their sons had fruitful musical careers. Early life Eduard de Lannoy was born in Brussels, then in the Duchy of Brabant, a region of the Austrian Netherlands, part of the Holy Roman Empire. His father was Pierre Joseph Albert, baron de Lannoy (1733–1825), of the Lannoy family, one of the olde

Eduard Lassen

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Eduard Lassen (13 April 183015 January 1904) was a Belgian-Danish composer and conductor. Although of Danish birth, he spent most of his career working as the music director at the court in Weimar. A moderately prolific composer, Lassen produced music in a variety of genres including operas, symphonic works, piano works, lieder, and choral works among others. His most successful pieces were his fine vocal art songs for solo voice and piano which often used elements of German and Belgian folk music. Biography He was born in Copenhagen, but was taken as a child to Brussels to which his father was president of the Jewish Consistor of Belgium. He was educated at the Brussels Conservatory where he earned prizes for piano (1844) and composition (1847). He won the Prix de Rome in 1851, which provided him with the opportunity to make a long tour in Germany and Italy. While touring he met Louis Spohr and Franz Liszt and composed much of his first opera Le roi Edgard. After returning to Brussels in 1855, Lassen actively sought to get his opera performed but was unable to do so. Liszt, however, agreed to produce the opera at the Grossherzogliches Theater (now the Staatskapelle Weimar) and the

Émile Mathieu (composer)

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Émile Louis Victor Mathieu (Lille, 18 October 1844 – Ghent, 20 August 1932) was a Belgian music teacher and composer of classical music. Mathieu was born into a musical family: his father was the director of a theatre in Antwerp and a singer, while is mother taught singing at the Académie des Beaux-Arts of Leuven. He studied at the Conservatory of Brussels and later became a teacher of piano and harmony at the conservatory of Leuven. In 1867 Mathieu won a second prize in the Prix de Rome contest with his cantata Torquato Tasso’s dood. He won first place in the same contest in 1871 and again in 1873. Between 1873 and 1875 he lived in Paris, where he conducted the orchestra of the Théâtre du Châtelet. Afterwards, he returned to Brussels, where he held a position as accompanist at the Theatre Royal of LA Monnaie. He headed the Leuven Conservatory (which today is called SLAC) from 1881, and succeeded Adolphe Samuel as director of the Ghent Conservatory from 1898 to 1924. Most of his operas used librettos of his own writing. His best known work today is “Freyhir”, an hour-long choral tone poem written in 1883 on the theme of deforestation around Ardennes where the composer grew up. Frey

Emmanuel Adriaenssen

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Emmanuel Adriaenssen (also Adriaensen, Adriansen, Hadrianus, Hadrianius; c. 1554 in Antwerp – buried 27 February 1604 in Antwerp) was a Flemish lutenist, composer and master of music. He authored the influential Pratum Musicum, which contains scores for lute solos, and more importantly settings of madrigals for multiple lutes and different ensembles involving lutes and voices. He also had an important influence on the next generation of lutenists through his activity as a teacher of music in his own music school. Life Emmanuel Adriaenssen was born in Antwerp between 1540 and 1555. The brothers had in 1587 a conflict with the musicians’ guild of Antwerp because they practised as musicians without becoming members of the guild. Emanuel later became a master of the guild. He married Sybilla Crelin in 1584 with whom he had six sons and one daughter. Their sons Alexander (1587–1661), Vincent (1595–1675) and Niclaes (1598–1658) became respectively a still life painter, a battle painter and a portrait painter. Prior to the Fall of Antwerp, Emmanuel was likely a Calvinist as he only had his first son baptised in a Catholic after the Fall of Antwerp. He was registered as a Catholic in the p

Ernest de Munck

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Ernest de Munck (December 21, 1840 – January 19, 1915) was a Belgian cellist and composer. Born in Brussels, de Munck learned the cello from his professional cellist father François de Munck as well as Adrien-François Servais. He later became a professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music in London. Life Ernest de Munck was born on December 21, 1840, in Brussels. His father François de Munck was a virtuoso cellist and teacher, once a member of the orchestra at Her Majesty’s Theatre and a professor at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. He was taught the cello by his father He toured Great Britain in 1855. They performed together throughout the United States, such as in St. Louis, and he was part of her company on her concert tours in the country. They also lived in the US for a period. Patti died in Paris in 1889. Following her death, de Munck moved to London where he became a professor at the Guildhall School of Music in 1891, and a professor at the Royal Academy of Music in 1893. De Munck died in Maida Vale, London, on January 19, 1915. His death was announced on February 5. * Polonaise for cello and piano, dedicated to Princess Louise, Marchioness of

Ernest van der Eyken

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Ernest Jozef Leo van der Eyken (23 July 1913 in Antwerp – 6 February 2010 in Brussels) was a Belgian composer, conductor and violist. Van der Eyken received his first musical training at the age of five at the Music Academy in Sint-Truiden. At the age of seven he joined the music theory class of Karel Candael at the Royal Music Conservatory in Antwerp. In 1930 he obtained his first degree under Jan Broeckx, and in 1931, a further degree in viola studying with Napoleon Distelmans. Further studies at the Antwerp Conservatory were chamber music with Albert van de Vijver, conducting with Lodewijk De Vocht, harmony with Emile-Constant Verres and Edward Verheyden. Van der Eyken also studied counterpoint and fugue with August de Boeck, instrumentation with Paul Gilson, and during World War II went to Salzburg, Austria to study conducting with Clemens Krauss and Joseph Marx at the International Conducting School. In 1930 Van der Eyken made his debut as a violist with the Groot Symfonie-Orkest van de Wereldtentoonstelling 1930 (Grand Symphony Orchestra of the 1930 World Exposition) in Antwerp. Thereafter, he played in orchestras and chamber music ensembles of Antwerp: Orkest van de Koninkli

Eugène Ysaÿe

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Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe (; 16 July 185812 May 1931) was a Belgian virtuoso violinist, composer, and conductor. He was regarded as “The King of the Violin”, or, as his former student Nathan Milstein put it, the “tsar”. Early years Born in Liège, Ysaÿe began violin lessons at age five with his father. He would later recognise his father’s teaching as the foundation of everything he knew on his instrument, even though he went on to study with highly reputed masters. In 1867, Ysaÿe entered the Royal Conservatory of Liège to study with Désiré Heynberg, and in the process won a shared second prize with the Viotti 22nd Violin Concerto. He then went on to study with Henryk Wieniawski for two years in Brussels and Henri Vieuxtemps in Paris. Ernest Bloch, Jascha Brodsky, Mathieu Crickboom, George Enescu, Charles Houdret, Julia Klumpke, Louis Persinger, Oscar Shumsky, and Jacques Thibaud. () During his tenure as professor at the Conservatoire, Ysaÿe continued to tour ever more widely, visiting all of Europe, Russia, and the United States. Despite health concerns, particularly regarding the condition of his hands, Ysaÿe was at his best when performing, and many prominent composers dedicated major

Eugénie-Emilie Juliette Folville

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Eugénie-Emilie Juliette Folville (5 January 1870 – 28 October 1946) was a Belgian composer, pianist, violinist, music educator, conductor and organist. Life Eugénie-Emilie Juliette Folville was born in Liège, Belgium, and began the study of music with her father who was a lawyer and amateur musician. She lived for several years in London, Works Folville composed for theater, solo instruments, orchestra, chorus, and chamber ensemble. Selected works include: Orchestral works * Scènes champêtres. 1 re Suite d’orchestre, op. 9 (1885) : Aux Champs, Dans la montagne, Rêverie, Fête de village * Scènes de la mer. 2 e Suite d’orchestre, op. 14 (1886) : Chanson du pêcheur, Nuit étoilée, Mer phosphorescente, Flots agités, Adieux à l’océan * Scènes d’hiver. 3 e Suite d’orchestre, op. 17 (1887) : Ballade, La neige, Noël, Carnaval * Violin concerto in G Minor, op. 20 (1888) * Piano concerto in D Minor (1902–1903) * Concerstück for cello and orchestra (1905) * Impressions d’Ardenne, orchestral suite (1910) * Triptyque for violin and orchestra, or piano (ca. 1935) Chamber and piano works * Souvenir de Mozart. 1 re Sonatine (op. 7, 1881) and 2 e Sonatine (op. 11, 1882) * Berceuse for violin and pia

Eva Dell'Acqua

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Eva Dell’Acqua (also Dall’Acqua, 28 January 1856, Schaerbeek12 February 1930, Ixelles) was a Belgian singer and composer of Italian ancestry. She wrote fifteen operas and operettas, as well as orchestral works, pieces for chamber orchestra, and other works for piano and solo voice. Dell’Acqua’s song “Villanelle” for coloratura soprano has been widely performed and recorded, and has appeared on film soundtracks including Get Hep to Love (1942) and I Married an Angel (1942). Biography Eva Dell’Acqua was born in 1856 in Schaerbeek, Brussels, Belgium, the daughter of the Italian painter Cesare Dell’Acqua and his wife Carolina van der Elst. Dell’Acqua had a younger sister, Aline, born July 18th, 1857. Dell’Acqua’s name does not appear in documents from the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, suggesting that her formal music education took place at home through private instruction. Given her father’s connections within Brussels’ artistic circles, she may have had access to influential musicians in the city, though no specific teacher has been definitively identified. Dell’Acqua composed in the Romantic style and produced orchestral works, pieces for chamber orchestra, and other works for pia

Flonja Kodheli

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Flonja Kodheli is an Albanian-born Belgian actress, musician, pianist and composer. Early life Kodheli was born in Tirana, Albania to parents who were both artists, as her mother Justina Aliaj was a well-known singer and actress and her father Pjerin Kodheli was a famous actor. Her brother Rubin is also associated with music and cinema being a composer for film and orchestra. The Kodheli family fled Albania in 1993 and settled in Belgium. Having played the piano since the age of eight, she pursued her studies at the Conservatoire Royal de Mons, where she received a first prize for piano and for chamber music. After finishing her studies at the Conservatoire, she became increasingly interested in acting, and attended various acting workshops in Brussels run by different Belgian filmmakers, in particular Frédéric Dumont, Yves Hanchar and Stephan Carpiaux. She attended a theatre workshop run by Boris Rabey, a professor at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts, which led her to devote herself to acting, and she soon moved to Paris, France to pursue an acting career. In 2010, Kodheli played the sister of Ilir (Guillaume Gouix) in the film Beyond the Walls (Hors les murs) by David Lambert,

François-Auguste Gevaert

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François-Auguste Gevaert (31 July 1828 – 24 December 1908) was a Belgian musicologist and composer. Life Gevaert was born in Huise, near Oudenaarde, to an upper class family. His father was a bakery owner, and he was intended for the same profession, but better counsels prevailed and he was permitted to study music. He was sent in 1841 to the Ghent Conservatory, where he studied under Édouard de Sommere and Martin-Joseph Mengal. Then he was appointed organist of the Jesuit church in that city. Soon Gevaert’s compositions attracted attention, and he won the Belgian Prix de Rome which entitled him to two years’ travel. The journey was postponed during the production of his first opera and other works. He finally embarked on it in 1849. After a short stay in Paris he went to Spain, * 1896: Grand Cordon in the Order of Leopold. Selected works * Te Deum (1843) * Ouverture Flandre au lion (1848) * Fantasia sobre motivos españoles (1850) * Requiem (1853) * “Vers l’avenir” (1905) * Grand’ Messe de Noël Puer Natus est Nobis (1907) * Quartet for clarinet, horn, bassoon and piano Operas * Georgette, ou le moulin de Fontenoy (1853) * Le billet de Marguerite (1854) * Les lavandières de Santarem

François-Joseph Fétis

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François-Joseph Fétis (; 25 March 1784 – 26 March 1871) was a Belgian musicologist, critic, teacher and composer. He was among the most influential music intellectuals in continental Europe. His enormous compilation of biographical data in the Biographie universelle des musiciens remains an important source of information today. Family Fétis was born in Mons, Hainaut, eldest son of Antoine-Joseph Fétis and Élisabeth Desprets, daughter of a noted surgeon. He had nine brothers and sisters. His father was titular organist of the noble chapter of Saint-Waltrude. His grandfather was an organ manufacturer. He was trained as a musician by his father and played at young age on the choir organ of Saint Waltrude. In October 1806 he married Adélaïde Robert, daughter of the French politician Pierre-François-Joseph Robert and Louise-Félicité de Kéralio, friend of Robespierre. They had two sons: the elder son helped his father with the editions of Revue Musicale and became member of the Royal Academy, while the younger son was a composer and professor. In 1866 his wife died, and he withdrew from the Brussels society and court. When his father died, Eduard inherited his complete library and colle

Frans Geysen

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Frans Geysen (born 29 July 1936) is a Belgian composer and a writer on music topics. Biography Frans Geysen was born in Oostham, and studied music at the Lemmens Institute in Mechelen, and at the conservatories of Antwerp and Ghent. In 1962 he became professor of harmony and analysis at the Lemmens Institute, and since 1975 has taught at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels. Musical style In 1962 he started using serial techniques, but in 1967 turned against the rhythmic aperiodicity and discontinuity characteristic of that technique. Instead, he began to use repetitive rhythmic structures similar to those of American minimalists such as Glass, Reich, Riley, and Young, though he developed these rhythmic ideas independently and retained the constructivism of serial thinking. He also continued to use twelve-tone rows often in his music, utilizing rows lacking thirds, perfect fifths, and semitones, in order to avoid suggestions of tonality and mutual attraction between pitches. His music is abstract, excluding emotion as either expression or goal. He explores a purposeful monotony, inspired by the monotony of the landscape of Flanders—and especially its easternmost province, Limburg, wh

Frantz Jehin-Prume

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Frantz Jehin-Prume (18 April 1839 – 29 May 1899) was a Canadian violinist, composer, and music educator of Belgian birth. He began his career as a highly successful concert violinist in Europe. From 1865 on he lived and worked mainly in Montreal, Canada; becoming one of the most important 19th-century musical figures in Quebec. He became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1868. Early life and career in Europe Born François-Henri Jehin in Spa, he was from a family of musicians. Both of his grandfathers were organists and his uncle was the violinist François Prume; the latter of whom he studied under as a boy at the Liège Conservatory. He was a pupil of Hubert Léonard and François-Joseph Fétis at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. From 1852 to 1863 he had a highly successful career as a concert violinist throughout Europe and Russia; performing in the courts of several monarchs and with the great orchestras of the day. Early career in North America In 1864, Jehin-Prume came to Mexico at the invitation of Emperor Maximilian I. After performing for four months there in numerous concerts, he briefly toured to Brazil and Cuba. In May 1865 he came to New York City where he appeared in rec

Frédéric Devreese

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Frédéric Devreese (2 June 1929 – 28 September 2020) was a Belgian composer of mostly orchestral, chamber and piano works that have been performed throughout the world; he was also active as a conductor. Devreese is known for his film scores, including Benvenuta by André Delvaux and The Cruel Embrace by Marion Hänsel. Career Born in Amsterdam, Devreese received his first musical training from his father, the composer-conductor (1893–1972). He died of cancer. Awards Devreese received the following prizes: * Prijs Oostende Piano Competition (1949, for Concerto No. 1) * Prix Italia (1964, for Willem van Saefthingen, together with Mark Liebrecht) * Joseph Plateau Award (1990, for Het Sacrament) * Georges Delerue Award (1994, for La partie d’échecs) Honours * Knight of the Order of the Crown * Knight of the Order of Leopold II He was knighted by Albert II of Belgium in 1996. His motto is Tenuto. Works Stage * Willem van Saefthinge, TV opera (1962–63), libretto by Jean Francis * Le Cavalier bizarre, opera (1976), libretto by Michel de Ghelderode Orchestral * Concerto No. 1, piano, orchestra (1949) * Concerto, violin, orchestra (1951) * Concerto No. 2, piano, orchestra (1952) * Symphony (1

George de La Hèle

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George de La Hèle (also Georges, Helle, Hele) (1547 – August 27, 1586) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, mainly active in the Habsburg chapels of Spain and the Low Countries. Among his surviving music is a book of eight masses, some for as many as eight voices. While he was a prolific composer during his time in Spain, much of his music was destroyed in 1734 in the burning of the chapel library in Madrid. Life La Hèle was born in Antwerp, and received his musical training both there and possibly at Soignies. He spent his teenage years as a choirboy in Madrid, in the chapel of Philip II, then led by Pierre de Manchicourt, another northern composer who spent much of his career in Spain; Manchicourt probably identified the young La Hèle himself on one of his talent-scouting trips to his own homeland. After singing as a choirboy for several years, in the late 1560s La Hèle went to study at the University of Alcalá, and in 1570 returned north, enrolling at the University of Leuven. While his course of study has not been documented, it is presumed he studied not music but theology. He seems not to have achieved the priesthood, but rose high enough in the Church hierarchy

Gerardus Mes

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Gerardus Mes or Gherardus (fl. c. 1561) was a Franco-Flemish composer. Life and work Little of his work has survived, except the settings for four voices of the Souterliedekens, 150 Dutch Psalm Songs and canticles, possibly written by nobleman Willem van Zuylen van Nijevelt and published in 1540 with a notation of the melody for one voice. Mes’s settings appeared in Antwerp in 1561 as the eighth up to the eleventh volume of the Musijck Boexkens, a collection of Dutch songs edited by Tielman Susato. In this series, Susato had already published Jacobus Clemens non-Papa’s Psalm settings for three voices in 1556-57. As was already the case with the Dutch secular songs from Susato’s Ierste and Tweetste Musijck Boexken (first and second Music Book), performance with human voices as well as with instruments is suggested in the edition of Mes’s Psalm settings. On the title page of the Souterliedekens, Mes is also mentioned as a pupil of Clemens non-Papa, which is the only fact we know about his life. Of his Souterliedekens, no complete copy has survived; the bass voice is missing. In his Souterliedekens, Mes made use of several writing techniques: sometimes, he used the original tune of a

Géry de Ghersem

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Géry de Ghersem (also Géry Gersem) (1573 to 1575 – 25 May 1630) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance, active both in Spain at the court of Philip II and Philip III, and in his native Low Countries. He was a prolific and highly regarded composer at the time, but little of his work survives, almost all having been destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake and fire of 1755. Life Ghersem was born in Tournai, and received his boyhood musical training there, possibly under the direction of composer George de La Hèle. While still young, “between the ages of 7 and 12” according to the Habsburg chapel records, he was one of 14 boys brought to Spain to sing in the imperial chapel choir, the capilla flamenca. During this period, as during the previous two hundred years, the Low Countries provided a dependable source of talented young musicians for the choirs of kings and aristocrats in other parts of Europe. This practice was shortly to come to an end, as the last known group of choirboys from Flanders went to Spain in 1594. After coming to Spain, Ghersem may have worked again with La Hèle briefly, since he directed the choir in Madrid, but La Hèle died in 1586. Ghersem rose in the

Gheerkin de Hondt

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Gheerkin de Hondt (also Gheerken, Gheraert, Gerit, Gerrit, Gheerart, Gerryt de Hont) was a Dutch singer, choirmaster, and composer of polyphonic songs. Despite the enormous popularity of his songs, very little biographical information survives. He was probably born c. 1495, the son of a Jacob de Hondt; if this was the Jacob who was guardian of the choirboys in Bruges in the 1530s, this may imply he was a native of Bruges. He was appointed choirmaster in Delft’s Nieuwe Kerk in mid-1521 but left at the end of 1523; he was re-appointed to the post in 1530. He left Delft 18 months later to take up the equivalent position at the church of Sint-Jacob in Bruges, where he remained until 1539. In December 1539 he became choirmaster of the Marian brotherhood in ’s-Hertogenbosch, where he remained until he left in 1547, apparently dismissed for failing to take adequate care of the choirboys. It appears he went to Friesland, but he disappears from the historical record at this point - although Diehl asserts that there is a record of his death in the Bruges archives in 1562. Of his compositions 5 mass settings, 4 motets and 9 songs survive, most of them preserved in the songbook of Zeghere van

Ghiselin Danckerts

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Ghiselin Danckerts (c. 1510 – late September 1567) was a Dutch composer, singer, and music theorist of the Renaissance. He was principally active in Rome, in the service of the Papal Chapel, and was one of the judges at the famous debate between Nicola Vicentino and Vicente Lusitano in 1551. Life He was born in Tholen, in Zeeland, but nothing is known of his early life. Like many of his contemporaries from the Low Countries, he may have received his early training in his homeland, going to Italy as a young adult. In his manuscript treatise Sopra una differentia musicale sententiata he asserts that he was employed by Pierluigi Carafa, member of an aristocratic family in Naples. He was admitted as a singer at the Papal Chapel 21 March 1538, a position he retained, seemingly without break, until 1565. In August 1565 he was forced to retire from the papal chapel as part of a reorganization and reduction in size which followed from the reforms of the Council of Trent. The entry in the chapel records for his dismissal includes the notice: “he is without voice, he is given to women, is excessively rich, and is useless because of illness.” He was granted a monthly pension of six ducats and

Giaches de Wert

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Giaches de Wert (also Jacques/Jaches de Wert, Giaches de Vuert; 1535 – 6 May 1596) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance, active in Italy. Intimately connected with the progressive musical center of Ferrara, he was one of the leaders in developing the style of the late Renaissance madrigal. He was one of the most influential of late sixteenth-century madrigal composers, particularly on Claudio Monteverdi, and his later music was formative on the development of music of the early Baroque era. Life Little is known about his early life, except that he was from Flanders, from either the vicinity of Ghent or Weert, near Antwerp. As a boy he went to Avellino in southern Italy, near Naples, where he became a choir boy in the chapel of Maria di Cardona, Marchesa of Padulla. Maria was the wife of Francesco d’Este, Marchese di Massalombarda, a captain under Charles V; Francesco was a son of the notorious Lucrezia Borgia, and her husband Alfonso I d’Este. Francesco was often in France and adjacent areas on military campaigns, and as an adjunct to these adventures he brought musically talented youths back to Italy with him. Wert’s association with the Este family was to endure

Giya Kancheli

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Gia Kancheli (; 10 August 1935 – 2 October 2019) was a Georgian composer. He was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, and resided in Belgium in later life. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kancheli lived first in Berlin, and from 1995 in Antwerp, where he became composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic. He died in Tbilisi at age 84. Life In his symphonies, Kancheli’s musical language typically consists of slow scraps of minor-mode melody against long, subdued, anguished string discords. Rodion Shchedrin called Kancheli “an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist; a restrained Vesuvius”. Kancheli wrote seven symphonies, and what he termed a liturgy for viola and orchestra, Mourned by the Wind. The Philadelphia Orchestra under Yuri Temirkanov gave the American premiere of his Fourth Symphony in 1978, not long before the cultural freeze in the United States against Soviet culture. Glasnost allowed Kancheli to regain exposure, and he began to receive frequent commissions, as well as performances in Europe and North America. Championed internationally by Lera Auerbach, Dennis Russell Davies, Jansug Kakhidze, Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Kim Kashkashian, Mstisl

Guillaume Lekeu

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Jean Joseph Nicolas Guillaume Lekeu (; 20 January 1870 – 21 January 1894) was a Belgian composer. Life Lekeu was born in Heusy, a village near Verviers, Belgium. He originally studied piano and music theory under Alphonse Voss, the director of the brass band at the local conservatory. In 1879, his parents moved to Poitiers, France. especially chamber music, and studied harmony and violin from 1887 under Octave Grisard. In June 1888, his family moved to Paris where he began to study philosophy. He was introduced to the works of Téodor de Wyzewa and continued his studies under Gaston Vallin. In August 1889, he travelled to Bayreuth to see the operas of Richard Wagner. On his return, he studied counterpoint and fugue privately with César Franck. Lekeu contracted typhoid fever from a contaminated sorbet in October 1893. He died in his parents’ home in Angers on 21 January 1894, the day after his 24th birthday. On 26 January 1894, he was buried in a small cemetery in Heusy. His style, prophetic of early-twentieth-century avant-garde French composers like Satie and Milhaud, was influenced by Franck, Wagner and (especially in the Trio) Beethoven, though these influences did not manifest t

Henri Pousseur

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Henri Léon Marie-Thérèse Pousseur (; 23 June 1929 – 6 March 2009) was a Belgian composer, teacher, and music theorist. Biography Pousseur was born on 23 June 1929 in Malmedy, Liège Province, Belgium, and studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and Brussels from 1947 to 1952, where he joined the group called Variations, associated with Pierre Froidebise. It was in this group that he first became familiar with the music of Anton Webern and other 20th-century composers. During his period of military service in 1952–53 at Mechelen, he maintained close contact with André Souris. He encountered Pierre Boulez in 1951 at Royaumont, and this contact inspired his Trois chants sacrés, composed that same year. In 1953, he met Karlheinz Stockhausen, and in 1956 Luciano Berio. A less-well-known influence from his early years was the music of Anton Bruckner, and he maintained a lifelong interest in medieval and Renaissance music, as well as in non-European music. In 1954, Pousseur married Théa Schoonbrood, with whom he had four children: Isabelle (1957), Denis (1958), (1961), and Hélène (1965). Beginning in 1960, he collaborated with Michel Butor on a number of projects, most notably the opera

Henri Vieuxtemps

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Henri François Joseph Vieuxtemps (; 17 February 18206 June 1881) was a Belgian composer and violinist. He occupies an important place in the history of the violin as a prominent exponent of the Franco-Belgian violin school during the mid-19th century. He is also known for playing what is now known as the Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesù, a violin of superior workmanship. Biography Vieuxtemps was born in Verviers, Belgium (then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands), son of a weaver and amateur violinist and violin-maker. He received his first violin instruction from his father and a local teacher and gave his first public performance at the age of six, playing a concerto by Pierre Rode. Soon he was giving concerts in various surrounding cities, including Liège, La Haye and Brussels where he met the violinist Charles Auguste de Bériot, with whom he began studies. In 1829, Bériot took him to Paris where he made a successful concert debut, again with a concerto by Rode, but he had to return the next year because of the July Revolution and Bériot’s marriage to his mistress Maria Malibran and departure on concert tour. Back in Brussels, Vieuxtemps continued developing his violin tec

Henri-Jacques de Croes

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Henricus Jacobus de Croes, Hendrik Jacob de Croes, known as Henri-Jacques de Croes (baptised 19 September 1705 in Antwerp, died 16 August 1786 in Brussels) was a Flemish composer and violinist. He was Kapellmeister of Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine, governor of the Austrian Netherlands whose court was based in Brussels. He composed various violin concertos, masses, motets, chamber music and an opéra comique. He received a solid education in prose, languages, composition and so on. He studied music with Josephus Guillielmus Soussé at the St. Andrew’s Church in Antwerp. Soussé was a tenor and a singing master at various Antwerp churches including the St. James’ Church. De Croes was appointed as the first violinist in the latter church in 1723 when he was only 18 years old and held this position until 1729. In 1729 he left Antwerp for Frankfurt on Main (Germany) where he worked in the service of the Thurn und Taxis family. Prins Anselm Franz von Thurn und Taxis had discovered de Croes’ talent and wished to include him in the new orchestra which he planned to set up in Frankfurt. De Croes joined the orchestra and eventually became its Kapellmeister. He toured with the orchestra a

Hubert Waelrant

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Hubert Waelrant or Hubertus Waelrant (last name also spelled Waelrand and Latinised name: Hubertus Waelrandus) (c. 1517 – 19 November 1595) was a Flemish composer, singer, teacher, music editor, bookseller, printer and publisher active in 16th century Antwerp. He was a member of the generation of the Franco-Flemish School of composers who were contemporaries of Palestrina. Unlike famous composers of his time he mostly worked in northern Europe. His style is a transition between that of Nicolas Gombert and the mature Orlande de Lassus. His compositions were modern in the use of chromaticism and dissonance. Life Details of Waelrant’s roots are uncertain, but he may have been one of a family of lawyers from Antwerp, the city in which he spent most of his life. Since some of his children were also lawyers it is seen as likely that he was related to this family. As a young man he may have studied in Italy, a common destination for a talented singer and composer from the Netherlands in the 16th century. While there is no documentary evidence for a trip to Italy, Waelrant maintained contact with a wealthy patron there, and his madrigals the influence of some of the more progressive Italia

Hugo Chaim Adler

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Hugo Chaim Adler (17 January 1894 – 24 December 1955), was a Belgian cantor, composer, and choir conductor. He is primarily recognized for creating and popularizing contemporary versions of 19th-century Jewish cantorial music. He is the father of Samuel Adler, a prominent American composer of contemporary classical music. Personal life Hugo Chaim Adler was born in Antwerp, Belgium, while his Jewish-German parents were on holiday on January 17, 1894. He was one of eight sons born to his parents, Emma Dahl and Simon Adler. Raised in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, he studied music composition at the Hochschule für Musik Köln from 1912-1915 and played piano. In 1915 he was drafted into the German Army as an infantryman and was injured at the Argonne in 1918. All seven of his brothers served in the war, and all survived. After returning home, Adler began his tenure at the Haupt-Synagogue in Mannheim and met his wife Selma Rothschild. They had two children, Marianne and Samuel Adler. He participated in the Mannheim Holiday Choir and was a member of the local Liederkranz. That December, he was imprisoned for two months in The Netherlands due to his Jewish ancestry. Upon his release

Irène Fuerison

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Irène Fuerison, née Van Santen, (8 January 1875 - 26 June 1931) was a Belgian composer. Biography Irène Van Santen was born in Ghent to a tradesman, August Van Santen, and a contralto singer, Florine Lepla, who was a graduate of the conservatoire of Ghent (class of Louis Cabel, 1867) and who performed in public at least until 1878. Irène learned to play piano and maybe to sing as well. In 1893, she married the lawyer Joseph Fuerison and assumed his name. They had one daughter in 1899, named Madeleine. The Fuerisons lived in a mansion in Ghent and, while being fluent in Flemish, belonged to the French-speaking middleclass. They spent the First World War in Ghent. Fuerison was widowed in 1921 after her husband suffered a stroke. She had been visually impaired for several years by then. Fuerison died at her home in Ghent in 1931. She bequeathed a fund for a prize to encourage promising young Belgian composers; the Irène Fuerison-prize is being awarded every two years since 1934. Work Fuerison’s music compositions include over 70 songs for voice and piano, but also a couple of pieces for piano solo and for chamber music, some orchestra works and one music theatre work. Her vocal work i

Jacob Regnart

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Jacob Regnart (French: Jacques Regnart; 1540s – 16 October 1599) was a Flemish Renaissance composer. He spent most of his career in Austria and Bohemia, where he wrote both sacred and secular music. Biography Regnart was born at Douai, one of five brothers. His first documented appearance is in 1560 as a tenor at the Hofkapelle in Prague under Habsburg ruler Archduke Maximilian; Regnart claimed to have worked there since 1557. In 1564 his first works were published; he moved to Vienna and then Italy, where he studied from 1568 to 1570. The first fruits of these studies, Il primo libro delle canzone italiane, would be published in 1574, with many subsequent volumes to follow. In November 1570 he became an instructor for Maximilian’s chapel choir, and upon Maximilian’s death, Emperor Rudolf II hired him as a member of his Hofkapelle. It was in the 1570s that his volumes of three-voice Teutsche Lieder (German songs) appeared, printed by the Gerlachs of Nuremberg; they sold very well, were reprinted several times, and were arranged in tablature by several composers. In October 1579, he became vice-Kapellmeister, succeeding Alard du Gaucquier; the next year, Orlandus Lassus gave his nam

Jacobus Clemens non Papa

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Jacobus Clemens non Papa (also Jacques Clément or Jacob Clemens non Papa) (c. 1510 to 1515 – 1555 or 1556) was a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance based for most of his life in Flanders. He was a prolific composer in many of the current styles, and was especially famous for his polyphonic settings of the psalms in Dutch known as the Souterliedekens. Life Nothing is known of Clemens’s early life, and even the details of the years of his artistic maturity are sketchy. He may have been born in Middelburg, Zeeland, though the evidence is contradictory; certainly he was from somewhere in modern Belgium or the Netherlands. The first unambiguous reference to him is from the late 1530s, when Pierre Attaingnant published a collection of his chansons in Paris. Between March 1544 and June 1545 he worked as succentor at the cathedral of Bruges, and shortly thereafter he began a business relationship with Tielman Susato, the publisher in Antwerp, which was to last for the rest of his life. From 1545 until 1549 he was probably choirmaster to Philippe de Croÿ, Duke of Aerschot, one of Charles V’s greatest generals, where he preceded Nicolas Gombert. In 1550 he was employed as sanger ende

Jacobus de Kerle

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Jacobus de Kerle (Ypres 1531/1532 - Prague 7 January 1591) was a Flemish composer and organist of the late Renaissance. Life De Kerle was trained at the monastery of St. Martin in Ypres, and held positions as a singer in Cambrai and choirmaster in Orvieto, where he also became organist and carillonneur. After entering the priesthood, he began having his music printed, including a 1561 collection of psalms and Magnificat settings in Venice. He was commissioned to write Preces Speciales set to texts by the Dominican Pedro de Soto for the Council of Trent, which he completed by 1562, and visited the city during the time of the Council in his travels with Otto Truchsess von Waldburg, cardinal of Augsburg. Although he did not take part in their discussions, the performance of the Preces Speciales reportedly influenced the deliberations of the Council Fathers on sacred music. In 1565, he was appointed director of music at Ypres Cathedral, though he would lose this position after being excommunicated on March 30, 1567, due to a dispute with another priest and thus lost his office. After performing the imposed penances in Rome, he was received again in the church. From there he moved to Ro

Jacobus Vaet

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Jacobus Vaet (c. 1529 – 8 January 1567) was a Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He was a representative of the generation between Josquin and Palestrina, writing smooth polyphony with pervasive imitation, and he was a friend both of Clemens non Papa and Lassus. Life He was born in either Kortrijk or Harelbeke, but about when and where he was born is for now not yet fully determined. From his “Modulationes” (1562) he calls himself “Flemish” but later he says that he is “Belgian”, so at least we can say he is from the low countries. His first appearance in the historical record is from Kortrijk, where he was admitted in 1543, at age 13, as a singer to the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk (Church of Our Lady). In 1547 he was enrolled at the University of Leuven, and by 1550 he was in the court of Charles V, where he was listed as tenor in the chapel choir. He may have been recruited for the choir by Pieter Maessens who had been magister cantus at Notre Dame in Courtrai when Vaet was a boy. He became Kapellmeister to Maximilian II in 1554, and held that post for the rest of his life. Evidently Maximilian was fond of his Kapellmeister, and mourned him both in his diary, and by having elegies wr

Jacqueline Fontyn

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Jacqueline, Baroness Fontyn (born 27 December 1930) is a contemporary Belgian composer, pianist and music educator. She was born in Antwerp, and has received the title of baroness from the King of Belgium in recognition of her many artistic contributions. Early years Jacqueline Fontyn was born in Antwerp, Belgium, and began piano studies at the age of five years with Ignace Bolotin. At nine years old, she began to compose small pieces, and at the age of 14, she decided to be a composer. She continued her piano studies with Marcel Maas and studied music theory and composition with Marcel Quinet in Brussels and with Max Deutsch in Paris. She also studied orchestra conducting in Vienna with Hans Swarovsky and graduated in 1959 from the Belgian Chapelle Musicale Elisabeth. Career Working in Antwerp, Fontyn founded a mixed choir Le Tympan and directed it for seven years. She conducted the Symphonic Orchestra of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium for two years. From 1963 to 1970 she taught counterpoint at the Royal Flemish Music Conservatory in Antwerp. From 1970 to 1990 she was a professor at the Conservatory of Brussels where she taught first counterpoint and later compositio

Jacques Calonne

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Jacques Calonne (10 August 1930 – 7 February 2022) was a Belgian artist, composer, singer, actor, logogramist, and writer. Life Born in Mons, Calonne studied music from 1944 until 1946 at the conservatories of Mons and Brussels, with amongst others the composer André Souris, who introduced him to the surrealist movement. He then pursued a course of art studies at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1947 to 1949, when he attended La fin et les moyens (The End and the Means), the first Belgian exhibition of the COBRA group at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, where he met Christian Dotremont. He immediately attached himself to this movement, becoming its youngest member and taking part in its meetings in the rue de la Paille, as well as in its review and at the exposition “L’Objet à travers les âges” (The Object through the Ages). Dividing himself between music and visual arts, he continued to pursue a double career after the dissolution of COBRA. In 1954 he made his first visit to the Internationale Ferienkurse für neue Musik at Darmstadt, where he met Karlheinz Stockhausen and Bruno Maderna. In 1957, he co-signed the “Manifesto against Style” with, amongst oth

Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens

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Jacques-Nicolas (Jaak-Nicolaas) Lemmens (3 January 1823 – 30 January 1881), was an organist, music teacher, and composer for his instrument. Biography Born at Zoerle-Parwijs, near Westerlo, Belgium, Lemmens took lessons from François-Joseph Fétis, who wanted to make him into a musician capable of renewing the organ-player’s art in Belgium. Fétis sent him to Adolf Friedrich Hesse in Germany to learn Johann Sebastian Bach’s tradition. In 1847, Lemmens won the Paris Conservatoire’s prestigious Prix de Rome with his Le roi Lear (“King Lear”). One year later he published his first work for organ: Dix improvisations dans le style sévère et chantant (“Ten improvisations in a strict and singing style”). In March 1849 he was appointed organ teacher at the Royal Brussels Conservatoire, aged only 26; and he trained numerous young musicians, including two eminent Frenchmen, Alexandre Guilmant and Charles-Marie Widor. During 1852 he gave organ recitals in Saint Vincent de Paul, La Madeleine and Saint Eustache churches in Paris, where he stunned audiences with his technique. Particularly notable was his brilliant pedal-playing, which owed a good deal to his studies of Bach’s music (at the time B

Jan Belle

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Jan Belle (fl. 1545 – 1566) was a Flemish composer from the Franco-Flemish School and a music theorist. Live Between 1546 and 1547, Belle was a magister duodenorum (master of the choirboys) at the Holy Cross Church in Liège. He was referred to as “de Lovanium”, which indicates that he was originally from Leuven. He may also have been a Kapellmeister (succentor) at the Church of Our Lady in Sint-Truiden. No copies of the book have been preserved. References

Jan Blockx

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Jan Blockx (25 January 1851 – 26 May 1912) was a Belgian composer, pianist and teacher. He was a leader of the Flemish nationalist school in music. Biography Born in Antwerp, Blockx studied the piano with Frans Aerts, the organ with Joseph Callaerts and composition with Peter Benoît at the Antwerp Conservatory. When he was still a student he wrote some songs, in Flemish, which became popular. However, his musical education studies were quite irregular, and he was essentially self-taught. Later he studied with Carl Reinecke at Leipzig. Despite the fact that he was Benoit’s favorite pupil, Blockx wanted to make his own way in life, independent of his teacher and the Flemish Movement. Unlike Benoit, Blockx never intended his works to have the educational, uplifting effect that was typical for the Flemish Movement. This caused tensions between student and master: despite the fact that Blockx’s work helped to spread Flemish music across the Belgian borders and even saved the Vlaamse Opera from bankruptcy, Blockx received a lot of complaints from his fellow Flemish composers for publishing his works in French and through the Parisian music publisher Heugel. In 1886 Blockx became a teache

Jan Van der Roost

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Jan Van der Roost (born Duffel, 1956) is a Belgian composer. Van der Roost was educated at the Lemmensinstituut in Leuven, and followed further studies at the Royal Conservatory in Ghent and the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp. Since 1984 Van der Roost is a professor of counterpoint and fugue at the Lemmensinstituut. He is also a guest professor at the Shobi Institute of Music, the Nagoya University of Arts, and Senzoku Gakuen. Works * 1834 (Concert band) * A Highland Rhapsody (Concert band) * A Highland Rhapsody (Fanfare) * A Year Has Four Lives (Children’s choir) * Adagio for Brass (Brass band) * Adagio for Winds (Concert band) * Adagio for Winds (Fanfare) * Albion (Brass band) * Algona Overture (Concert band) * Amazonia (Concert band) * Apollo * Arghulesques (for Clarinet Quartet) * Arpád (part 2 from ‘Sinfonia Hungarica’) * Arsenal * Attila! (part 1 from ‘Sinfonia Hungarica’) * Autumn * Avalon * Balkanya * Ballad for Bass Trombone * Bassonnerie * Beata viscera * Brasiliana * By the River * Cantabile e Ritmico * Canterbury Chorale * Canzona gothica (for Trombone) * Castellum * Céad Míle Fáilte * Centennial Prelude * Ceremonial March * Chemical Suite (for Trombone quartet)

Jane Vignery

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Jeanne Emilie Virginie Vignery (11 April 1913 – 15 August 1974) was a Belgian composer, teacher, and violinist who published her compositions under the name “Jane Vignery.” She is best remembered today for her Sonata for Horn and Piano, opus 7. Life and career Vignery was born in Ghent. Her father was an engineer. Her mother () and grandfather composed music and gave Vignery her first music lessons. Vignery went on to study at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent, the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, and with Nadia Boulanger, Jacques de la Presle, and Paul Dukas. Vignery was nominated for the Prix de Rome in 1941. In 1942, the Royal Belgian Academy awarded her the Prix Emile Mathieu for her Sonata for Horn and Piano. Her compositions included: Chamber *Sonata for Horn and Piano, opus 7 *Sonata for Violin, opus 8 Orchestra *La Fille de Jephte (solo voice and orchestra) *Vision de Guerre References

Jean Absil

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Jean Absil (23 October 1893 – 2 February 1974) was a Belgian composer, organist, and professor at the Brussels Conservatoire. Biography Absil was born in Bonsecours, Hainaut, Belgium. His teacher there was Alphonse Oeyen, organist at the basilica of Bonsecours. From 1913 he studied organ and harmony at the Brussels Conservatoire, but upon graduating, decided to concentrate on composition instead. In 1922 Absil won the Belgian Prix de Rome and in 1934 the Prix Rubens, which allowed him to travel to Paris. Here, he met fellow contemporary composers Ibert, Milhaud, and Honegger. Absil gained international prominence with the premiere of his first piano concerto (op. 30), composed for the 1938 Queen Elizabeth Competition for Piano (Ysaye), for which it was the compulsory piece for all finalists. Only one of those, Moura Lympany, who won second prize (after Emil Gilels), performed the piece entirely from memory mistake free. From 1930 onwards, Absil taught harmony at the Brussels Conservatoire, becoming a professor of counterpoint there six years later. Amongst his Conservatoire pupils was Paul Danblon. He also taught at Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth and the Etterbeek Music School.

Jean de Latre

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Petit Jean De Latre (c. 1505 or 1510 – 31 August 1569) or Joannes de Latre (his surname is also recorded as Delattre, Delatre, De Lattre and Laetrius) was a Flemish Renaissance composer and choirmaster who worked in Liège and Utrecht. He is no longer believed to be the same person as Claude Petit Jehan who died in 1589. Life The earliest record of his employment is for 1538 to 1539 when he was maître de chant at church of St John the Evangelist in Liège. Subsequently, De Latre was employed at St Martin, Liège. From about 1550 he was also chapel master to George of Austria, Prince-Bishop of Liège (1544–1557), to whom De Latre dedicated his first volume of secular songs or chansons of 1552. During his time in Liège notable pupils included Gerard de Villers and Johannes Mangon. After George of Austria’s death in 1557 De Latre continued to work at St Martin, but in 1563 took up a post for a short period in Amersfoort (within the province of Utrecht). Around this time the former rector of the Latin school in Amersfoort, Johannes Oridryus, together with Albertus Buysius, undertook the publication of a collection De Latre’s chansons, Cantionum musicarum, in Düsseldorf. De Latre returned t

Jean Rogister

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Jean François Toussaint Rogister (25 October 1879 in Liège – 20 March 1964 in Liège) was a Belgian virtuoso violist, teacher and composer. Life and career Jean Rogister came from a family of musicians; his father was a flautist and his brothers Fernand Rogister (1872–1954), a horn player and composer, Chrétien Rogister (pseudonym Caludi) (1884–1941), a violinist and composer, and Hubert Rogister, a cellist. A musically gifted child, Rogister studied violin, viola, horn and composition at the Liège Conservatory. Rogister studied composition with Jean-Théodore Radoux, and viola with Désiré Heynberg (1831–1898) and Oscar Englebert. He emerged a virtuoso viola player, and at the age of twenty-one, he was appointed Professor of Viola (1900–1945) at the Liège Conservatory. Rogister performed in chamber ensembles and made his debut in 1902 as violist of the Charlier Quartet led by Léopold Charlier. It was also at this time that Rogister completed his String Quartet No. 1. He continued to study composition and play in chamber music ensembles including Cercle Ad Artem, the Chaumont Quartet, and Piano et Archets. Rogister, like his composition teacher Radoux, composed largely in the neo-roma

Jean-Baptiste Accolay

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Jean-Baptiste Accolay (; 17 April 1833 – 19 August 1900) was a Belgian violin teacher, violinist, conductor, and composer of the romantic period. His best-known composition is his one-movement student concerto in A minor. It was written in 1868, originally for violin and orchestra. Biography Born in Brussels, Accolay studied the violin at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and played the solo flugelhorn at the second cuirassier-regiment of Bruges. He also played the first violin at the orchestra of the theaters of Namur and Bruges. In 1860, he became a teacher of solfège at the conservatory of Bruges. Later on he also taught the violin (1861-1864), the viola (1864), string quartets (1865), and harmony (1874). The liner notes for Perlman’s recording of “Concertos from My Childhood” indicate that there are at least “seven works by the long forgotten Belgian violinist and teacher Jean-Baptiste Accolay, whose concertos (including the one in question) were edited for publication by the Walloon virtuoso Mathieu Crickboom, a protégé of Eugène Ysaÿe, and professor at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels.” Accolay’s Concerto in A minor (1868) is “one of the most enduring of all tutorial violi

Jean-Baptiste Loeillet of London

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Jean-Baptiste Loeillet of London (18 November 1680 – 19 July 1730), was a Flemish composer and musician of the Baroque period. He is called the London Loeillet to distinguish him from another famous composer, his cousin Jean-Baptiste Loeillet of Ghent. Life and career Jean-Baptiste Loeillet was born in Ghent, then in the Spanish Netherlands. He had a younger brother, Jacques Loeillet, who was also a composer. He had a cousin, also named Jean-Baptiste Loeillet. The distinction between the London Loeillet and the Ghent Loeillet was made to differentiate the cousins. In 1705, after his studies in Ghent and Paris, he moved to London and became known as John. His works were published by John Walsh in London under the name of John Loeillet. He published trio and solo sonatas, as well as two collections of harpsichord lessons. Loeillet was able to play the recorder, flute, oboe, and harpsichord. He was successful as a teacher of the harpsichord. He played woodwind in the Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket and held musical gatherings every week at his home. His performances were well received in London, and he was responsible for introducing Arcangelo Corelli’s 12 Concerti Grossi to Londoner

Jean-Baptiste Roucourt

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Jean-Baptiste Roucourt (Brussels, 28 October 1780 - Brussels, 1 May 1849) was a music pedagogue, singer and composer. He founded the music school which was the cradle of the Royal Conservatoire of Brussels. Early life (1780-1812) Jean-Baptiste Roucourt was born in Brussels in the Austrian Netherlands. His father François Roucourt was from Diest and his mother Catherine Barbe Bormans from Gingelom in the Bishopric of Liège, but they lived in Brussels, near the Treurenberg, by the time of Jean-Baptiste’s birth. The household counted at least two older children, Catherine Henriette and Louis. Jean-Baptiste was baptized at the Church of St. Michael and St. Gudula on the day of his birth. In his early childhood, he had music education from Adrien-Joseph Van Helmont, who had succeeded his father Charles-Joseph as music master at the Church of St. Michael and St. Gudula in 1777. However, Van Helmont junior being also employed as a singer at the royal chapel since the same year, and Van Helmont senior having declared in his resignation letter that he would keep the pay and the duties as a music master as long as his health allowed him to (this was a normal way to ensure one’s retirement al

Jean-Théodore Radoux

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Jean-Théodore Radoux (; 9 November 1835 – 20 March 1911) was a Belgian composer and bassoonist. In 1859 he won the Belgian Prix de Rome for his cantata Le Juif errant which he had composed earlier that year. His other compositions include 2 operas, an oratorio, 2 symphonic poems, an overture, several choral works and vocal art songs, and music for the church. Life and career Born in Liège, Radoux began studying counterpoint at the Liège Conservatory in 1845 at the age of 9 with Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul. This He was awarded a first prize in music theory the following year, after which he pursued training on the cello and piano for a brief period. Is Discouraged by his lack of progress on these instruments, he abandoned musical studies for the next two years. Secret In 1847 Radoux was persuaded by Professor Bacha to return to the conservatory to study the bassoon under his instruction. Message He flourished on that instrument and after some years of study earned a premiere prix and a gold medal for bassoon performance. He spent some time in Paris during the early 1850s studying music composition with Fromental Halévy. Upon Bacha’s death in 1856, Radoux succeeded him in the post of bas

Jeanne Colin-De Clerck

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Jeanne (Albertine) Colin-De Clerck (born 9 January 1924) is a Belgian composer who also uses the names Jeanne Colin and Albertine De Clerck. She was born in Brussels, Belgium, and studied at Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels. During her time at the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music she won first prize for solfeggio (1942) and a “mention for piano accompaniment”. After completing her education, she began to compose without formal instruction. Four years later, she took a position teaching at the Music Academy in Anderlecht, and taught as a professor of solfeggio at the Academy of Music Anderlecht from 1946 to 1977. She married composer Georges Colin (1921–2002), and together they had two sons and two daughters. Throughout her compositional career she also collaborated with her husband on pieces. Works Colin-De Clerck composes vocal, chamber and electronic music. Selected work include: *Matière habitée op.9, for orchestra (1968) *String Quartet (1968) *Caprice, violin & piano (1970) *Divertissement op.13, for string orchestra (1970) *Concerto for flute and orchestra (1972) *Concerto for violin & orchestra (1974) *Concertati Movimenti violin & piano (1975) *Fantaisie for Saxo

Jef van Hoof

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Jef van Hoof (8 May 1886 – 24 April 1959) was a Flemish composer and conductor. Biography Born on 8 May 1866, in Antwerp, van Hoof was a pupil of Paul Gilson and was heavily influenced by the works of Peter Benoit. His dedication to the Flemish cause led him to collaborate with the German occupiers in World War I, for which he was subsequently sentenced to eight months in prison. He studied at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, of which he was the director from 1942 to 1944. In 1933, he founded the (Vlaams Nationaal Zangfeest) where he worked as a conductor for many years. He also conducted concerts associated with the Flemish Movement. He died in Antwerp on 24 April 1959, aged 72. He composed chamber music, symphonic works, art songs, works for solo piano, carillon, organ, as well as sacred music. He is particularly known for writing the Flemish patriotic song “Groeninge” to a text by Guido Gezelle. Works (Selection) Symphonies * Symphony No. 1 in A major (1938) * Symphony No. 2 in A-flat major (1938) * Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (1945) * Symphony No. 4 in B major (1950) * Symphony No. 5 in E major (1955) * Symphony No. 6 in B-flat major (1959) Orchestral * Perzeus, Concert Over

Johannes Ciconia

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Johannes Ciconia (c. 1370 – between 10 June and 13 July 1412) was an important Franco-Flemish composer and music theorist of trecento music during the late Medieval era. He was born in Liège, but worked most of his adult life in Italy, first in the papal entourage in Rome and later and most importantly at Padua Cathedral. Life He was the son of a priest (also named Johannes Ciconia) and a woman of high social standing. Since at least three other men around Liège had that name as well, this has created biographical confusion, first solved by David Fallows in 1975. A Johannes Ciconia, probably the composer’s father, worked in Avignon in 1350 as a clerk for the wife of Pope Clement VI’s nephew. Another Johannes Ciconia is recorded in Liège in 1385 as a , generally identifying a person of young age; scholars agree that this is the composer himself. Papal records suggest that Ciconia was in the service of Philppe d’Alençon, a powerful French cardinal of the schismatic Pope Boniface IX. He is believed to have worked as a clericus capelle, an important job usually held by younger musicians. His whereabouts between the early 1390s and 1401 are generally undocumented, however, due to his se

Joris Vanvinckenroye

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Joris Vanvinckenroye (born 1977), also known by his solo moniker BASta!, is a Flemish avant-rock and experimental double bass musician and composer. He is best known for Aranis, a neo-classical chamber rock group he founded and leads, and for his double bass solo project, BASta!. Vanvinckenroye has performed in Europe and the United States, and recorded seven albums with Aranis. As BASta!, he released a solo album, Cycles, which a review at AllMusic described as “a fabulous showcase for the talents of Joris Vanvinckenroye”. Biography Joris Vanvinckenroye began studying contrabass when he was 16 at the Music Academy of Lier in Belgium. He won Belgium’s Axion Classics award in 2000, and continued his studies at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire in Antwerp, where he obtained a master’s degree in double bass in 2005. Vanvinckenroye also obtained a secondary school teacher diploma in 2000 in physics, geography and mathematics. In 1994, while still studying, Vanvinckenroye co-founded Troissoeur, an electronic group, who toured Europe into the early 2000s, and released two CDs. In 2002 Vanvinckenroye founded and led Aranis, an acoustic avant-rock, experimental and neo-classical chamber musi

Josée Vigneron-Ramackers

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Christiane-Josée Vigneron-Ramackers (25 January 1914 – 30 August 2002), also known as Jo Delande, was a Belgian music educator, conductor and composer. She is known for founding the Academie voor Muziek, Theater & Dans in Maasmechelen in 1945 and for several prize-winning compositions. Biography Josée Vigneron-Ramackers was born on 25 January 1914, in Leopoldsburg, Limbourg in Belgium. Her father was director of the boys’ school of the Coal Mines in Eisden, where she lived from 1921. Her mother was the daughter of lyricist Jean-G. Close, and a soprano singing in charity concerts. She studied at the Zusters Kindsheid Jesu’s (Sisters of the Childhood of Jesus) normal school in Hasselt, and at the Limburgse Orgel- en Zangschool under the tuition of Herman and Arthur Meulemans, Vigneron-Ramackers was then appointed to the Koninklÿk Atheneum of Eisden and the Atheneum of Maaseik, where she taught singing and drawing from 1934 to 1969. In the meantime, she pursued her studies by correspondence, learning about fugue with Herman Meulemans, and orchestration with Arthur Meulemans and Paul Gilson. On 14 March 1981, she was made Officer of the Order of Leopold II by the Governor Vandermeulen.

Joseph Callaerts

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Joseph Callaerts (11 August 1830 – 3 March 1901) was a Belgian organist, carillonneur, composer and music teacher. He was an important member of the Belgian school of organ playing. Biography Joseph Callaerts (sometimes referred to as Jozef ) was born in 1830 in Antwerp, and spent nearly all of his life in that city. He started learning music when he was a boy, singing in Antwerp’s choir of the Cathedral of Our Lady. As a young man, he studied the organ with Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens at the Brussels Royal Conservatoire, and he won the first prize in organ at that institution in 1856. Starting in 1850, Callaerts served as the organist at the Jesuit College in Antwerp. In 1855 he became the organist at Antwerp Cathedral and in 1863 he became carillonneur of the city of Antwerp. From 1867 on, he taught organ and harmony at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, which had its name changed to the Royal Flemish Conservatoire in 1898. He also gave expert advice in the building of several organs. Callaerts’s compositions include an opera called Le Retour imprévu, a symphony, a piano concerto, an organ concerto, a violin and orchestra concertpiece, chamber music, choral music, songs and many wor

Joseph Dall'Abaco

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Joseph Abaco (full name Joseph (Giuseppe) Marie Clément Ferdinand dall’Abaco) (27 March 171031 August 1805) was an Italian violoncellist and composer. He was born and baptised in Brussels, the capital of the Spanish Netherlands, on 27 March 1710, and was musically trained by his father, Evaristo Felice dall’Abaco. At age nineteen Abaco entered into the service of the Prince-elector of Cologne at Bonn and played in the court chamber orchestra. He was appointed its music director in 1738. He traveled to England in 1740. In 1753 he moved to Verona, in the Republic of Venice, where he worked as a member of the Philharmonic Academy. In 1766 he was given the title of baron by Prince Maximilian of Bavaria. Abaco wrote nearly 40 cello sonatas, the 11 Capricci for Violoncello Solo, and other works. Many of his compositions were written in an old-fashioned, Baroque style, despite himself living a very long life well into the Classical era. Abaco died at his estate, Arbizzano di Valpolicella, Napoleonic Italy, near Verona, at the age of 95, on 31 August 1805. * Capricci for solo cello, edited by Christian Bellisario, Daniele Bianchi and Andrea Friggi (The White Prince Edition, 2006). Referenc

Joseph Jongen

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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,

Joseph Ryelandt

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Joseph Ryelandt (7 April 1870 – 29 June 1965) was a Belgian classical composer. He is known for sacred vocal music, including several oratorios and masses. His oeuvre catalog, which lists 133 opus numbers, includes symphonies, masses, an opera, numerous works for piano solo, chamber works and songs, and also five oratorios, which Ryelandt himself considered his most important works. Life Joseph Victor Marie Ryelandt was born in Bruges, into a wealthy bourgeois family, for whom culture, tradition, and the Roman Catholic religion mattered. So did music, which, like many such families, the Ryelandts practiced a lot. From his childhood on he enjoyed private lessons in piano and violin. He studied assiduously, up to 2½ hours per day, but he gave up the violin after a mere two years. Even as an adolescent he realized that his real destiny was music. But at the insistence of his mother, he first went to college, to study philosophy and later law—his father, who had died when Joseph was only seven, had been a lawyer. While at university, however, he continued his musical activities, including composition, although he had had only a few lessons in harmony. Eventually he persuaded his mother

Josquin Des Prez

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Name#

Josquin’s full name, Josquin Lebloitte dit des Prez, became known in the late 20th century. A pair of 1483 documents found in Condé-sur-l’Escaut identify the composer as the nephew of Gille Lebloitte dit des Prez and the son of Gossard Lebloitte dit des Prez. His first name Josquin is a diminutive form of Josse, the French form of the name of Judoc, a Breton saint of the 7th century. Josquin was a common name in Flanders and Northern France in the 15th and 16th centuries. Other documents indicate that the surname des Prez had been used by the family for at least two generations, perhaps to distinguish them from other branches of the Lebloitte family. At the time, the name Lebloitte was rare and the reason that Josquin’s family took up the more common surname des Prez as their dit name remains uncertain. His name has many spellings in contemporary records: his first name is spelled as Gosse, Gossequin, Jodocus, Joskin, Josquinus, Josse, Jossequin, Judocus and Juschino; and his surname is given as a Prato, de Prato, Pratensis, de Prés, Desprez, des Prés and des Près. In his motet Illibata Dei virgo nutrix, he includes an acrostic of his name, where it is spelled IOSQVIN Des PREZ. Documents from Condé, where he lived for the last years of his life, refer to him as “Maistre Josse Desprez”. These include a letter written by the chapter of Notre-Dame of Condé to Margaret of Austria where he is named as “Josquin Desprez”. Scholarly opinion differs on whether his surname should be written as one word (Desprez) or two (des Prez), with publications from continental Europe preferring the former and English-language publications the latter. Modern scholarship typically refers to him as Josquin.

Karel Goeyvaerts

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Karel August Goeyvaerts (8 June 1923 – 3 February 1993) was a Belgian composer. Life Goeyvaerts was born in Antwerp, where he studied at the Royal Flemish Music Conservatory; he later studied composition in Paris with Darius Milhaud and analysis with Olivier Messiaen. He also studied ondes Martenot with Maurice Martenot, who invented the instrument. In 1951, Goeyvaerts attended the famous Darmstadt New Music Summer School where he met Karlheinz Stockhausen, who was five years his junior. Both were devout Catholics and found ways of integrating religious numerology into their serial compositions. They found themselves deep in conversation, and performed a movement from Goeyvaerts’s “Nummer 1”, Sonata for Two Pianos, in the composition course by Theodor Adorno there. They were both astonished upon hearing for the first time Messiaen’s “Mode de valeurs et d’intensités” (from Quatre études de rythme), in a recording by the composer which Antoine Goléa played at a lecture. These experiences together convinced Stockhausen he should study with Messiaen. Goeyvaerts became excited in 1952 when he learned that Stockhausen had access in Paris to a generator of sine waves. Goeyvaerts saw them

Kris Defoort

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Kris Defoort is a Belgian avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. He is the brother of the famous Wim “Dj Willie”, “the living pop encyclopedia” Defoort, Belgian saxophonist Bart Defoort and Koen Defoort. Early life Kris Defoort was born in Bruges, Belgium. His brother is saxophonist and composer Bart Defoort. In 1978, he entered the conservatory in Antwerp to study early music and recorder. He graduated four years later, and then decided to study contemporary music and jazz at the Liège conservatory. Frederic Rzewski, Henri Pousseur and Garrett List were among his teachers. He also teaches at the Brussels conservatory. Opera and music-theatre In 1998, Defoort became a composer-in-residence at LOD, a production company specialising in contemporary music theatre in Ghent. His first work for them was the dance piece Passages with Fatou Traoré, premiered in 2001. His first opera, created in collaboration with director Guy Cassiers was The Woman Who Walked into Doors, after the novel of the same name by Roddy Doyle. It premiered in November 2001 at deSingel in Ghent, before a very successful tour of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Musica fe

Lambert Chaumont

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Lambert Chaumont (c. 1630 – April 1712) was a Flemish Baroque composer and organist. Chaumont was from the Liège area, possibly born in that city. The earliest mention of his name dates from January 1649, when he is listed as a lay brother at the Carmelite monastery at Liège. He was still there in October 1651, and then a monastery accounts entry dated 8 May 1659 lists Chaumont among the nine brothers who completed their novitiates at the monastery at Reims. Nothing is known about the next 15 years of Chamount’s life. On 10 February 1674 he was made rector of the parish of St. Martin’s Church at Huy. The post was insignificant, and the church and the parish were very small, but eventually Chaumont’s career progressed further. On 7 September 1688 he became priest of the parish of the nearby St. Germain’s Church, and pater of the Carmelites at Huy. He occupied these positions until his death in 1712. Chaumont’s extant oeuvre comprises a collection of organ music, Pièces d’orgue (Huy, 1695), and a work of piety published in 1709. At least one more collection of music is lost. Although he evidently spent most of his life in Liège and Huy, Chamount’s style in his organ pieces is entirel

Leonora Duarte

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Leonora Duarte (1610 – 1678?) was a Baroque Flemish composer and musician, born in Antwerp. She belonged to a wealthy Portuguese-Jewish family who were major patrons of the arts and music. She was baptized into the Catholic faith on 28 July 1610. Duarte composed seven sinfonias which are the only known pieces of music written for viol by a woman in the 17th century. Life Family Leonora Duarte’s paternal grandparents, Diego Duarte I (c. 1544-1626) and Leonora Rodrigues (c.1565-1632) originally lived in Lisbon, Portugal until they were forced to flee during the Portuguese Inquisition. They most likely arrived in Antwerp around the year 1571. Practicing Judaism in Antwerp was illegal, so the family became conversos, meaning they outwardly acted as Catholics while secretly maintaining their Jewish faith and practices. Leonora was the first-born child of Gaspar Duarte (c.1584-1653) and Catharina Rodrigues (1584-1644), and she had three sisters and two brothers; Diego II (1612-1691), Catharina (1614-1678), Gaspar II (1616-c.1685), Francisca (1619-1678), and Isabella (1620-1685). In addition to his business in jewels, Gaspar and Diego were also heavily involved in the collection, trading,

Lodewijk Mortelmans

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miniatuur Lodewijk Mortelmans (5 February 1868, Antwerp – 24 June 1952, Antwerp) was a Belgian composer and conductor of Flemish ancestry. Sometimes called de Vlaamse Brahms (“the Flemish Brahms”), Mortelmans composed in a number of forms, including piano music and orchestral works, but he was most celebrated in his day for his art songs. Beginning in 1899, he often set the poetry of the priest Guido Gezelle. His opera De Kinderen der Zee (The Children of the Sea) was first produced in 1920 at the Vlaamse Opera. Biography Family Mortelmans was from a family of six surviving children born to Isabella and Karel Mortelmans. His father was a printer, and his elder brother Frans a painter. He was married twice. With Gabriella Mortelmans (d. 3 May 1917) he had seven children, two of which (Frits, d. 22 July 1917 and Guido, d. 10 January 1917) died with her in 1917. Mortelmans composed In Memoriam in her honour. His second wife was the pianist and teacher Gabrielle Radoux. Career Mortelmans studied music at the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp, where his teachers included Peter Benoit, Joseph Tilborghs, and Jan Blockx, as well as Arthur De Greef (piano) and Hubert Ferdinand Kufferath

Louis Brassin

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Louis Brassin (24 June 184017 May 1884) was a Belgian pianist, composer and music educator. He is best known now for his piano transcription of the Magic Fire Music from Wagner’s Die Walküre. Career Louis Brassin was born in Aix-la-Chapelle in 1840. His father was a baritone named de Brassine, whose career took him and his family abroad. Louis gave his first concert at the age of six, in Hamburg. At age seven he entered the Leipzig Conservatory as a pupil of Ignaz Moscheles. In 1852 he went on concert tours with his two brothers. In 1857 he adopted the surname Brassin. In 1866-67 he taught at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, succeeding Hans von Bülow, then resumed concertising. He was piano professor at the Brussels Conservatoire 1868-78, and played an important role in the musical life of the country. Among his pupils there were Edgar Tinel, Arthur De Greef, Franz Rummel and Alfred Wotquenne. In 1878 he took over the piano class of Theodor Leschetizky at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where his pupils included Vasily Safonov, Wassily Sapellnikoff and Genary Korganov. He died in Saint Petersburg in 1884, aged 43. Transcriptions Brassin’s piano transcription of the Magic Fire M

Louis Lambillotte

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Louis Lambillotte (born La Hamaide, (Hainaut, Belgium), 27 March 1797; died Paris, 27 February 1855) was a Belgian Jesuit, composer and palaeographer of Catholic music, associated with the restoration of Gregorian music, which he inaugurated and promoted by his scientific researches and publications. Early life Louis Lambillotte was born at La Hamaide, near Charleroi and began studying solfège, piano, and harmony at the age of seven. At the age of fifteen, he became organist in Charleroi; later he went in a similar capacity to Dinant (Belgium). In 1820 he was appointed choirmaster and organist of the Jesuit College of Saint-Acheul, Amiens. While exercising these functions he also studied the classics, and at the end of five years, in August, 1825, he entered the Society of Jesus. The thirty years of his Jesuit life were spent successively in the colleges of Saint-Acheul, Fribourg, Estavayer, Brugelette and Vaugirard (Paris). While occupied in teaching and directing music, he gave himself up more entirely to composition, with a view to enhance both the religious ceremonies and the academic entertainments in those newly founded colleges. His powers of composition were checked by the

Luc Brewaeys

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Luc Brewaeys (25 October 1959 in Mortsel, Belgium – 18 December 2015 in Antwerp, Belgium) was a Belgian composer, conductor, pianist and recording producer at the VRT (Flemish Radio & Television). He studied composition with André Laporte in Brussels, with Franco Donatoni in Siena (Italy) and with Brian Ferneyhough in Darmstadt (Germany). Prizes and distinctions * 3rd prize of the European Competition for Young Composers (1985). * 1st prize in the category “young composers” from the international tribunal of composers of UNESCO (1986). * 1st prize “Prix de Musique Contemporaine du Québec” (1988) for the work entière. * 1st prize for the competition of European composers at the International meeting of contemporary music in Metz (1988). * The prize for the “Musique de la Communauté Flamande” (1989) * The SABAM prize (1990) * 1st prize for “Premio Musicale Città di Trieste” for symphonic composition (1991). Works and Discography Vocal and Choral works *2015 On a day 9’ *2010 speechless song, seeming many, being one ‘Sonnet n° 8’ by William Shakespeare ca. 6’ *2009 vogliamo inneggiare all’uomo 3’ *2007 Fantasia con tre canzoni popolare Napoletane 8’ *2006 L’uomo dal fiore in bocca Ope

Luc Van Hove

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Luc Van Hove (born 1957, Wilrijk, Belgium) is a Belgian composer of contemporary classical music. Biography Luc Van Hove received his musical training at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. He studied composition with Willem Kersters and music analysis with August Verbesselt. Afterwards he pursued advanced studies at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg (orchestral conducting) and at the University of Surrey. He has gained several awards, including the Sabam Prize for Contemporary Music (1993). He is an honorary professor of composition and music analysis at Luca, School of Arts, campus Lemmensinstituut of Leuven and former professor of composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp, department of the Artesis Plantijn University College of Antwerp. He is also a former extraordinary professor at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Waterloo, member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts (President of the Class of the Arts in 2011), and Commander in the Order of Leopold II. Luc Van Hove received commissions from and was performed by numerous Belgian orchestras, ensembles and soloists, e.g. the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Flemish Radio Orchestra (Brussels

Lucie Vellère

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Lucie Vellère (23 December 1896 – 12 October 1966) was a Belgian composer. Biography Lucie Vellère was born in Brussels, and began piano lessons with her father at the age of six. She studied with Emile Chaumont for violin, Paul Miry for harmony, and Joseph Jongen for composition. She was awarded the 1957 “Prix du Brabant” and received an award from the American Section of the International Council for Women for her compositions. She made her primary living as a pharmacist and composed as a hobby. Selected works Vellère composed works for voice, solo instruments, chamber ensembles, chorus and orchestra in a traditional style. Most of her works show impressionistic tendencies. *Chanson nocturne (for violin and piano) 1920 *String Quartet No. 1 in d minor 1937 *String Quartet No. 2 in e minor 1942 *Piano Trio 1947 *Fantaisie en trois mouvement (for violin and piano) 1950 *String Quartet No. 3 1951 *Nocturne (for cello and piano) 1954 *Petite Symphony 1956 *Arlequinade (for trumpet and piano) 1959 *Bagatelles (String Trio) 1960 *Dialogue (for oboe and piano) 1960 *Intermède (for flute and piano) 1960 *Sonata for violin and viola 1961 *Divertissement (for violin and piano) 1962 *String

Lucien Goethals

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Lucien Goethals (26 June 1931 – 12 December 2006) was a Belgian composer. Life Lucien Goethals was born in Ghent, but spent his formative years in Argentina, where he studied at the Dima Conservatory of Buenos Aires. When he returned to Belgium, he continued his studies at the Royal Conservatory in Ghent up to 1956, where he earned his first prize in organ, music history, counterpoint, and fugue. He later studied orchestration with Norbert Rosseau, and serial technique and electronic composition with Gottfried Michael Koenig and De Meester. He worked at the IPEM in Ghent ever since it was founded in 1962, and was its artistic director from 1970 to 1987. He died in Ghent, aged 75. Aesthetics Goethals was a stubborn proponent of “high” culture, in opposition to postmodernism thinking, which wants to dissolve the separation between “high” and “low” culture into the function of a global post-industrial culture of consumption. Compositions *Musica Dodecafonica, for piano (1959) *Twee Kristallen, for piano (1961) *Studies I–VIIb, for tape (1962–73) *Diálogos, for wind quintet, percussion, 2 string quintets, string orchestra, and 4-track tape (1963) *Endomorfie I, for violin, piano, and t

Marcel Poot

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Marcel Michel, Baron Poot (7 May 1901 – 12 June 1988) was a Belgian composer, professor, and musician who was born in Vilvoorde and died in Brussels. Biography Youth and education Poot was born in Vilvoorde, Belgium, on 7 May 1901. His father, , was the director of the in Brussels and led a wind band in Vilvoorde. Encouraged by his father, Poot learned to play clarinet in his childhood. Although pressured from an early age to pursue a musical career by his father, Poot did not believe himself to be especially talented: Although I was very mediocre, I began studying music at an early age. My father had me join the clarinetists of a local band in which he was saxophonist. Less apt than my young friends, I soon had to give up this position. From then on dates my unpopularity in Vilvoorde. My father, however was determined to make me a musician. We then tried the piano. The town organist, Gerard Nauwelaerts, taught me scales and the Czerny exercises. This did not amuse me at all. But the laborious study continued until I was able to play with my professor overtures by Suppé arranged for four hands. My father then decided to enroll me at the Brussels Conservatory. The first time I was t

Marcel Quinet

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Marcel Alfred Quinet (6 July 1915 – 16 December 1986) was a Belgian composer and pianist. He studied at the Mons Conservatory briefly and then the Brussels Conservatory, where he obtained prizes for harmony in 1936, counterpoint in 1937, fugue in 1938, and a higher piano diploma in 1943. Among his teachers at the Conservatory were Raymond Moulaert and Léon Jongen. A continued his studies with Jean Absil, and won the Belgian Prix de Rome in 1945 for his cantata La vague et le sillon. In 1946 he was awarded the Agniez Prize for his orchestral Divertissement. In 1943 he became the head of the piano faculty at the Brussels Conservatory where he also taught harmony and fugue. Among his pupils there was Paul Danblon. In 1956 he was appointed professor at the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth. In 1957 he won second prize in the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition and his Piano Concerto no.1 was used as a test piece in the 1964 session of the same contest. In 1976 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium. Quinet’s music is very similar in style to Hindemith and is distinguished by formal clarity and the absence of lyrical effusion. His earlier works were more closely related t

Marinus De Jong

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Marinus de Jong (14 January 1891, Oosterhout - 13 July 1984, Ekeren) was a Belgian composer and pianist of Dutch origin. Biography Marinus de Jong was born in Oosterhout (The Netherlands) to a working-class family with twelve children. His musical talent became apparent early in his life: he was accepted into the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp (Belgium) at the age of fifteen, where he was taught by Lodewijk Mortelmans and Emile Bosquet. At the start of World War I De Jong returned to his native town to recover from a burn-out, but he returned to Belgium after the Armistice of 11 November 1918. He gained fame as a pianist and toured throughout Europe and the United States between 1920 and 1922. Afterwards he married Johanna Corthals, with whom he settled in Kapellenbos, and in 1926 De Jong traded in his Dutch nationality for a Belgian one. In this same year, he was made a teacher of counterpoint and fugue at the Lemmensinstituut, where he would work until 1963. In 1931 he was also appointed professor of piano at the Conservatory of Antwerp, where he became professor of counterpoint and fugue in 1948. In these teaching positions, he wrote two treaties on harmony and counterpoint, of

Martin Pierre Marsick

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Martin Pierre Marsick (1847–1924), was a Belgian violinist, organist, singer, composer and teacher. Marsick was the owner of the Marsick Stradivarius. At the time of his birth, Marsick was the youngest of 5 children and by 1868 was one of 18 children. As a child Marsick was a member of the choir at St. Martin’s Basilica in Liège, and was a member of the choir school at Liège Cathedral. and Cécile Chaminade. In 1900, Marsick left both his wife and the Conservatoire de Paris in order to live abroad with his mistress. Marsick also owned the 1705 Marsick Stradivarius during 1879–1880. From 1902–c. 1907 Marsick owned what was later named the Schneiderhan violin. Personal life and death On 23 February 1872, Marsick married Adolphine Adrienne Berthe Mollot (1848– 1923) in Chatou. The couple later divorced. Marsick is buried at the Cimetière de Robermont in Liège. Selected works Marsick published a series of finger exercises entitled Eureka in 1906 and his La Grammaire du violon appeared in 1924. Besides these, he composed the septet Souvenir de Naples for strings, flute, and clarinet; a piano quartet; and a lyric drama, Le Puits. ;Stage * Le Puits, Lyric Drama (c.1900); libretto by August

Mateo Romero (composer)

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Mateo Romero (ca. 1575 – 1647) was a Belgian-born Spanish composer of Baroque music and master of the royal chapel. Biography Romero was born as Mathieu Rosmarin in Liège, Belgium, and, following the early death of his father was, like many children from the then-Spanish Netherlands, recruited as a child to serve as a choir boy at the Madrid court. Between 1586 and 1593 he was taught in Spain by his countrymen George de la Hèle and Philippe Rogier. He took the name Romero in 1594. In 1598 he was maestro de capilla at the Spanish court of Philip II of Spain and Philip III of Spain. He remained in this position till 1634. In 1609 he was ordained a priest and was private chaplain to Philipp III. He was also secretary of the Order of the Golden Fleece. After the death of Philip, he was also chaplain to King John IV of Portugal. Romero was one of the most appreciated composers of his time; he was known as “El Maestro Capitan”. His service extended over the threshold of two musical eras, the Renaissance and Baroque. Although he was not part of the polyphonic school of the great Franco-Flemish school, he played an important role in the introduction of Italian stile moderno in Spain. Works

Maurice Vaute

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Maurice Vaute (27 April 1913 – 21 June 2000) was a Belgian composer of classical music, conductor and music teacher. Biography Maurice Vaute was born on 27 April 1913 in Roisin and studied at the Conservatories of Mons and Brussels (harmony, fugue, saxophone, etc.). He was a music teacher as well as an orchestra and choir conductor. His compositions are deposited as “Fonds Maurice Vaute” in the library of the Brussels conservatory. He died in Chimay. Style Initially, he was influenced by Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Joseph Jongen, his teacher. Later, his compositions were atonal. Compositions Symphonic works *Auprès de toi - aria, 1936 *Arlequins-fantaisie *Gavotte ancienne *Menuetto allegretto *Triptyque for strings and harpsichord *Deux mouvements pour les temps venus *Trinôme for orchestra, soli and wind trio *Concerto for saxophone alto and orchestra *Symphonie de danses for orchestra and saxophone trio *Espace, intensité (symphonie libre) *Les heures, Trois mouvements symphoniques 1. Prélude 2. Rondo giocoso 3. Postlude *Concerto for piano and orchestra *Concerto for violin and orchestra *Rondo pastoral Ballet *Le reflet dans la Meuse (argument de Malfère) *Melos Solo in

Michel Herr

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Michel Herr (born 16 February 1949 in Brussels) is a Belgian jazz pianist, composer and arranger. In addition to releasing jazz albums, composing for jazz ensembles and touring widely as a performing musician, he has also composed scores for films. As a bandleader he founded several bands: Solis Lacus, Michel Herr European Quintet, Michel Herr & Unexpected Encounters. He is also a music producer. In 2020 he was awarded the Prix Sabam for Culture – Compositeur de Jazz 2019 for his album Positive / Music for sextet and string quartet (Igloo Records, 2019). Selected works Albums as a leader or co-leader * Positive / Music for sextet and string quartet (2019) * Jazz Olympics (1 track in tentet with Michel & Life Lines) (2008) * The Music of Michel Herr (with the Brussels Jazz Orchestra) (2008) * A tribute to Belgian Jazz (1998) * Notes of life (1998) (Quintet) * Just friends (Michel Herr & Archie Shepp)(1993) (movie soundtrack) * Meet Curtis Lundy & Kenny Washington (Steve Houben & Michel Herr) (1983) * Intuitions (1989) (trio) * Short stories (1982) (with Wolfgang Engstfeld) * Continuous flow (1980) (Engstfeld / Herr / Danielsson / Lowe) * Good buddies (1979) (with Bill Frisell) * Per

Nicholas Lens

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Nicholas Lens Noorenbergh (born 1957) is a Belgian composer of contemporary music, particularly known for his operas. His work is published by Schott Music and distributed by Universal Music Group and Sony BMG. In 2020 Lens signed with Deutsche Grammophon. He lives alternately in Brussels and Venice, and has one daughter, the Berlin-based painter Clara-Lane Lens Works Operas * Costello in limbo (Elizabeth Costello at the gate), opera, world premiere 2028 at La Monnaie with libretto by John M. Coetzee in a staging by Barbora Horáková Joly and Allison Cook as soprano falcon in the title role * Is this the gate?, chamber opera with libretto by J. M. Coetzee, world premiere at Adelaide Festival, Australia 2024 * L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S, trance-minimal chamber opera with libretto by Nick Cave, written and produced by Nicholas Lens & Nick Cave, release by Deutsche Grammophon 2021 * Shell Shock, opera with libretto by Nick Cave, world premiere on 24 October 2014 at the Royal Theatre of La Monnaie * Slow Man, opera with libretto by J. M. Coetzee based on his novel Slow Man, world premiere on 5 July 2012 at the Malta Festival, Grand Theatre, Poznań Vocal and chamber music * The Puppet Designer (Der

Nicolas Champion

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Nicolas Champion (also Nicolas Liégeois, dis le Liégeois; c. 1475 – 20 September 1533) was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of the Renaissance. He was a member of the renowned musical establishments of the Habsburg court, including the chapels of Philip I of Castile and Charles V. While with Philip’s chapel he was a close associate of composers such as Pierre de La Rue, Marbrianus de Orto and Alexander Agricola. Life Champion was born in or near Liège, where he probably received his early training. Little information survives regarding his early life and the first record relating to his involvement with Philip’s Grande chapelle, the Habsburg chapel choir, dates from 13 November 1501, prior to Philip’s first trip to Spain. He was one of the few singers who remained with the chapel after Philip’s death in 1506, maintained by his wife Joanna the Mad; for several years after Philip’s death, Joanna traveled around Castile with his corpse in its coffin, having her chapel choir sing requiems to it each night, until her father Ferdinand I finally had her locked up in the fortress at Tordesillas. After the dissolution of Joanna’s chapel, Champion joined the chapel of Charles V. While th

Nicolas Payen

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Nicolas Payen (also Nicolas Colin) (c. 1512, in Soignies – after April 24, 1559) was a Franco-Flemish composer and choirmaster of the Renaissance, associated with the Grande Chapelle, the Habsburg imperial chapel, at the end of the reign of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Life Payen was born in Soignies, and received his earliest musical training in that town, in the church of St. Vincent. When he was about 13 years old he went to Spain to sing in the choir of Charles V; children were commonly recruited in the Low Countries for service in the imperial chapel. In the 1530s he may have attended university, but this portion of his life is poorly documented. In the 1540s he rose in the chapel hierarchy, becoming successively a clerk and a chaplain, and in 1556 he took over the post of maestro di capilla, the director of music, from Cornelius Canis who had retired the previous year simultaneously with the abdication of Charles V. Thus Payen became the first maestro di capilla for Habsburg monarch Philip II of Spain. Payen acquired honors including prebends. In 1558 he became canon at the church in Tournai. He died in Madrid the next year or shortly after. Music and influence Payen’s musi

Nicolaus à Kempis

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Nicolaus à Kempis, Nicolaus a Kempis or Nicolaes a Kempis (c. 1600 – buried in Brussels on 11 August 1676) was a Flemish composer and organist active in Brussels in the middle of the 17th century. He is known for introducing the latest innovations from Italy into Flemish polyphonic music. Life Not much is known about a Kempis. He was born around 1600, but it is unknown where. Because of his knowledge of contemporary Italian music, some musicologists have opined that he came from northern Italy, perhaps from Florence but there is no evidence for this. Current research is considering the possibility that Kempis was never in Italy and that he only came into contact with the then new Italian violin music through the migration of other musicians caused by the wars of religion. The earliest extant piece of biographical information about him is his nomination as organist of the cathedral of Saints Michael and Gudule in Brussels around 1626. He had various sons of whom Joannes Florentius succeeded him in his role as organist in 1670. He died in 1676 and was buried in Brussels on 11 August 1676. Nicolaus à Kempis was the first musician to introduce the Italian viol style and techniques of G

Nini Bulterijs

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Nini Bulterijs (also spelled Bulterys) (20 November 1929 – 12 December 1989) was a Belgian composer. She was born in Temse, East Flanders, and studied piano with Jozef d’Hooghe and harmony with Yvonne van den Berghe at the Royal Flemish Conservatory of Antwerp. She continued her studies in composition with Jean Louel privately and with Jean Absil at the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth. After completing her studies, she taught at small music schools in Hamme, Vilvoorde and Mechelen before taking a position as professor at the Lemmens Institute at Louvain and in 1970 at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire of Antwerp. She retired from teaching in 1988 and died in Wilrijk. Bulterijs won second place in the 1963 Prix de Rome contest and in the 1966 Queen Elisabeth International Composition Competition. She received the 1969 Emile Doehaerd Prize. Works Bulterijs composed orchestral, chamber ensemble, choral and instrumental works and songs. Selected compositions include: *Sonata, 2 violins, pianoforte, 1960 *Symphonic Movements, orchestra, 1960 *Pianoforte Concerto, 1961 *Trio for piano, viol and cello, 1962 *Arion (cantata, text: B. Decorte), solo violin, chorus, orchestra, 1963 *Concerto

Noël Goemanne

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Noël Goemanne (Poperinge, December 10, 1926 – Dallas, January 12, 2010) was a Belgian-born musician, who in 1952 emigrated to the United States, where he made a name for himself as an organist, as a choirmaster, and as a composer, especially of sacred music. Education Goemanne began studying music at the age of six, and obtained his first music degrees magna cum laude from a so-called “central examination board”. He then studied full-time at the Lemmensinstituut, where he had renowned teachers, among them composer Marinus De Jong, choirmaster Jules Van Nuffel, and organist Flor Peeters, and at the Royal Conservatory of Liège, where he his teachers included Pierre Froidebise and Charles Hens. Subsequently, he studied for two more years with Flor Peeters as a private student. In Belgium During World War II, the Nazi occupier tried to persuade him to become a composer for the Third Reich, but he refused. He was later arrested for playing music by Felix Mendelssohn, a Jewish composer, in public. His wartime experiences turned him into a committed pacifist, which was reflected in his demand, to which he adhered till the end of his life, that his singers sing the “Dona nobis pacem” (Gran

Orlande de Lassus

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Name#

Lasso’s name appears in many forms, often changed depending on the place in which his music was being performed or published. In addition to Orlando di Lasso, variations include Orlande de Lassus, Roland de Lassus, Orlandus Lassus, Orlande de Lattre and Roland de Lattre. Since these various spellings or translations of the same name have been known and accepted for centuries, and since there is no evidence that he stated a preference, none of them can be considered incorrect.

Oscar van Hemel

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Oscar van Hemel (3 August 1892 – 9 July 1981) was a Dutch-Belgian violinist, music teacher and composer of contemporary classical music. His work includes two operas and symphonies. Life and education Van Hemel was born in 1892 in Antwerp, Belgium, where he studied with August de Boeck and Lodewijk Mortelmans at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. During World War I he was wounded at the Battle of Halen. With the help of the Red Cross, he fled in May 1915 to Roosendaal in the Netherlands during the bombardment of Antwerp. He subsequently played violin in the orchestra of the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam. In 1918 he moved to Bergen op Zoom, where he became a teacher of violin, piano, and music theory at the municipal music school. and De prostituée (The Prostitute). Van Hemel’s music was at times praised as “lovely” and spontaneous, albeit at times “constructed”. His Pianokwartet was praised as “powerful, quirky interbellum music”. Others were more critical and lamented a lack of originality. Nevertheless, in the 1950s, van Hemel’s music was very popular in the Netherlands. In 1962, van Hemel received the for his Quartetto di strumenti ad arco no. 6. In the same year, he was kn

Patrick Defossez

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Patrick Defossez (born 7 August 1959 at Valenciennes, France) is a Belgian composer, pianist and improviser of contemporary classical music. A Belgian citizen, he has lived in France for many years and divides his time between Belgium, Reims and the foothills of the Mont Ventoux. He is also the musical director of the 2d’Lyres not-for-profit organization and the Autres Voix de piano collective. Studies A classically trained musician, Patrick Defossez cut his teeth first at the Académie de Musique, then at Mons Conservatory, Belgium, where he wrote his first orchestral work in 1977. He then left for the United States in order to work on jazz and improvisation. He perfected his musical techniques at Berklee College, Boston. On his return to Europe, he began working with electroacoustic music and mixed music, especially at the IRCAM music research institute. Under the guidance of Claude Ballif, he rounded his music composition studies off with the unanimous award of the prize for composition. Work Patrick Defossez began his musical career in 1985, moving to France at a time when Belgian jazz was going through a very challenging period. Over the years, he put his creative talents as a

Paul Danblon

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Paul Danblon (25 July 1931 – 8 February 2018) was a Belgian composer, opera director and administrator, and journalist. He was one of the pioneers of scientific journalism on RTBF (Radio télévision belge de la communauté française). In 1954, after graduating in chemistry from the Université libre de Bruxelles, Danblon joined the RTBF current events programme, Carnets de l’Actualité. He went on to specialize in producing and presenting popular science programmes such as La Bouteille à encre, Connaître, and Le point de la médecine. He is the author of two books in the area: *150 ans de sciences (1830–1980) (Paul Legrain, Brussels, 1980) *L’espace (Lombard, Brussels, 1964) Danblon has also had a parallel career in the arts. He studied composition at the Brussels Conservatory with Jean Absil and Marcel Quinet. His first work, a piano concerto, premiered in Moscow in 1954. His other compositions include: *Les Troyennes (1954) - Oratorio to a libretto by Jean Le Paillot *Cyrano de Bergerac (1980) - Opera composed for the 150th anniversary of the creation of the Belgian state, with Gabriel Bacquier in the title role. He joined the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in Liège as a stage director in 19

Paul Gilson

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Paul Gilson (Brussels, 15 June 1865 – Brussels, 3 April 1942) was a Belgian musician and composer. Biography Paul Gilson was born in Brussels. In 1866, his family moved to Ruisbroek in the Belgian province of Brabant. There he studied theory with the organist and choir director Auguste Cantillon, and began writing works for orchestra and choir. His first official training came from 1887 to 1889 under François-Auguste Gevaert in composition and under Charles Duyck in harmony and counterpoint at the Brussels Conservatory, and in 1889, he was awarded the Belgian Prix de Rome for a cantata, Sinaï, which was very well received. As the winner of the prize he was able to spend time in Bayreuth (1892), Paris (1893–4) and Italy (1895). A large orchestral work, La mer, which was first performed in Brussels on 20 March 1892, established Gilson as a national musical figure and also gave him success abroad, though not in Paris. In 1925, a group of Gilson’s students who called themselves Les Synthétistes (including René Bernier, Francis de Bourguignon, Théo De Joncker, Marcel Poot, Maurice Schoemaker, Jules Strens and Robert Otlet) first formed, declaring allegiance to Gilson’s ideas about music

Paul-Baudouin Michel

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Paul-Baudouin Michel (7 September 1930 – 30 October 2020) was a Belgian composer, professor, and writer. He was a member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium. Biography After he attended the Conservatoire Royal de Mons, Michel continued his studies at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, where he worked on composition under Jean Absil and graduated in 1962. He worked in orchestral conducting and musical analysis at the Académie d’été in Nice. He then became director of the Académie de musique de Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, where he taught harmony and the history of music. He was a professor of music at the Conservatoire Royal de Mons and the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. He became a member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium in 1997, and subsequently became a lecturer on new music and wrote radio broadcasts. Paul-Baudouin Michel died on 30 October 2020 at the age of 90. Works *Variations symphoniques *Symphonium III Jeanne la Folle *Symphonium IV dite Sommeil paradoxal *L’Oreille fertile *Engrenage *Atomes crochus *16 interludes for piano *Lamobylrinthe * Mystère-jeu for viola and piano (1976) Prizes *Prix Émile Doehaerd of CeBeDe

Peeter Cornet

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Peeter Cornet (Pierre, Pietro, Peter, Pieter) (ca. 1570-80 – 27 March 1633) was a Flemish composer and organist of the early Baroque period. Although few of his compositions survive, he is widely considered one of the best keyboard composers of the early 17th century. Life Very little is known about Cornet’s life. Much of the information comes from a letter by his widow. Cornet was born in the 1570s in the Brussels, then the capital of the Southern Netherlands. The family included numerous musicians, among them a violinist, singers and organists. ) and John Bull, as well as fellow Flemish composers Géry Ghersem and Matthijs Langhedul. Apparently Cornet was also active as an organ consultant and builder. In 1615 he provided advice concerning the organ of St. Rumbolds Cathedral (Sint-Romboutskathedraal) in Mechelen, and in 1624 he signed a contract to build a choir division for the same organ. The settings of Salve Regina and Tantum Ergo exhibit similar characteristics. The former comprises five sections (Salve, Ad te clamamus, Eia ergo, O clemens, Pro fine). The first three are fugues on the initial motifs of the corresponding lines, the fourth is a cantus firmus setting with the me

Peter Benoit

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Peter Benoit (17 August 18348 March 1901) was a Flemish composer of Belgian nationality. Biography Petrus Leonardus Leopoldus Benoit was born in Harelbeke, Flanders, Belgium in 1834. He was taught music at an early age by his father and the village organist. In 1851, Benoit entered the Brussels Conservatoire, where he remained till 1855, studying primarily with FJ Fétis. During this period, he composed music to many melodramas, including the opera Le Village dans les montagnes for the Park Theatre, of which in 1856 he became the resident conductor. In 1857, he won the Belgian Prix de Rome for his cantata Le Meurtre d’Abel. The accompanying money grant enabled him to travel through Germany. In the course of his journeys, he found time to write a considerable amount of music, as well as an essay called L’École de musique flamande et son avenir. Fétis loudly praised his Messe solennelle, which Benoit composed in Brussels on his return from Germany. In 1861, he visited Paris for the production of his opera Le Roi des Aulnes (“The Erl King”), which, though accepted by the Théâtre Lyrique, was never performed. (He also composed a work for piano and orchestra called Le Roi des Aulnes.) Wh

Peter Vermeersch

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Peter Vermeersch (born 1959 in Waregem) is a Belgian composer, clarinet player and producer. He is a main character in several Belgian bands such as X-Legged Sally, A Group and the Flat Earth Society. His compositions, balancing between classical, jazz and pop music, are often commissioned for or used by modern dance companies. As a producer he helped to form the first album of Belgium’s most prominent indie band dEUS. As such, he is one of the godfathers of the Belgian music scene. Early career Vermeersch’s formal training include architecture and urbanization, and a modern art course. He soon got involved with music and started composing. In the eighties and early nineties, Vermeersch was part of the post-modern classical ensembles Union and Maximalist! and composed and performed music for dance productions by Rosas and Ultima Vez. He was also a member of the Simpletones and Kamagurka en the Vlaamse Primitieven. Among his first official compositions is part of the music for the dance production Rosas danst Rosas (1983). Bands Because Vermeersch soon grew tired of the constraints imposed by sheet music, he started his own ensemble X-Legged Sally. In a way, XLS was the last Belgian

Philippe Boesmans

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Philippe Boesmans (17 May 1936 – 10 April 2022) was a Belgian pianist, composer and academic teacher. He studied to be a pianist at the Royal Conservatory of Liège, and was self-taught as a composer, influenced by the Liège Group of Henri Pousseur, André Souris, and Célestin Deliège, and by attending the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. He worked for the Radio Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française (RTBF) from 1961, as a producer from 1971. Boesman became primarily recognised for his operas, with works written for the Royal Opera House La Monnaie in Brussels as composer in residence since 1985. Four operas were written in collaboration with Luc Bondy who adapted plays for him, Schnitzler’s La Ronde, Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Strindberg’s Miss Julie and Iwona, księżniczka Burgunda by Witold Gombrowicz, and who directed the world premieres of the operas. Au monde was honoured with an International Opera Award in 2015. His last opera based on Feydeau’s vaudeville ‘On purge bébé’ had its world premiere at La Monnaie in Brussels in December 2022. Life Boesmans was born in Tongeren and studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Liège, He studied first with , then with Stefan Askenase

Philippe de Monte

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Philippe de Monte (1521 – 4 July 1603), sometimes known as Philippus de Monte, was a Flemish composer of the late Renaissance active all over Europe. He was a member of the 3rd generation madrigalists and wrote more madrigals than any other composer of the time. Sources cite him as being “the best composer in the entire country, particularly in the new manner and musica reservata.” Others compare his collections of music with that of other influential composers, such as Orlande de Lassus. Life and career Philippe de Monte was born in Mechelen around 1521. After boyhood musical training at St. Rumbolds Cathedral in Mechelen, where he was a choirboy, Monte went to Italy — a common destination for a young Flemish composer in the sixteenth century – where he made a name for himself as a composer, singer, and teacher. He lived and worked in Naples for a while, and in Rome, in the employ of Cardinal Orsini, although he was in England for a brief period, 1554–1555, during the reign of Queen Mary I, while she was married to King Philip II of Spain. Monte reported that he disliked working in Philip’s choir since all the other members were Spaniards. While in England, Monte was acquainted wi

Philippe Rogier

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Philippe Rogier (c. 1561 – 29 February 1596) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active at the Habsburg court of Philip II in Spain. He was one of the last members of the Franco-Flemish school, in the closing days of the Renaissance period in music history, and was a prolific composer; however most of his music was lost in the destruction by fire of the library of John IV during the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Life He was born in Arras, then in the Spanish Netherlands now in France, around 1561. Presumably he received his early training there or nearby, and his talent was sufficient for him to be brought in 1572 to Spain to sing in the choir of Philip II in Madrid. Boys were often recruited from the Low Countries to become singers in the imperial chapel; the numerous cathedral schools in the towns of northern France and the Netherlands provided a rich environment from which the Habsburgs could cherry-pick the best musicians. Rogier became assistant director of the capilla flamenca in 1584, chaplain by 1586, and director of music at the court of Philip in 1586 on the death of the previous director, George de La Hèle. Sometime before 1595 he also became a priest. Rogier

Pierre de la Rue

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Pierre de la Rue (c. 145220 November 1518) was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of the Renaissance. His name also appears as Piersson or variants of Pierchon and his toponymic, when present, as various forms of de Platea, de Robore, or de Vico. A member of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, and a long associate of the Habsburg-Burgundian musical chapel, he ranks with Agricola, Brumel, Compère, Isaac, Obrecht, and Weerbeke as one of the most famous and influential composers in the Netherlands polyphonic style in the decades around 1500. Biography Early life La Rue was probably born at Tournai, in modern Belgium, and likely educated at the Notre-Dame Cathedral there, which had a substantial musical establishment. He may have been the son of Jean de la Rue, a master enlumineur of the city of Tournai. While no records remain of his childhood, a Peter vander Straten (the Flemish equivalent of his name) is mentioned in the archives of the cathedral of Ste. Gudule in Brussels in 1469–1470, as an adult (tenor) singer; this is considered very likely to have been him. In 1471 he was in Ghent at the Jacobskerk as a part-time singer, paid from the cathedral’s miscellaneous fund, sugg

Pierre de Manchicourt

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Pierre de Manchicourt (c. 1510 – 5 October 1564) was a Renaissance composer of the Franco-Flemish School. De Manchicourt was born at Béthune. Little is known of his early life other than that he was a choirboy at Arras in 1525. Further biographical information is scant, however the title-pages of his publications reveal that between 1539 and 1556 he held a succession of posts in Arras, Tours and Tournai, before going to Spain to be master of the Flemish chapel (capilla flamenca) at the court of Philip II, where he stayed for the remainder of his life. Similar to many composers of the early to mid 16th century, he predominantly wrote masses, motets and chansons. His motets are particularly significant as they show the three separate stages of early sixteenth century motet development, highly unusual to find in the work of a single composer. In his earliest motets one can hear the influence of Ockeghem; in his middle period works, the paired imitation style of Josquin des Prez; and in his late works the stylistic refinement, well-crafted melodic lines and pervasive imitation recall Gombert. Manchicourt is an excellent example of a Franco-Flemish composer who learned his craft and art

Pierre Kolp

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Pierre Kolp is a Belgian composer and music pedagogue born in Cologne, Germany, on 23 March 1969. With composers Juan Carlos Tolosa, Francis Ubertelli, and David Nuñezañez, he founded the Black Jackets Company in 1995, an international society of contemporary arts based in Brussels. Work For many years, Kolp has taught music theory, organology, aesthetics, history, and composition. In 1997, he became director of the Institut de rythmique Jaques-Dalcroze de Belgique, an educational institute in Brussels. In 2004, he became president of the Francophone Association of Belgian Music Academies and delegate to the European Music Schools Union. Kolp has written several articles on creativity, time, and musical spaces. He gave composition master classes at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina, in 1999, and at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in 2002. He also works with conductor Juan Carlos Tolosa, composer André Ristic, and virtuoso Stephane Ginsburgh, all three of whom have also taught at the Institut de rythmique Jaques-Dalcroze de Belgique. Catalogue of Works Source: Orchestra * Cosmose (2006–2008), 40 minutes * Ho, mia kor (2007), 8 minutes * Los cometas colorados

Piotr Lachert

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Piotr Lachert (5 September 1938 – 18 September 2018) was a Polish composer, pianist and teacher. Lachert lived and worked in Warsaw, Paris, Hannover, Brussels and in Pescara (Italy) and was a piano teacher in a conservatoire in Brussels, the Warsaw Music School and the Pescaran Academy of Music. Lachert directed numerous university masterclasses. Originally a concert pianist, Lachert gained international recognition as a composer. He is regarded as one of the founders of the new consonant music movement. In 1973, he founded TEMV! (Théâtre européen de musique vivante!) in Brussels, which he directed for twenty years and which had a significant influence on the direction of his catalogue. Lachert composed more than 200 works including concertos, sonatas, chamber music, works for the musical theatre and didactic music. His compositions include a ballet (Aroma Tre), and numerous volumes of piano pedagogy. His music has been published by Bärenreiter, Jobert, Alain Van Kerckhoven Éditeur, and Chiola Music Press. Selected works : Many works by Piotr Lachert are published by Alain Van Kerckhoven Editeur, CeBeDeM and Consonant Music Press. ;Opera * Erotic music, scène 24 (1977) * Primavera

Roland Cardon

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Roland Cardon (15 April 1929 – 18 August 2001) was a Belgian composer, pedagogue, flautist, clarinetist and multi-instrumentalist. He often published works under the name Guy Rodenhof. After studies at the Ghent Conservatory, from 1955 he was a member of the long-lived band Chasseurs Ardennais in which he played solo flute. In the period 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in woodwind and orchestral music in the music school of Aarlen. From 1973 to 1982 he taught flute at the Music Academy in Vilvoorde. In addition, he taught at the Rijksmuziekacademie in Etterbeek in flute from 1973 to 1977. From 1974 to 1977 he was lecturer in the conducting of wind or fanfare orchestras at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. From 1 January 1982 to 1 July 1994 he was director at the Municipal Conservatory of Ostend. Compositions Orchestra * Serenade, for strings *# Moderato *# Andante *# Allegro Band * 1968 Capriccio in Blue * Ad Futurum * Arlequino, ouverture in sonatenvorm * Blue, sweet & swing, voor klarinettenkoor * Childrens Symphony * Claribel, voor klarinettenkoor * Concertino, voor piano en harmonieorkest * Cricket First * Dance Party, suite *# Bossalero *# Tangentino *# Chachambo *# Salsamba

Servaes de Koninck

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Servaes de Koninck, or Servaes de Konink, Servaas de Koninck or Servaas de Konink, or Servaes de Coninck (1653/54 – c.1701) was a Flemish baroque composer of motets, Dutch songs, chamber and incidental music, French airs and Italian cantatas. After training and starting his career in Flanders he moved to Amsterdam in the Dutch Republic, where he was active in circles connected to the Amsterdam Theatre. Life and work Youth and education in the Southern Low Countries De Koninck (Coninck) was born at Dendermonde (Flanders) in 1653. From 1663 to 1665, he was a boy chorister at St. James Church in Ghent. In 1675, he became a student at the University of Leuven. Around 1680, he lived in Brussels. Career in the Republic About 1685, he took up residence in Amsterdam in the Dutch Republic, where he had been preceded by another composer from the Southern Netherlands, Carolus Hacquart. He operated in circles connected to the Amsterdam Theatre and he probably worked later on as an independent musician in Amsterdam. He was a music teacher at the Lucie Quarter’s French girls’ school. Between 1696 and 1699, he issued seven opus numbers, published by Estienne Roger in Amsterdam: two volumes of son

Simon Lohet

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Simon Lohet (Loxhay) (born before c. 1550 – buried 5 July 1611) was a Flemish composer and organist of the late Renaissance, active in Germany. He is best known as one of the earliest exponents of the keyboard fugue. Life Lohet’s father was a certain Jean de Liège, so the family originates from Liège and Simon was probably born in the area. Loxhay is the Walloon version of his surname. He was appointed organist of the Württemberg court at Stuttgart on 14 September 1571, assisting Utz Steigleder and H.F. Fries until both went into retirement. Lohet then assumed full responsibility for the chapel services. He was also somewhat active as a teacher, his pupils included his own son Ludwig (who became his father’s assistant in 1594) and, most importantly, Adam Steigleder (father of Johann Ulrich Steigleder). Lohet made several trips to the Low Countries in the 1570s and to Venice in 1581 to buy instruments and music. In 1601 he retired from his post. He remained in Stuttgart until his death in summer 1611. Works Johann Woltz’s Nova musices organicae tabulatura (Basel, 1617) contains all of Lohet’s known works (six also survive in another manuscript, D-Mbs Mus.ms.1581). The bulk of his sm

Steve Willaert

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Steve Willaert is a Belgian composer, arranger, musician and producer. Biography Since the eighties, Steve Willaert composed music for Belgian radio and television-shows. In 1993 he released a solo album called Musical Regards. He wrote the score for the French movie Le Golden Boy (1996). A year later, he did the orchestrations and arrangements for the movie When The Light Comes (1997) by director Stijn Coninx (Daens). In his home country, he regularly is musical director of great television shows. Since 2001, he is VTM’s musical director for their annual Christmas Parade. In 2003 he did orchestrations for 50 years TV, Eurosong live on stage in the Sportpalais Antwerp organized by the national broadcast (VRT). He toured as musical director and arranger with the Belgian artists Will Tura, Jo Lemaire, Axelle Red and Nathalia. He did arrangements for major orchestras, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Belgium, the Beethoven Academy, Philharmonic orchestra of Prague and the Flemish Radio Orchestra (VRO). By his experience with these orchestras and the use of acoustic, electronic instruments and computers, Willaert had the opportunity to collaborate

Sylvain Dupuis

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Joseph Michel Sylvain Dupuis (; 9 October 1856 – 28 September 1931) was a Belgian conductor, composer, oboist, and music educator. Life Born in Liège, Dupuis was trained at the Royal Conservatory of Liège. After graduating in 1878, he was appointed to that school’s faculty as a professor of harmony. In 1911 he succeeded Jean-Théodore Radoux as the director of the conservatory. Among his notable pupils were Charles Houdret and Joseph Jongen. Dupuis worked actively as a composer during the early part of his career, but later became more heavily involved in his work as an opera conductor and music teacher. As a result, the majority of his works date from before 1900. In 1879 he won the Belgian Prix de Rome for his cantata Le Chant de la Création. In the 1880s he composed two operas, Moîna and Coûr d’ognon. His other compositions include several secular cantatas, the symphonic poem Macbeth, a concertino for oboe and orchestra, a number of choral works, and music for solo organ, piano, violin and cello. In 1890 Dupuis was appointed to the conducting staff at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, and in 1900 he assumed the role of principal conductor at that house. He notably conducted that o

Théo Charlier

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Theophile Noel Charlier (17 July 1868 – 9 October 1944), more commonly known as Théo Charlier, was a Belgian trumpeter, composer, and teacher. He was notable for preferring the trumpet during a period when the cornet was more popular. Career Théo Charlier studied under Dieudonné Gérardy and Sylvain Dupuis at the Royal Conservatory of Liège. He played solo trumpet for the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and at La Monnaie in Brussels, Belgium. On 17 April 1898, he performed Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 by Johann Sebastian Bach in Antwerp. This was the first performance of the piece on a modern piccolo trumpet. He was appointed as a trumpet teacher to the Liège Conservatory in 1901. He was the founder of the Schola Musicae institute for higher musical education. He frequently collaborated with Victor-Charles Mahillon to develop a sopranino trumpet in high G and a “Charlier model” B trumpet. Influence The Theo Charlier International Trumpet Solo Competition was held in 2005, 2015, and 2019 in Charlier’s home country of Belgium. Charlier wrote Solo de Concours in 1900, and it is still performed to this day. By far, his most famous work is 36 Études Transcendantes (Thirty-six Transcendental Etu

Théo De Joncker

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Théo De Joncker (11 April 1894, in Brussels – 12 July 1964, in Asse) was a Belgian composer. Biography Théo De Joncker was a student of August de Boeck and Paul Gilson. For years he conducted the orchestra of the Belgian National Radio (NIR), but he also enjoyed a conducting career outside of Belgium. As a composer, he belonged to the Brussels group Les Synthétistes. This group was found by students of Paul Gilson as a way to celebrate their teacher’s 60th birthday and included Francis de Bourguignon, Théo De Joncker, Marcel Poot, Maurice Schoemaker, Jules Strens, René Bernier, and Robert Otlet. Compositions Orchestral works * 1917 Filosofische gedachten van een draaiorgelspeler for orchestra * 1918 Hedda Gabler for orchestra * 1927 Breugeliaansche schets for orchestra * 1939 Sinfonia burlesca for orchestra * 1939 Sinfonie im klassischen Stil for orchestra * 1943 Symfonie nr.3 for orchestra * 1944 Muzikaal portret van Bernard Shaw for orchestra * Allegro for chamber orchestra * Boere-Charleston for tenor and orchestra - text: Paul van Ostayen * Cello Concerto for cello and orchestra * De laatste oogenblikken van Lodewijk XI for small orchestra * Don Quichotte rêve… for orchestra

Théo Ysaÿe

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Théophile Ysaÿe (; 2 March 1865 – 24 March 1918) was a Belgian composer and pianist, born in Verviers, Belgium. His brother was the violinist and conductor Eugène Ysaÿe. Biography Rather overshadowed throughout his life by the career of his elder brother Eugène, Théo Ysaÿe began amateur studies in music at the Liège Conservatory and, on Eugène’s advice, furthered his education in Berlin. In 1885, Ysaÿe returned to Paris, where he joined the Bande à Franck but also supported the growth of a new aesthetic movement represented by the impressionism of Claude Debussy. Ysaÿe helped promote the work of the new school of French musicians, in Brussels. In 1894, he and his brother found engagements with the La Libre Esthétique in Brussels, which offered the residents of the city the opportunity to experience a generous range of displays in both music and the plastic arts. Ysaÿe contributed his talents as a pianist and a répétiteur. Although Ysaÿe was an excellent pianist, his fragile health did not allow him to follow the hectic pace of his brother’s career and he instead became a professor at the Genève Conservatory of Music. In 1918, Théo Ysaÿe died in Nice, France, two days before Debussy

Thierry Plas

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Thierry Patrick Plas (born 1959) is a Belgian guitarist, first known as lead guitarist and co-songwriter for the Belgian rock group Machiavel. Since 1992, Plas composes and produces also soundtracks for the film and advertising industry at ZOO Productions Company. Biography At the age of 21, he joined Machiavel at a time when the band was going through fundamental (personnel) changes, and looking for a new direction. This led to more of a hard rock sound, combined with greater maturity and simplicity, culminating in the hit single “Fly” from their 1980 album “New Lines”. In the 1990s, Thierry Plas became a highly appreciated session musician, playing live and recording with Vaya Con Dios, Vladimir Cosma, Pierre Rapsat, Beverly Jo Scott, Billy Preston and other Belgian, French & international artists. Plas was also a member of The Responsibles with Patrick Riguelle who released one album, “Every Germ is Sacred” (1995) and were chosen as the opening act for Jimmy Page & Robert Plant in Brussels, Rotterdam and Köln. In 2000, Plas and Marc Ysaye (of Machiavel) teamed up again to record the Purple Prose album with Dani Klein, and in 2004 Thierry did arrangements & guitars for several tr

Thomas Crecquillon

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Thomas Crecquillon or Créquillon (c. 1505 – probably early 1557) was a Franco-Flemish school composer of the Renaissance. While his place of birth is unknown, it was probably within the region loosely known at the time as the Low Countries, and he probably died at Béthune. Biography Very little is known about his early life. He was a priest and a member of the chapel of Emperor Charles V, but whether he was maître de chapelle or merely a singer is still a matter of dispute; the surviving documents are contradictory. Later he seems to have held positions at Dendermonde, Béthune, Leuven, and Namur. Unlike many of the composers of the Franco-Flemish school, he seems never to have left his home region for Italy or other parts of Europe. Crecquillon was retired by 1555, and most likely he died in 1557, probably a victim of the serious outbreak of the plague in Béthune that year. The location of his burial remains a mystery, and no likeness of Crecquillon is known to exist. Crecquillon’s music was highly regarded by his contemporaries, and shows a harmonic and melodic smoothness which prefigures the culminating polyphonic style of Palestrina. He wrote twelve masses, more than 100 motets

Tielman Susato

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Tielman (or Tylman) Susato (c. 1510/15 – after 1570) was a Renaissance composer, instrumentalist and publisher of music in Antwerp. Biography While Susato’s exact place of birth is unknown, some scholars believe that because of his name—Susato meaning de Soest, of the town of Soest — he may be from the town of that name in Westphalia, or the town of Soest in The Netherlands. Not much is known about his early life, but he begins appearing in various Antwerp archives of around 1530 working as a calligrapher as well as an instrumentalist: trumpet, flute and tenor pipe are listed as instruments that he owned. In 1543, he founded the first music publishing house using movable music type in the Low Countries. He could be found in Antwerp, “At the Sign of the Crumhorn.” Until Susato set up his press in Antwerp, music printing had been done mainly in Italy, France and Germany. Soon afterwards, Susato was joined by Petrus Phalesius the Elder in Leuven and Christopher Plantin, also in Antwerp, and the Low Countries became a regional center of music publishing. It is possible that Susato also ran a musical instrument business, and he attempted several times to form partnerships with other pub

Tim Driesen

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Tim Driesen is a Belgian actor, notable for roles in both musicals, plays, and television serials. He has composed a full-scale musical as well as a number of pop-songs. In 2007, he created the role of Adrian Banks (a character based on pop-star Mark Owen) in the Take That musical, Never Forget. Take That member Gary Barlow, who wrote the majority of the production’s musical numbers, said jokingly of the cast: “I’m just worried that they’re better than us”. When the musical opened, Driesen appeared with fellow cast members Dean Chisnall, Craig Els, Stephane Anelli, Eaton James and Nancy Sullivan on ITV’s GMTV performing the show’s title song, “Never Forget”. He also appeared in the UK tour of Starlight Express. Driesen appeared in the television series, The Bubbles. He is also noted for his voice-over work in televised commercials. Driesen appeared as Phoebus in Notre Dame de Paris in Belgium (Antwerp & Ghent). He played a role for which he won ‘Best Supporting Actor in a Musical’ at the VMPs (Flemish Musical Awards). His musical ‘My Super Girlfriend’ (previously known as ‘Super Alice Smith’) has been workshopped and showcased in conjunction with ‘Perfect Pitch’ at Trafalgar Studio

Vic Legley

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Victor Legley (18 June 1915 in Hazebrouck – 28 November 1994 in Ostend) was a Belgian violist and composer of classical music, of French birth. He first studied in Ypres with Lionel Blomme (1897–1984). In 1935 he matriculated at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, and there won awards in the study of viola, fugue, counterpoint and chamber music. In 1941, Legley began studying with Jean Absil, and in 1943 he received the second Belgian Prix de Rome. After World War II he played in the Brussels Opera Orchestra and also in the Déclin Quartet, where he encountered the music of Béla Bartók and of Arnold Schoenberg. At about this time (in 1942) he wrote his first symphony, first of a series of eight (the last of which was written in 1993 and premiered in 1994), and also his first string quartet (first of five, 1941–63, 1990) (Randel, Don Michael (1996).) He was chairman of SABAM (the authors’ rights association) from 1980 to 1992, and from 1986 to 1990 president of the Union of Belgian Composers. His last years saw a turn towards wind-band music; his Symphony No. 7 is scored for this ensemble. His output also includes 3 violin concertos, a viola concerto, and a piano concerto, among othe

Vic Nees

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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

Walter Hus

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Walter Hus (born July 2, 1959) is a Belgian composer and musician. He studied at the music conservatories in Ghent and Brussels. In 1984, he graduated with excellence (Diplôme supérieur) for piano with Prof. Dr. Robert Steyaert and soon became involved with new music in many different expressions. He performed improvised piano recitals (1984: LP Eight Etudes on Improvisation); occasionally flirted with free jazz (Belgisch Pianokwartet) and rock (Simpletones); collaborated with painters (Michel Thuns) and video artists (Walter Verdin, Marie André). He wrote film scores for Suite Sixteen (Dominique Deruddere) and The Pillow Book (Peter Greenaway); toured the world with his ensemble Maximalist! and wrote and performed for theatre and ballet (amongst others Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Wim Vandekeybus, Roxanne Huilmand, Needcompany, Bud Blumenthal, Discordia, Beukelaars, Kortekaas, Ritsema). From the nineties on, he appeared less on stage and concentrated on composition as his main interest. He was commissioned by a number of music institutions and festivals, such as the Kaaitheater, deSingel, the , , Festival van Vlaanderen, Antwerpen ‘93, Happy New Ears, Vooruit, Felix Meritis, Hebbel

Willy Albimoor

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Willy Albimoor, sometimes also William Albimoor (pseudonym: Willy Noël De Moor; born on December 28, 1924, Wevelgem, Belgium – died on December 11, 2004, Borgworm, Belgium) was a Belgian composer and pianist. Sometimes he also used Bill Ador as a pseudonym. Biography As pianist De Moor began as a jazz pianist and was part of Roger Vanhaverbeke’s trio since the 1950s. He collaborated with well-known jazz musicians such as Jack Sels, Etienne Verschueren, Herman Sandy, David Bee, Sadi Lallemand and Fud Candrix (especially in the period 1969–1971). He collaborated on Sadi Lallemand’s big band album Swing a little and the 1958 album Jazz in little Belgium. Furthermore, in the lighter genre, he accompanied such well-known names as Chuck Berry, Josephine Baker, Fud Leclerc, Johan Verminnen and many others. He also accompanied all the revues of the Compagnie des Galeries at the Théâtre Royal des Galeries from its inception in 1953 until 1992. As composer Albimoor wrote music for Louis Neefs, Ann Christy, Etta Cameron, Will Tura, Bobbejaan Schoepen, The Cousins and many others. He also composed 4 mini concertos for piano and orchestra. These works were performed regularly between 1972 and 1

Willy Ostijn

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

William (Willy) Ostijn, also seen as Ostyn (13 July 1913 in Kachtem – 30 March 1993 in Roeselare), was a classical Belgian composer of the 20th century. Biography At the age of sixteen, Willy Ostijn entered the Lemmensinstituut of Malines to study the piano with Marinus de Jong and the organ with Flor Peeters. He got a pedagogical diploma at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent, and first prizes of counterpoint, piano, chamber music and composition. Willy Ostijn becomes the second organist of the St Rumoldus’ Cathedral of Malines. From 1938 until his retirement, he was also a professor of musical education at the Royal Atheneum of Roeselare, a function that did not prevent him from giving lectures at the Music Academy of Izegem from 1939 to 1949. Before the Second World War, Ostijn had a reputation with the Trio Willy Ostijn which played the great works of the repertory and Ostijn’s own compositions. Between 1950 and 1960 his symphonic music and concertante pieces, written in a romantic style, were performed by many orchestras in Belgium and broadcast abroad. Conductors Paul Doulliez, Leonce Graz, , and Jozef Verhelst were the most active ones to publicize his works. From 1960, the disi

Wim Henderickx

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wim Henderickx (; 17 March 196218 December 2022) was a Belgian composer of contemporary classical music. He was composer in residence at Muziektheater Transparant and the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, writing operas and other stage works. His music was influenced by oriental music and philosophy. He taught composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Life and career Henderickx was born in Lier and began his music career as a jazz and rock drummer. In the 1990s he also attended the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. Henderickx was a professor of analysis, harmony and counterpoint at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp from 1986 to 1995. He taught composition, harmony and counterpoint at the Lemmensinstituut in Leuven from 1989 to 2002. From 1995, he was professor of composition and analysis in Antwerp, and from 2002, also professor of composition at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Music and style Henderickx composed operas, orchestral and choral works, works for wind bands, and chamber music. He used electronics in his works. and Dawn (1992) for mezzo-soprano, female chorus and instrumental ensemble. His opera (2000) was commissioned by Muziektheater

Wim Mertens

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wim Mertens (; born 14 May 1953) is a Flemish Belgian composer, countertenor vocalist, pianist, guitarist, and musicologist. Life and work Mertens was born in Neerpelt, Belgium. He studied social and political science at the University of Leuven (graduating in 1975) and musicology at Ghent University; he also studied music theory and piano at the Ghent Conservatory and the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. In 1978, he became a producer at the BRT (Belgian Radio and Television, now called Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroep). For Radio 2 (Radio Brabant) he produced concerts by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Urban Sax and others, and hosted a program called Funky Town together with Gust De Meyer (with whom he recorded the experimental album For Amusement Only). Known primarily as a composer since the early 1980s, Mertens began developing a reputation after releasing “Struggle for Pleasure”, under the name of his early ensemble Soft Verdict, and for “Maximizing the Audience”, which was composed for Jan Fabre’s play The Power of Theatrical Madness, which premiered in 1984 in Venice, Italy. Mertens’ style has continually evolved during the course of his prolific care