Walloon provinces

In the treasury of the Romanesque cathedral (12^th-13^th century) is the manuscript of the oldest polyphonic Mass, dated 1349. It is a compilation of three-voice movements in 13^th c. modal rhythm and in 14^th c. motetus style.

In the 16^th century, Pierre de Manchicourt and Georges de La Hèle worked in this church.

Birthplace of the composer Jean Absil (1893-1974; > 1055). A monument (bust) was erected nearby.

photos: Commune de Péruwelz

The building of the present St Waltrudis church began in 1451. Gilles Binchois, born in Mons in 1400, was organist and Guillaume Dufay, not residing here, had the title of canon in the foregoing church; they met in 1449, the year of its demolition. At the most they have witnessed the plans for the new church, in which Roland Lassus alias Orlando di Lasso, born in Mons in 1532, was probably a chorister, before being taken along to Italy at the age of thirteen; he would spend the rest of his life abroad, dying in 1594.  Thus the first great master of the Franco-Flemish Music and its last and greatest champion had both connections with this spot!   

Outside the church is a Lasso monument, called La Cantoria.

Birthplace of the musicologist and composer François-Joseph Fétis (1784-1871). As a composer and critic, he was conservative but his musicological work on renaissance music and non-Western cultures was pioneering and his Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique (1833-44) is still a gold mine for research workers. Fétis was the first director of the conservatory of Brussels (1833-71).

Gilles Binchois, composer of church music and c 60 French chansons, was a member of the Burgundian court chapel. He ended his life in the abbey of Soignies and was interred here in 1460; his grave is not marked but he is mentioned on a plaque at the left side of the cloister.

The guitar virtuoso Django (Jean-Baptiste) Reinhardt (1910-1953) became the greatest jazz guitarist as a member of the quintet Hot club de France, together with the violinist Stéphane Grapelli. Being a Sinti, he was born at the trailer camp of Liberchies, a part of Pont-à-Celles, but lived mostly in France. A monument marks his birthplace and a museum Espace Django Reinhardt is devoted to him.  Yearly festival in May.  

The formerly very prosperous industrial town of Charleroi has a theatre with 1800 seats for opera, ballet, concerts  and other performances. It was built in 1957 after the design of Joseph André.           photo  Creative Commons

Birthplace of the composer François-Joseph Gossec (1734-1829). The original farmhouse was later extended by a second store. At the same street, in front of the church, is a bust of him. Gossec went to Paris in 1751 and soon his symphonies and chamber music became popular. Also the Requiem and Te Deum scored successes. The Marche lugubre on the occasion of the death of Mirabeau (1790) is representative for the music of the French Revolution.

The ‘Music Chapel’ is a centre of training excellent young musicians, a kind of ‘super conservatory’. It was – together with the ‘Queen Elisabeth Contest ─ established in 1939 by the Belgian Queen Elisabeth and the violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe in a new building by Yvan Renchon in the middle of a large park. The Launoit wing was added in 2015 and since then, public concerts are given. cf. www.cmre.be

The theatre of Namur was built in 1868 to replace the previous building from 1824. The architect created a luxurious theatre for 800 spectators. It offers drama, opera, ballet and concerts.

The first music school in Namur was established in 1835 by the Société d’Harmonie Sainte Cécile.  The present building near the theatre was occupied in 1868 and its status rose from ‘academy’ to ‘conservatory’.

The Benedictine monastery of Chevetogne was founded in 1925 and is fully named Monastère de l’exaltation de la Sainte Croix and its services – mass and divine office – follow the Orthodox rite. The choir is usually sings Russian and sometimes Greek Orthodox chant and has made several cd-recordings. The Byzantine church was built in the 1950s after a Russian example.

Visitors can attend the services and stay in the monastery.        e-mail Dit e-mailadres wordt beveiligd tegen spambots. JavaScript dient ingeschakeld te zijn om het te bekijken.

Birthplace of the instrument maker and inventor Adolphe Sax (1814-1893). He began to experiment in his father’s workshop, where he created  various innovations on existing wind instruments and – after having moved to Paris in 1842 – also a range of new instruments, of which the set of saxophones formed the peak. The house is an interactive museum. Attractive monument in front of the house.

Following Sax’s example, the visitor of this playful mixture of workshop and museum is invited to experiment with unusual sound producers ─ stones, nails, cans, bamboo tubes ─ and with strange home-made constructions, such as embarcassons, zigzagpoules and chahutophones. A touristic highlight for all ages.

Simon-Joseph de Harlez, a canon of St Lambert in Liège, was the librettist of the first operas in the local dialect: Li voëgge di Châfontaine (1757) and Les Hypocondes (1758); the music was by Jean-Noël Hamal, a member of a dynasty of composers from Liège.  Harlez also was a benefactor of the composer Modeste Grétry; he got him a grant to study in Rome and had his works performed in his house. The houses of Harlez and Hamal couldn’t be located, but Harlez’s summer residence, Château Deulin, must have been visited by Hamal and Grétry too. Descendants of the Harlez family still occupy the beautiful castle.

In the Episcopal principality of Liège, which covered a larger area than the present province, church music prospered from the 9^th century until the loss of independence in 1793. Jacques de Liège (c 1300) wrote the largest medieval treatise on music: Speculum musice, consisting of seven volumes and 521 chapters. Johannes Ciconia was born here in the mid 14^th century and became the great predecessor of the Franco-Flemish composers. He was a canon at this church of St John the Evangelist. From 1402 he worked in Padua, where he died in 1411. The

composer Johannes Brassart worked at St John’s in the 1420s and also at the cathedral of St Vincent, the leading music centre until its destruction by revolutionaries in 1794.

After a downfall during the revolutionary 1790s, the music life had to struggle up. The opera house by architect Auguste Duckers, partly built with materials from the destructed cathedral, opened in 1820 with a performance of Zéire et Azor by Grétry. Between 1840 and 2012, various extensions and alterations were made and the number of seats was reduced from 1554 to 1000.

In front of the building is the statue of Grétry. He was interred in Paris in 1813, but his heart was taken out and is kept in the pedestal of the statue.

André Ernest Modest Grétry was born in 1741 in this beautiful house in the Outremeuse quarter. Since 1913 it is an attractive museum. Grétry moved to Paris in 1767, where he created forty opéras comiques, which set the standard of that genre. He died in 1813.

The Royal Conservatory was established in 1826. César Franck enrolled here in 1830 and scored the one after the other grand prix. Vieuxtemps and Ysaÿe were pupils too. The institute moved to the present building by the architects Boonen and Demany in 1887.

The Salle Philharmonique belongs to the same complex as the conservatory, but the entrance is at the backside. It is the platform of the PO of Liège. On the lawn facing the entrance is a bust of Eugène Ysaÿe.

Birthplace of Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931). He was one of the greatest violinists of his time and a composer of post-romantic works for string instruments. Remarkable are the Six Sonatas for solo violin, a cycle of musical portraits of his colleagues: Szigeti, Thibaut, Enescu, Kreisler, Crickboom and Quiroga.

In this museum of fine arts and archaeology one finds the Studio Ysaÿe, a reconstruction of the study of Eugène Ysaÿe in its house in Brussels (> 1061).

The former ‘Hôtel de Grady’ is considered to be the birthplace of the great composer César Franck (1822-1890). In 1835 the family moved to Paris, where César would become the famous organist and composer of Prière and Variations symphoniques.

The piano shop of Wielick has an auditorium for chamber music.

Louise de Riquet, countess of Mercy-Argenteau, was an amateur pianist and befriended with Liszt, but her greatest interest concerned the Russian music of her time. Borodin visited her in this château in the summer of 1885 and returned in December in company of his colleague César Cui. A warm friendship arose between Louise and César; she supported him, he wrote the piano cycle Á Argenteau (1887). At the end of her life, Louise spent most of her time in St Petersburg, where Russia’s greatest painter Ilya Repin made her portrait, commissioned by Cui, shortly before her death from cancer in 1890.

At the midnight mass on Christmas 1846, Franck played the organ in this ‘church of his youth’. The church from 1774 was extended in 1906, and so was the organ.

Gemmenich was the home of Franck’s parents until 1822; it is not impossible that he was born here instead of in Liège, as it is commonly believed. In this family house, called  'Ferme César Franck', his ancestors lived. The composer visited it frequently during his youth and also later for holiday stays.

In the genealogy of persons from this corner of Belgium, close to the borders with Germany and the Netherlands, it is not surprising that one can find Belgian, German and Dutch names. So, what was Franck’s nationality? To avoid any claims and because his whole career took place in Paris, he is generally considered a French composer.

The theatre by architect Charles Thirion was opened in 1892. In 1967 it merged with the theatre of Liège into the Opéra Royal de Wallonie.  On account of dilapidation, it had to be closed in 2016 but its restoration is foreseen for the mid 2020s.

The violinist and composer Henri Vieuxtemps (1820-1881) was born in Verviers at the address 115 Crapaurue; the house was demolished but a  monument by Égide Rombaux was erected nearby. Vieuxtemps´ romantic violin concertos are still popular among violinists and listeners.

The museum of Archeology and Folklore offers an exhibition in the ‘Grand Salon’ about the life and works of Vieuxtemps.

Grave of Henri Vieuxtemps, †1881.

Monument of the composer Guillaume Lekeu, behind the theatre.

Birthplace of the composer Guillaume Lekeu (1870-1894). In spite of his short life, he was a prolific composer in all genre’s, but today his fame is particularly based on his chamber works, including the splendid violin sonata from 1891.

Grave of Guillaume Lekeu, †1894.

Since centuries, the mineral bathes of Spa ─ already mentioned by the Roman Plinius – are world famous. Among its guests were many musicians. On the large fresco ‘Livre d’Or’ in the pavilion named after tsar Peter the Great, many of them have been portrayed in 1894 by the painter Antoine Fontaine. They stand together at the left side, behind the balustrade. The group includes the composers Vieuxtemps, de Bériot, Litolff, Offenbach, Grétry, Spontini, Meyerbeer. One composer is lacking, even the greatest of all: Claudio Monteverdi visited Spa in 1599 in the retinue of the Duke of Mantua.

A frequent visitor of Spa was the master of Grand-Opéra at its grandest: Giacomo Meyerbeer. He has been honoured with a monument in the town centre and a footpath at the edge of the town, named after him and with a plaque.

House and monument of the composer Joseph Jongen (1873-1953). It was originally the summer house of the family of Jongen’s wife. He lived here permanently from his retirement until his death  (> 1068).

A plaque remembers the marriage of violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe with Louise Bourdeau on 28.IX.1886, obviously an unforgettable event for the local Rotarians.

Unlike the Belgian province of Luxembourg, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg  is an independent state since 1890. Its musical history is modest and great composers are lacking, but the present state provides all one needs of opera, concert and musical education.  The country is officially bilingual, but in this website the use of the German-like vernacular Lëtzebuergesch has been abandoned in favour of French.