1834–1901 · Belgium · Romantic
Peter Benoit (1834–1901) was a Flemish composer and conductor from Belgium who founded a music school in Antwerp, which grew into the Royal Flemish Conservatoire. From 1866 he wrote mainly choral and vocal music to Flemish texts. The site has two of his choral works: Ave Maria and Magnificat.
Peter Benoit was born on 17 August 1834 in Harelbeke, Flanders. His first music lessons came from his father, Petrus, who played in the parish choir and orchestra and taught music himself. As a boy he sang in the choir of the church of St Saviour in his home town, and that is where he got to know sacred music.
In 1847 he became an apprentice to Pieter Carlier, a pianist and organist in Desselgem, and stayed with him until 1851. He also had contact with two composers from Kortrijk, Pieter Vanderghinste and Joannes Vandewiele.
In 1851 Benoit enrolled at the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels. His piano teacher was Jean-Baptiste Michelot and his harmony teacher was Charles Bosselet, while counterpoint, fugue and composition were taught by the director, François-Joseph Fétis.
Studying was not easy, as family, money and psychological difficulties got in his way. Even so, he finished his course and earned a diploma in harmony and composition together with a first prize.
Fétis backed him. The young composer stayed in Brussels to prepare for the Prix de Rome, the prestigious state prize for composition. Charles-Louis Hanssens, director of the Monnaie theatre, also helped him. Benoit wrote a symphony, sacred music, songs to French and Dutch words, and zangspelen, stage pieces that mix speech and song, for Jacob Kats's popular theatre.
He composed music for melodramas, among them the opera The Village in the Mountains for the Royal Park Theatre. In 1856 Benoit became the theatre's resident conductor.
In 1855 Benoit received an honourable mention in the Prix de Rome competition, and in 1857 he took first prize there with the cantata Le Meurtre d'Abel (The Murder of Abel). The prize paid for a trip abroad.
The prize was usually meant to fund a study trip to Italy, but Benoit went to Germany instead. He visited Cologne, Bonn, Leipzig, Dresden, Berlin and Munich, and also Hungary, and he met Franz Liszt. He became a follower of Wagner and Liszt. On the road he wrote a good deal of music, along with an essay about the Flemish school of music and its future.
His views on national music kept taking shape during this journey. After coming back from Germany to Brussels, he wrote a Messe solennelle, which Fétis praised warmly.
Next, Benoit settled in Paris, hoping to make his name as an opera composer. His opera The Erl King (Le Roi des Aulnes) was accepted by the Théâtre Lyrique but was never staged. He also wrote a piece of the same title for piano and orchestra.
The piano cycle Contes et Ballades (Tales and Ballads, 1861) was warmly received and often performed. Unlike many virtuoso pianists who found success playing their own compositions, Benoit wrote something closer to intimate music here. Critics also noted his interest in the folk traditions of his region and the original way he brought them into his piano pieces.
Benoit became head of the operetta company at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, which Jacques Offenbach was then running, and took over from him as conductor. With the company he also appeared in Vienna, Brussels and Amsterdam.
In 1863 Benoit returned to Belgium for good. His sacred cycle startled the musical world: a tetralogy made up of a Christmas cantata, a Mass, a Requiem and a Te Deum. In it he embodied many of his ideas about Flemish music. Around then the novelist Hendrik Conscience also left his mark on him. Back in Belgium, Benoit was regarded as one of the most promising composers in the country.
This reputation was confirmed by a flute concerto (Op. 43a) and a piano concerto (Op. 43b), both subtitled Symphonic Tale. In a symphonic poem for piano and orchestra he used a folk song.
A turning point was the oratorio Lucifer of 1866. It began Benoit's long collaboration with the poet Emanuel Hiel and was his final switch to texts in his own language. From then on he gave up instrumental music and wrote only vocal and choral works, to Flemish texts and on motifs of Flemish folk music.
In 1867 Benoit took charge of the Flemish music school in Antwerp and led it until the end of his life. In 1898 the school was reorganised as the Royal Flemish Conservatoire. His pupil and chief successor was Constant Lenaerts; Jan Blockx was another of his students.
Benoit set out his ideas about national music in many essays and polemical pieces; in 1868 he published his key article on the new Flemish musical movement. He believed that a national school grows from people of one nation who develop the art step by step. To create a distinct Flemish musical language free of foreign influence, he urged a return to the sources: folk song and the mother tongue.
Benoit brought folk song into both his teaching and his own compositions. He opposed the dominance of French in teaching and musical practice, and of Latin in church music, and advised using the mother tongue: only that, he was convinced, makes music human. He also stood up for the cultural autonomy of Flanders.
Not everyone shared Benoit's views. The 'cosmopolitan' composers, among them his former teacher Fétis, François-Auguste Gevaert and Adolphe Samuel, saw Belgium as one musical region where Latin and Germanic influences meet. They did not accept national schools, because they took universality to be the mark of all good music. Benoit also produced many essays about music.
In 1881 Benoit was made a Commander of the Order of Leopold, and in 1882 he was elected to the Belgian royal academy that covers science, letters and fine arts.
Benoit died in Antwerp on 8 March 1901 and is buried in the Schoonselhof cemetery there. In Harelbeke there is a museum devoted to his life and work. A Belgian postage stamp with his portrait appeared in 1934.
From 1866 Benoit devoted himself almost entirely to vocal and choral music on Flemish texts. His operas, choruses and songs tell Flemish stories and are set to Flemish verse, and many works are built on motifs of folk music. In Belgium he is named one of the foremost composers of the nineteenth century and a pioneer of the Flemish movement in national music.
Key works include three oratorios, Lucifer (1866), De Schelde (The Scheldt, 1869) and Rubens (1877), plus the operas Isa and The Village in the Mountains, Drama Christi and a very large number of songs, choruses, short cantatas and motets. De Schelde rests on a historical and national subject: the melody of the Wilhelmus runs through it as a leitmotif of William of Orange. When Lucifer was staged in London in 1888 it ended in complete failure.
His works include sacred music: the Messe solennelle, the Christmas cantata, the Te Deum and the Requiem. Cantatas appeared in 1885, 1887 and 1888. Before his turn to choral writing, Benoit also composed instrumental music: a symphony, the piano cycle Contes et Ballades (1861), and two concertos, for flute and for piano, subtitled Symphonic Tale.
Folk song holds a special place in his work. Benoit saw Flemish folk song as a source of national music and brought its motifs into his compositions, including a symphonic poem and piano pieces. Critics noticed this interest as early as his Paris years. Even his sacred works were written in the mother tongue. A long collaboration tied him to the poet Emanuel Hiel.
For singers, the heart of his music is the choral and vocal line. The site has two of his choral works. Ave Maria (Opus 1) for SATB choir is at a medium level, and Magnificat for choir is at a medium plus level. It is easiest to start with Ave Maria and then move on to Magnificat.