(Flem. Brussel; Fr. Bruxelles).
Capital city of Belgium. The city dates from the 10th century, when it consisted of a small group of artisans and merchants gathered round the military encampment of the Duke of Lorraine. In 1012 it became part of the territory of the Count of Leuven. From the 13th century it developed as a centre of textile manufacture; it was well known in the 15th and 16th centuries for its tapestries. It became important when the dukes of Brabant came to live there, and when Brabant was absorbed into the Burgundian territories Brussels retained a privileged position as their favoured residence. As a result it became the administrative and political capital of the principalities of the Low Countries, and frequently housed the governors of these territories under the King of Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries and the Emperor of Austria in the 18th. When Belgium became independent in 1830, Brussels was the obvious choice for the capital of the new state and its main development started then.
1. The royal chapel and religious institutions.
ROBERT WANGERMÉE/HENRI VANHULST
Duke Henri III of Brabant (d 1260) was a trouvère and entertained minstrels at his court, including Adenet le Roi, author of chivalrous romances. The use of polyphony in Brussels is first documented in 1362 at the collegiate church of Ste Gudule (now Ste Gudule et St Michael). A papal bull of 12 April 1444 gave the chapter the permission to appoint new chaplains who were trained to sing polyphony. The church became a centre for the practice of polyphony; a choirmaster (sangmeester) directed the music and was responsible for the musical education of the young choristers (choraelen), who sang soprano in the services and were trained as professional musicians. In the second half of the 15th century Ste Gudule had a full complement of choristers and professional cantors directed by a choirmaster, and an organist. Until the end of the 18th century it was a centre of musical life, and its choirmasters and organists were often well-known composers. During the 15th century polyphonic music was also practised in the other Brussels churches, but to a lesser extent.
The sumptuous court of the dukes of Burgundy and the choice of Brussels by Philip the Good as his favourite residence attracted many musicians to the city. In their picturesque narratives chroniclers often stressed the importance of fêtes and court rejoicings and, more prosaically, account books also testify to the brilliance of occasions such as the Festival of the Golden Fleece (1435), the Shrove Tuesday tournament (1444) and the funeral ceremonies for Catherine of France (1446), first wife of Charles the Bold.
The musicians were permanent members of the ducal court and fell into two distinct categories: those who were attached to the chapel, the chapelains, and those who were attached to the hôtel or town house, the ménestrels, who were socially far inferior. The minstrels were in turn divided into ‘high instruments’ (oboe, trumpet and sackbut) and ‘low instruments’ (harp, flute, lute and hurdy-gurdy). Some chapelains were composers of polyphonic music but of those who won fame at the Burgundian court (Binchois, Busnoys, Fontaine, Grenon, Hayne van Ghizeghem, Morton, Vide and La Rue) not one was born or trained in Brussels. At the beginning of his reign, when he inherited the chapel of John the Fearless, Philip the Good employed only French musicians. Later, he preferred to engage northern artists, as did Charles the Bold and his successors to an even greater extent, but there was never a native of Brussels among them. This confirms the theory that Brussels developed musically fairly late and lacked the standing of Liège, Courtrai, Bruges, Ghent or Antwerp as a centre of musical training. From the time of Maximilian, Philip the Fair and, later, Charles V, the princes resided only occasionally in the Low Countries and took their chapels with them to Austria, Germany or Spain.
In the Low Countries there is evidence that musicians were employed by the governors. While Margaret of Austria, Charles V’s aunt, lived in Mechelen from 1506 to 1530, her successors moved to Brussels. Maria of Hungary, the emperor’s sister (1531–55), employed Benedictus Appenzeller as choirmaster from 1530 to 1551; he was the first composer who had his music printed in the Low Countries. The chapel of Margaret of Parma, the emperor’s natural daughter, who was the governor from 1555 to 1567, consisted of a choirmaster, 12 cantors, four young choristers and an organist. Alessandro Farnese, her son, contributed to the diffusion of the madrigal in the Low Countries, and Jan-Jacob van Turnhout, his maître de chapelle, was one of the first local musicians to compose mainly to Italian poems.
The Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella were more than just governors, for Philip II wished them to rule the Low Countries as a political entity with considerable independence from Spain. The musical chapel was therefore reorganized as the ‘royal chapel’ of Brussels with statutes based on those of the Burgundian chapel. Géry Ghersem, a prolific composer who had begun his career as chapelain and later became assistant director of Philip II’s chapel in Spain, was director in Brussels from 1604 to 1630, which was a particularly brilliant period. The chapel included some exiled Catholic musicians from England, such as the chapelain Peter Philips and the organist John Bull (1613–14).
Even when mere governors ruled the Low Countries again, the royal chapel was always the most important centre of religious music. In contrast to ‘chamber’ music, used in the 17th century for court entertainments and usually directed by Italians or Spaniards, the chapel was always headed by a native musician, often from Brussels itself, and thus the royal chapel maintained a continuity during the successive regimes – Spanish, French and Austrian – until the French Revolution.
Other composers (whose works have not survived) succeeded Ghersem as master of the chapel: Charles Caullier (1630–58), Jean Tichon (1658–66), Honoré Eugène d’Eve (1666–85) and Nicholas van Rans (1685–98). However, the masses and motets of 18th-century masters of the chapel such as the Venetian Pietro Antonio Fiocco (1698–1714), his son Jean-Joseph Fiocco (1714–46), Henri de Croes (1749–86) and Ignace Vitzthumb have survived. Among the best musicians of the royal chapel were the organists Peeter Cornet (1611–43) and Abraham van den Kerckhoven (1656–c1680).
In the 18th century chamber and chapel were no longer distinct from each other, for the same musicians played both types of music. The master of the chapel, Croes, wrote sonatas for various instruments, concertos for flute or violin, and divertissements in the galant style for the court orchestra.
Apart from the royal chapel, the most important centre in Brussels for religious music was Ste Gudule, where there is an important music collection. Its organists included Nicolaus a Kempis, who published at Antwerp three volumes of ‘symphonies’ (which are in fact sonatas for one to five instruments with basso continuo), and Josse Boutmy, whose pieces for harpsichord were influenced by Couperin and Handel. Among the choirmasters who were also composers were Petrus Hercules Bréhy, Joseph-Hector Fiocco and Charles-Joseph van Helmont.
The first opera production in Brussels, Ulisse all’Isola di Circe, by Gioseffo Zamponi, took place in 1650 to celebrate the marriage of Philip IV of Spain and Maria Anna of Austria. Zamponi was master of chamber music to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, governor of the Low Countries, and he, the librettist, set-builder, designer and singers were all Italian. The first public theatre, the Académie de Musique on the Quai du Foin, dates from 1682. Apart from some Italian works, it was Lully’s tragic operas that had the greatest success in Brussels. Although no operas by local composers were produced there, Pietro Antonio Fiocco, musical director of the theatre, wrote prologues in praise of the governor. Opened in 1700, the Théâtre de la Monnaie quickly became the centre of theatrical activity. In the 18th century the French repertory still predominated; after Lully came Destouches, Campra, Mouret, Collasse and, later, Favart’s opéras comiques, but a few italianate works were also performed. Operas by Flemish composers were seldom performed, with the exception of those by Pierre van Maldere, who wrote some opéras comiques, and Grétry, from Liège, who achieved fame in Paris.
When the ancien régime came to an end, so did the roles of the royal chapel and of Ste Gudule, but the Théâtre de la Monnaie survived, and the riots after a performance there of Auber’s La muette de Portici (commonly called Masaniello) on 25 August 1830 (fig.2) helped to spark off the revolution from which the modern state of Belgium was born. In the 19th century La Monnaie was particularly successful under Stoumon and Calabresi (1875–85, 1899–1900), Dupont and Lapissida (1886–9) and Maurice Kufferath and Guidé (1900–14). They were followed by Corneil de Thoran and various collaborators (1918–53), J. Rogatchewsky (1953–9) and Maurice Huisman (1959–81). In 1963 the city of Brussels relinquished ownership of La Monnaie for financial reasons and it became a national theatre, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (Koninklijke Muntschouwburg). From then on operas were given in their original languages. Many French, as well as Belgian, opera premières were given there, including Massenet’s Hérodiade (1881), Reyer’s Sigurd (1884), Chabrier’s Gwendoline (1886), d’Indy’s L’étranger (1903) and Les chant de la cloche (1912), Chausson’s Le roi Arthus (1903), and the first French-language performances of many Wagner operas. Other French-language productions included Richard Strauss’s Salome (1907) and Elektra (1910), Berg’s Wozzeck (1932), Prokofiev’s The Gambler (1929) and works by Ravel, Milhaud and Honegger either as premières or immediately after their premières in Paris.
Huisman’s administration was noted for the foundation in 1960 of the famous Ballet du XXème Siècle, directed by Maurice Béjart. The company’s performances of The Rite of Spring, Ninth Symphony and Romeo and Juliet with inventive modern choreography aroused the enthusiasm of a vast, mainly young, public. Béjart placed great emphasis on the spectacular in works such as Mathilde, Messe pour le temps présent, Baudelaire and Bakhti. He also founded an international ballet school, the Mudra.
Under Gérard Mortier (1981–91) La Monnaie achieved an international reputation for the quality of its productions and the originality of its programming (including Janáček and the lesser-known operas of Mozart). Bernard Fouccroulle (from 1991) introduced Baroque works (e.g. Cavalli) to the repertory. La Monnaie also gave the world premières of André Laporte’s Das Schloss (1986), Philippe Boesmans’s La passion de Gilles (1983) and Reigen (1993), and John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer (1991).
One of the most important 19th-century musical institutions in Brussels was the conservatory, founded as a state academy in 1832. From 1833 to 1871 its director was the famous musicologist François-Joseph Fétis. Taking the Paris Conservatoire as his model he planned the musical instruction on very strict lines and engaged excellent teachers. His successor, another musicologist, François-Auguste Gevaert (1871–1908), exercised a despotic authority over contemporary musical life. Thereafter the conservatory was directed by the composers Edgar Tinel (1908–12), Léon Du Bois (1912–25), Joseph Jongen (1925–39), Léon Jongen (1939–49), Marcel Poot (1949–66), Camille Schmit (1966–73), Eric Feldbusch (1973–87) and Jean Baily. Teachers included the violinists Charles-Auguste de Bériot, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, Ysaÿe, César Thomson, Gertler and Grumiaux and the pianists De Greef, Bosquet, Del Pueyo, Vanden Eynden and Blumenthal. In 1967 the conservatory was divided into two separate institutions (Conservatoire Royal de Musique and Koninklijk Muziekconservatorium) giving instruction in French and Flemish respectively, with Kamiel D’Hooghe as director of the Flemish one (1967–95).
The conservatory was for a long time the centre of the city’s musical life, as it organized the principal concerts, including both classical and non-controversial modern masterpieces in its programmes. Fétis organized ‘historic concerts’ of 16th-, 17th- or 18th-century music, or concerts devoted to a particular musical genre, for example church music, dance music etc. Gevaert chiefly promoted the great choral works of Bach and Handel, Gluck’s operas and Beethoven’s Missa solemnis. After 1850 the conservatory concerts became less important because of the development and diversification of musical life. In 1865 Adolphe Samuel founded the Concerts Populaires de Musique Classique, which, in spite of their name, presented innovatory modern works as well as a traditional repertory. Most of Wagner’s works were played at these concerts before they were staged, a policy initiated by Samuel and encouraged by his successor, Joseph Dupont, who also introduced Richard Strauss’s music to Brussels. However, the most innovatory group before World War I was the Cercle des XX (1884–93, later known as the Libre Esthétique). This was a group of artists working in the visual arts who publicized the work of the impressionists, pointillists and symbolists before they were appreciated elsewhere, and regularly gave concerts of chamber music in conjunction with their exhibitions. Octave Maus (1856–1919) was a friend of d’Indy and Ysaÿe, and presented concerts of important contemporary French chamber works by Franck, Duparc, Chausson, Fauré, Chabrier, Debussy, Roussel and Milhaud.
After World War I the Pro Arte concerts continued this policy of innovation and between 1921 and 1934 often presented works by young composers such as Milhaud and Poulenc before they were heard in France, as well as many works by Stravinsky, Satie, Bartók, Hindemith, Berg and others. The nucleus of the Pro Arte was the excellent Quatuor Pro Arte (later resident in the USA as the Pro Arte Quartet) and the impresario Paul Collaer.
The work of the Concerts Populaires was continued by the Société Philharmonique de Bruxelles, founded in 1927 by Henry Le Boeuf. The concerts, which include orchestral and chamber music, take place in the Palais des Beaux-Arts, a building with facilities for music, theatre, cinema, lectures and exhibitions. Marcel Cuvelier, during his time as the director of the society, raised the quality of performance by inviting great international conductors and soloists; however, he favoured familiar works, often at the expense of contemporary music. The Brussels SO was founded in 1931 by Désiré Defauw and the Belgian National Orchestra formed from it in 1936.
In 1946 Cuvelier founded Jeunesses Musicales, which has since become a powerful international movement concerned with the musical education of young people. However, like the Société Philharmonique, it has neither encouraged the performance of contemporary music nor attracted audiences from all social classes. André Souris, director of the music section of the Séminaire des Arts, promoted music that was largely unfamiliar at the time, such as English Renaissance music, as well as contemporary music, including 12-note works by Messiaen and Boulez’s early compositions.
Since the 1950s several festivals have sprung up in Brussels, with Reconnaissance des Musiques Modernes (1964–75) and Ars Musica (from 1988) devoted to contemporary music. The Festival van Vlaanderen (from 1958) and the Festival de Wallonie (from 1971) organize concerts in Brussels. The Concours Musical Reine Elisabeth (founded in 1937 as the Concours Eugène Ysaÿe) is a competition for pianists, violinists and singers which has brought some virtuosos to public attention.
Musical activity in Brussels intensified when the city became the home of the EEC and NATO and therefore an international economic and political centre. Because of its cultural attraction as a capital city, many important Belgian musicians, although often born elsewhere, have spent at least part of their working lives in Brussels and many important national organizations are located there (see Low countries,§I, 5). A list of composers who have worked in Brussels is in fact a summary of Belgium’s musical history from 1830. The composer Paul Gilson, whose work was influenced by Wagner, Richard Strauss and The Five, was also a renowned teacher of several generations of composers. His best-known pupils include Marcel Poot, Gaston Brenta and René Bernier (founders of the ‘Synthétistes’ group in Brussels in 1925), Jean Absil and André Souris. Other composers who have spent most of their working life in Brussels include: Léopold Samuel, Raymond Moulaert, René Barbier, Willem Pelemans, René Defossez, Pierre Moulaert, Jacques Stehman, Jean Louël, Victor Legley, Marcel Quinet, David van de Woestijne, Frederic Devreese, André Laporte, Jacques Leduc, Raphael D’Haene and Frederik van Rossum.
In the second half of the 18th century Brussels became an important centre of music publishing, notably with the Van Ypen brothers and their associates Pris and Mechtler. From 1795 to 1813 Weissenbruch ran a music store where a stock of 23,000 manuscripts and editions was assembled. In the 19th century local publishers (Messmaeckers, Katto) were forced to compete with branches of foreign firms (Schott, Breitkopf & Härtel, Bosworth). After 1918 some firms specialized in music for brass and wind bands or in jazz, while others (Editions de l’Art Belge, Editions Ysaÿe) commissioned such artists as Magritte to design the covers of their editions of Belgian composers. The decline in publishing after World War II prompted the Belgian government to create CeBeDeM.
Court archives show that instruments were being made in Brussels as early as the 15th century. The heyday was in the 18th and 19th centuries, with makers of string instruments (Boussu, Snoeck, Vuillaume), wind instruments (Rottenburgh, Mahillon), pianos (Hoeberechts, Berden, Hanlet) and organs (Forceville, Merklin).
See also Burgundy and Low Countries.
CeBeDeM directory
J. Isnardon: Le Théâtre de la Monnaie depuis sa fondation jusqu’à nos jours (Brussels, 1890)
G. van Doorslaer: ‘Henry Bredemers, organiste et maître de musique, 1472–1522’, Annales de l’Académie royale d’archéologie de Belgique, lxvi (1915), 209–56
Les concerts populaires de Bruxelles (Brussels, 1927) [60th anniversary]
C. van den Borren: ‘Le fonds de musique ancienne de la collégiale SS. Michel et Gudule’, Annuaire du Conservatoire royal de musique de Bruxelles, lii (1928–9), 127–35
L. Renieu: Histoire du théâtre à Bruxelles (Paris, 1928)
G. van Doorslaer: ‘La chapelle musicale de Philippe le Beau’, Revue belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art, iv (1934), 21–57, 139–65
J. Marix: Histoire de la musique et des musiciens de la cour de Bourgogne sous le règne de Philippe le Bon (1420–1467) (Strasbourg, 1939/R)
S. Clercx-Lejeune: ‘La chapelle royale de Bruxelles sous l’ancien régime’, Annuaire du Conservatoire royal de musique de Bruxelles, lxv (1942), 159–79
H. Anglès: La música en la corte de Carlos V (Barcelona, 1944, 2/1965/R)
J. Cuvelier: ‘La confrérie des musiciens instrumentistes de Bruxelles sous l’ancien régime’, Bulletin de l’Académie royale de Belgique: classe des beaux-arts, xxviii (1946), 35–63
Le Palais des Beaux-Arts à Bruxelles (Brussels, 1949)
E. Clossen and C. van den Borren, eds.: La musique en Belgique du Moyen-Age à nos jours (Brussels, 1950)
R. Wangermée: Les maîtres de chant des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles à la collégiale des SS. Michel et Gudule à Bruxelles (Brussels, 1950)
R. Wangermée: La musique belge contemporaine (Brussels, 1959)
C. Mertens: Hedendaagse muziek in België (Brussels, 1967)
Société philharmonique de Bruxelles et Société des concerts populaires: cinquantième anniversaire (Brussels, 1979)
P. Raspé: ‘Les débuts de la gravure musicale à Bruxelles à la fin de l’Ancien Régime’, Annales d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie, ii (1980), 123–34
R. Wangermée and P. Mercier, eds.: La musique en Wallonie et à Bruxelles (Brussels, 1980–82)
G.G. Thompson: ‘Music in the Court Records of Mary of Hungary’, TVNM, xxxiv (1984), 132–73
W.F. Prizer: ‘Music and Ceremonial in the Low Countries: Philip the Fair and the Order of the Golden Fleece’, EMH, v (1985), 113–53
Un théâtre d’opéra: l’équipe de Gérard Mortier à la Monnaie (Paris, 1986)
M. Haine and N. Meeùs: Dictionnaire des facteurs d’instruments de musique en Wallonie et à Bruxelles du 9e siècle à nos jours (Liège, 1986)
B.H. Haggh: Music, Liturgy and Ceremony in Brussels, 1350–1500 (diss., U. of Illinois, 1988)
M. Cornaz: ‘Jean-Joseph Boucherie et Jean-Louis de Boubers: deux imprimeurs de musique bruxellois dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle’, RBM, xlvi (1992), 179–88
R. Mortier and H. Hasquin, eds.: Musiques et spectacles à Bruxelles au XVIIIe siècle (Brussels, 1992)
H. Vanhulst and M. Cornaz: ‘Le marchand de musique bruxellois Weissenbruch et la diffusion de la musique de Beethoven (1804–13)’, RBM, xlvi (1992), 189–223
H. Vanhulst: ‘Le Conservatoire royal de musique de Bruxelles: ses origines et le directorat de François-Joseph Fétis’, Le Conservatoire de Paris, 1795–1995: des Menus plaisirs à la Cité de la musique, ed. Y. Gérard and A. Bongrain (Paris, 1996), 201–17