The Department of Music in the "Archives and Museum of Flemish Cultural Life"(Antwerpen)Author(s): LUDO SIMONSSource: Fontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 23, No. 3 (1976 Juli-September), pp. 127-129Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23506364 .

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127

BERNARD HUYS (BRUXELLES)

Le Fonds de Sainte-Gudule de la

Bibliothèque du Conservatoire

Royal de Musique de Bruxelles

Signalons l'existence d'une collection comparable au fonds Terry, le fonds de Sainte

Gudule. Provenant de la Collégiale SS. Michel et Gudule, actuellement cathédrale de Saint

Michel, il est conservé depuis 1929 à la bibliothèque du Conservatoire Royal de Musique de Bruxelles. Cette collection extraordinaire est d'une importance capitale pour l'histoire

de la musique en Belgique au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècles; elle a été évoquée par plusieurs

musicologues belges, aussi contentons-nous de signaler les plus intéressantes études sur

ce fonds. Le premier article est celui de Charles Van den Borren, Le Fonds de Musique ancienne de la Collégiale SS. Michel et Gudule, à Bruxelles, paru dans l'Annuaire du Con

servatoire Royal de Musique de Bruxelles 52 (1928-1929), p. 127—135. Cette modeste

étude a été suivie par un travail plus important de Robert Wangermée, Les maîtres de

chant des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles à la Collégiale des SS. Michel et Gudule à Bruxelles,

publié en 1950 par l'Académie Royale de Belgique. En 1953 Mlle Jacqueline Bacq a pré senté un mémoire à l'Université catholique de Louvain Le Fonds Ste Gudule. Son ori

gine, sa composition, son importance. Il contient le catalogue complet de cette collection; on regrette que ce remarquable ouvrage ne soit toujours pas publié. Ajoutons-y l'article

du chanoine René Bernard Lenaerts, The ,Fonds Ste Gudule' in Brussels : an important collection of eighteenth-century Church Music, paru dans les Acta Musicologica 29 (1957),

p. 120—125, et le mémoire, dirigé par le chanoine Lenaerts, de Paul Culot, Les motets de

Joseph Hector Fiocco du Fonds de Sainte-Gudule (inédit). Voilà sans doute les plus

importantes études susceptibles d'orienter les chercheurs dans ce fonds unique qui, depuis

1930, retient l'attention des historiens, des musicologues et des chefs de choeur.

L UDO SIMONS (ANTWERPEN)*

The Department of Music in the

'Archives and Museum of Flemish Cultural Life" (Antwerpen)**

The „Archives and Museum of Flemish Cultural Life" (hereafter called AMVC from its

Dutch name) was not intended to comprehend a department of music. It was in fact

established in 1933 as a literary museum („Museum of Flemish Literature"), after long

* Ludo Simons, director of the „Archives and Museum of Flemish Cultural Life," Antwerpen. ** Archief en Museum voor het Vlaamse Cultuurleven, Minderbroedersstraat 11, B—2000 Antwerpen.

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128 Ludo Simons:. . . Archives and Museum of Flemish Cultural Life

preliminaries. They had begun in 1883, when the Flemish novelist Hendrik Conscience (The Lion of Flanders 1838, first English translation in 1855) requested in his will that his literary heritage should not be dispersed. This heritage was bought in 1899 by the City of Antwerp and supplemented by loans from several admirers, was shown to the public in

a large exhibition in 1912 on the occasion of the famous author's centenary. In the state

ly 19th-centuiy merchants' mansion where that exhibition had been held, the Museum of

Flemish Literature was solemnly inaugurated by Mayor Camille Huysmans in 1933.

The first curator, Antweip City Librarian Lode Baekelmans, who was a popular prose writer as well, and Ger Schmook, who became his assistant in 1937, went in search of

documents that would illustrate the slow revival of Flemish literature in the 19th and its

rich development in the 20th century. That literary renascence was part of a general cul

tural growth of the northern part of Belgium, which had been subject to the increasing influence of French as the principal cultural language since the separation of the Nether

lands in the 16th century — an evolution confirmed in 1830 with the foundation of the

Belgian State in which French predominated.

The first promoters of the so-called Flemish Movement, wanting to re-establish the old

mother tongue, had to struggle against French political, social, economic and cultural

supremacy. Yet they succeeded in the course of more than a hundred years' strife in

enforcing a number of language laws setting up Dutch as the only administrative language for the Flemish part of the country, and, more generally, in starting a process which

established Flanders as a flourishing and self-confident partner of the French speaking area. This development, at first (after 1830) confined to the linguistic and literary field, soon covered the other fields of cultural life, and from the middle of the 19th century entered into a political phase related also to the social and economic circumstances of

Flanders' backward situation.

If the historical truth were to be considered, documentation concerning the revival of

Flemish literature could no longer be limited to the purely artistic aspect. As there were

no other institutions dedicated to the collecting of material related to music, theatre and

the fine arts in Flanders, the need for extending the museum's scope was keenly felt. In

1945 this tendency was expressed in a new and more appropriate name: Archives and Museum of Flemish Cultural Life. A scientific purpose was thus added to the purely documentary, and a broad cultural survey to the purely literary.

The musical holdings rank next in importance to the literary fund. This is only natural if we take into account that in the first years after 1830 writers were at the origin of the

strongest impulses towards the growth of a Flemish musical life. Jan Frans Willems

(1793—1846) and Ferdinand Augustjjn Snellaert (1809—1872) — the former a registrar of deeds, the latter a physician, both amateur philologists and enthusiastic defenders of the mother tongue — devoted themselves to the „promotion of national song", as did the

poets Prudens van Duyse (1804—1859) and Johan Michiel Dautzenberg (1808—1869), who with the musicians Evariste (1808-1875) and Robert van Maldeghem (1806-1893) patronized in 1846—1847 the Flemish-German choral society that organized festivals on both sides of the frontier. In those years was born the „Flemish Lion", which was to be come the war-song of the Flemish Movement. It was the work of the writer and physician Hippoliet van Peene (1811-1864) and the composer Karel Miry (1823-1889).

A complete osmosis of musical creation and Flemish action occurred in the composer Peter Benoit (1834-1901), the founder of the Antweip College of Music and the author of a laige number of combative nationalist songs, oratorios and cantatas. Instrumental music like the symphonies of Hendrik Waelput (1845-1885) was at that time not consid ered very seriously. Musical autonomy, already patent in Jan Blockx (1851-1912), Benoit's pupil, and his contemporary Edgar Tinel (1854-1912), was firmly established by the next generation: Paul Gilson (1865—1942), August de Boeck (1865—1937) and

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Ludo Simons:... Archives and Museum of Flemish Cultural Life 129

Lodewgk Mortelmans (1868—1952). Although the influence of the Flemish inspiration remains important for some 20th-century composers, a musical tradition is growing, con

scious of the autonomy of musical creation in accordance with the major tendencies of

European music.

We do not wish to trace a history of 19th-centuiy music or of the origins of 20th-cen

tury music, but only to point out the intimate connection between the Flemish musical

tradition and the cultural rebirth of the 19th century, thus showing how a purely literary

documentary centre was led to collect archives bearing upon music, the theatre and the

arts as well.

The AMVC possesses the correspondence of Peter Benoit with his librettists Julius de

Geyter, Emmanuel Hiel and Jan van Beers. It also has the entire musical legacy of Renaat

Veremans (1894—1969), the most recent of nationalistically inspired composers. Among the nearly 5000 songs in trust, a large number are from the travelling „ambassador" of

Flemish popular song, Emiel Hullebroeck (1878-1965). But the collection also contains

songs of a century before this, composed by people who wrote music to the first Flemish

texts since 1830, e. g. Willem de Mol (1846—1874) with a hyperromantic „I know a most melodious song" to a text by Conscience's son-in-law Gentil Antheunis (1840—1907). The latter in turn wrote music to the equally romantic „My Flanders, dearly loved land",

by the civil servant Theofiel Coopman (1852-1915). The collection has grown gradually with legacies of important composers such as Jan

Blockx, Lodewjjk Mortelmans, August de Boeck, Flor Alpaerts (1876-1954), Jef van

Hoof (1886—1959) and Maurits Schoemaker (1890—1964). There have also been sub stantial gifts from living composers such as Marinus de Jong (b. 1891), Flor Peeters

(b. 1903), Jef Maes (b. 1905) and others, and from the estate of the pioneer musicologist Flor van der Mueren (1890-1966). Along with its collection of songs the AMVC has a

repertoire of about 750 records of Flemish music. It is also considering the foundation

of „Sound and Picture Archives" (with the aid of the Ministry of Flemish Culture) for

the registration of literary, theatrical and musical life in Flanders, a. o. by complete

recordings of opera performances. In the meantime the fund is being completed by

letters, manuscripts, posters, clippings, photos, announcements and programs connected with composers, concert halls, opera houses, recitals etc.

The Reading Room is open to the public every day from 8.30 to 16.30, and on Satur

day and Sunday mornings. The published catalogue of the collection indexes 17,000 items

(3d ed. 1973, with English summary). In many cases the AMVC is able to furnish rich sources to those seeking information. In others, it may provide the initiation into further

investigations at the more specialized Conservatory libraries or the Music Department of the Royal Library of Belgium.

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