Gevaert, François Auguste

1828-

Belgian composer and musical scientist; was born at Huysse, near Oudenarde. He studied at the Ghent Conservatory from 1841 to 1847, piano under Sommere and harmony under Mengel, winning first prize for piano in 1843, and the Grand Prize of Rome in 1847. At the age of fifteen he had become organist of the Jesuits' Church of Ghent and in 1848 produced operas at Brussels with some measure of success. The next year, 1849, he went to Paris, and receiving there a commission to write an opera for the Theatre Lyrique, he left in 1850 for Spain, where he wrote a Fantasia sobre motives espanoles, for which the Order of Isabella le Catolica was conferred upon him. He also wrote a treatise, Rapport sur la situation de la musique en Espagne, published at Brussels in 1851. After short periods of residence in Italy and Germany, he returned to Ghent in 1852, and during the next nine years brought out as many operas, chiefly in Paris, with much success. His festival cantata for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Leopold's reign won him the Order of Leopold in 1857. In 1867 he was chosen director of the Grand Opera, Paris, which was closed by the war of 1870. The next year, after his return to Germany, he succeeded Fetis as director of the Brussels Conservatory, where he reformed some of the conditions in the school, and thereafter confined his efforts to the duties of this position and to musical history and theory. In 1873 he was elected a member of the Academic des Beaux Arts.

His operas are Georgette; Le Billet de Marguerite; Les Lavandieres de Santarem; Quentin Durward; Le diable au Moulin; Chateau Trompette; La ppularde de Caux; Le Capitaine Henriot; and Les Deux Amours. He also composed two cantatas, a requiem for male voices and orchestra, choruses, ballads and songs. His theoretical works are Leerboek van den Gregoriaenscher zang; Traite d' instrumentations; Les Gloires d'ltalie, a collection of songs from operas and cantatas, by Italian composers of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, with biographical sketches; Histoire et Theorie de la musique dans 1'Anti quite; Les Origines du Chant Liturgique, and various contributions to periodicals. He is considered a thorough and capable musician and is much respected for his learning.