Jean Absil

Jean Absil
(b Bonsecours, Hainaut, 23 Oct 1893; d Uccle, Brussels, 2 Feb 1974). Belgian composer. He studied the organ, the piano and harmony with Alphonse Oeyen, organist of Bonsecours.

He continued his studies at the Ecole St Grégoire, Tournai, where he gave his first organ recital in 1912. In 1913 he entered the Brussels Conservatory to study with Desmet (organ), Edouard Samuel (practical harmony) and (from 1915) Lunssens (written harmony). He took a first prize for organ and harmony in 1916 and, after a year's further work with Paulin Marchand (counterpoint) and Léon Du Bois (fugue), another for counterpoint and fugue. Abandoning the idea of a career as an organist, he went to Gilson for composition lessons (1920–22). In 1921 his First Symphony won the Agniez Prize; in 1921 he took the second Belgian Prix de Rome with the cantata La guerre and was appointed director of the Etterbeek Music School. From 1930 he taught practical harmony at the Brussels Conservatory, where he was made professor in 1936. In 1934 he won the Rubens Prize and stayed for a time in Paris. Then with Dotremont and Leirens he founded the Revue internationale de musique (1938); in the same year the Piano Concerto, composed for the Ysaÿe Competition, brought him to international notice. For some time he was president of the Belgian section of the ISCM. He was appointed professor of fugue at the Brussels Conservatory and at the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth in 1939, retiring in 1959. In 1955 he was elected to the Belgian Royal Academy, and in 1964 he received the Prix Quinquennial of the Belgian government.