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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joseph Ryelandt (7 April 1870 – 29 June 1965) was a Belgian classical composer.
Joseph Victor Marie Ryelandt was born in Bruges, into a wealthy bourgeois family, for whom culture, tradition, and the Roman Catholic religion mattered. So did music, which the family practiced a lot. From his childhood on Joseph had lessons in music, which he studied assiduously, up to 2½ hours per day.
Even as an adolescent Joseph realized that his real destiny was music. But at the insistence of his mother, he first went to college, to study philosophy and later law—his father, who had died when Joseph was only seven, had been a lawyer. While at university, however, he continued his musical activities, including composition, although he had had only a few lessons in harmony. Eventually he persuaded his mother to let him show some of his compositions to Edgar Tinel, at the time one of Belgium’s most esteemed musicians. Tinel had never taken on private students (nor would he ever again), “but,” he wrote, “I let myself be conquered because this young man will one day be someone. He played me a sonata of his. I was stupified. He already is someone, but he has never studied. This fellow has written sonatas, trios, variations, duos …” His mother relented, and from 1891 to 1895 Joseph studied with Tinel.
After his study with Tinel, he was able to devote himself exclusively to composing, being of independent financial means. The years between 1895 and 1924 were his most productive.
But World War I badly affected his financial situation, and he had a family to take care of, for in 1899 he had married Marguerite Carton de Wiart (1872–1939), and the children had come thick and fast, eight in all. He felt compelled to find a position, and in 1924 he was appointed director of the Municipal Conservatory of Bruges, a function that came with a teaching load. He assumed it with some reluctance, but he discovered that he enjoyed teaching, He kept on composing, albeit at a slower rate. Also, he ceased composing oratorios, which he considered his major works, but that was at least as much due to the death of Charles Martens (1866–1921), his librettist as well as his Maecenas, the tireless propagandist of his music and above all his friend, whose name he never mentioned without preceding it with “my good friend” or similar expression.
His life was busy: he took on a counterpoint course at the Ghent Conservatory, he organized a highly successful concert series in his own conservatory, he was involved in the organization of the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition, etc. Many honors came his way. He was asked to compose the Te Deum for the centenary of the independence of Belgium; he was made a member of the Belgian Academy in 1937 and a baron in 1938. But his private life was saddened by the slow decline in health of his wife, who died in 1939.
World War II and the miseries and worries it entailed caused his composition to slow down still further: he wrote nothing at all in 1940– 42, and only a few chamber music works between 1943 and 1948, when he ceased composing altogether. In 1943 the German administration forced Ryelandt to resign, but he was reinstated after the liberation of Belgium in 1944. In 1945 he retired. He died aged 95, in his beloved Bruges and “without bothering anyone,” as he had wished, after a brief illness.
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