Proceedings of the Musical Association ISSN: 0958-8442 (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrma18 Peter Benoit and the Modern Flemish School Prosper Verhevden To cite this article: Prosper Verhevden (1914) Peter Benoit and the Modern Flemish School, Proceedings of the Musical Association, 41:1, 17-35, DOI: 10.1093/jrma/41.1.17 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jrma/41.1.17 Published online: 28 Jan 2009. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 4 View related articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rrma18 Download by: [Athabasca University] Date: 07 June 2016, At: 02:49 T. LEA SOUTHGATE, EsQ., D.C.L., PETER BENOIT AND THE MODERN FLEMISH SCHOOL. Downloaded by [Athabasca University] at 02:49 07 June 2016 YOUmay, perhaps, think it over-bold of me to talk tw you in your own language, which, in my mouth, will appear without its native richness, shength, and beauty. You will at once realise that you have before you a man who did not want to come and call for your attention a short time ago, but now is willii to suffer the cruel consciousness of being a poor orator, if only he succeeds, though but partially, in his attempt to give you an idea of one of the aspects of beauty in his own beloved country. A perfect command of a foreign language enables one to communicate with foreigners on all subjects of intellectual interest ; but only in one's own tongue is it possible to utter one's deepest feelings, those which lind their strongest expression in art. How much does one feel the lack of adequate words, of swiftness and ease in sentences, when wanting to speak of cool matters of reason in a foreign language! But how dreadfully helpless is one when the tenderest strings of one's heart are thrilling and, instead of being magnified by the wonderful power of the native tongue, die out in the heavy struggle between throat and lips-and mind ! It seems to need no demonstration that a man, even if well versed in the knowledge of a foreign language, will never produce literature of high value in that 18 Peter Benoit and the Modern Flemish School. language, and that a people could never reach to a high level of civilization, if it had to get all its knowledge through a foreign language ; without the use of its own tongue for education and for art, it could not be a people for itself, it could have no national feeling. " The tongue is wholly the people"—" De taal is gansch het volk": This was a sentence commonly used by those men who tried to revive in the Flemish people, soon after 1830, the consciousness of its own being ; to awake in the people of Flanders the powerful soul which, from the early Middle Ages until the end of the 16th century, had made the Low Countries one of the brightest centres of civilization, and, up to the 18th century, had expressed itself in splendid works of art. They thought the decay of Flemish civilization in those days was not the result of material retrogression only, due to two centuries of foreign tyranny, but the result also of the contempt for the Flemish tongue shown by all the rulers, great and small, Spanish, Austrian, and French, who governed the Southern-Netherlands. The upper classes, following the example given by the Court, had learned to despise the people's language. The brief re-union of the Belgian provinces with the kingdom of the Netherlands, after 1815, could not restore to our tongue in Flanders, Brabant and Limburg, the place which it deserved. The activity shown by the Walloon provinces in the struggle against the good intentions and the many faults of King William I.'s government; the Downloaded by [Athabasca University] at 02:49 07 June 2016 predominant part taken by the Walloons, if not in the Revolution of 1830, certainly in the first government of the young Belgian kingdom ; French influence ; reaction against Orangism; and much more and worse than all this, the constant tendency among wealthy Flemish citizens to separate themselves from the common people by speaking the leading language, kept Flemish in the background. Although the Belgian Constitution guaranteed liberty of languages, practically only French was official; French reigned absolutely in administration of every degree, in law courts, in universities, and in schools. As soon as the best among the Flemings—let me use this word, which is simply the English pronunciation of the name of the inhabitants of Flanders, Vlamingen, and denoting all the Belgians speaking Flemish—as soon as the best Flemings realised that the vital interests of their race were despised by the Walloon and the French-liking Belgians, who had seized the government of the State, they warned the Flemish people as well as their rulers. Jan Frans Willems, who deserves the name of " the-father of the Flemish movement," began, in 1834, that long struggle for the rights and intellectual well-bebg of the Flemish people and for Flemish civilization, which, after eighty vears of slow but steady conquests, has culminated in the claim Peter Benoit and the Modern Flemish School. 19 for a Flemish University. The philologists, as well as the poets and prose-writers of those days, constantly tried to awaken in the people of Flanders the memory of their former glory, wealth and art, and to arouse them to the consciousness of the reprehensible and depressed conditions from which they were now suffering. The Belgisch Museum of Willems, Snellaert and David, was a magazine devoted to the study of old literature and old folk-songs of Flanders, and of the actual state of language and art among the people. From the end of the 16th century, the southern part of the Low Countries had produced no more great authors, while literary hegemony, down from Jacob van Maerlant, the didactic poet, and from Jan van Ruysbroec, the mystic prose-writer (one of whose wonderful works recently owed its revival to Maurice Maeterlinck's splendid translation, "L'Ornement des Noces Spirituelles de Runsbroec 1'Admirable"—while since the 16th century, I say, literary hegemony had belonged to rich Flanders and Brabant, where Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels were enjoying a remarkable and always increasing prosperity. The northern part of the Low Countries, which had escaped the Spanish tyranny, was gradually growing, early after 1600. into the Dutch Republic, the rise of which was started by the emigration of a great number of learned men, artists, manufacturers and merchants, from the Flemish countries; and while the poetical genius of Joost van den Vondel (born at Downloaded by [Athabasca University] at 02:49 07 June 2016 Antwerp) raised immensely the fame and intellectual value of Holland, we had nobody but one Pater Poirters, a popular preacher, to carry on the traditions of lower class-rhetoric. Our men of 1830 were confronted by intellectual ruins, and by a miserable population without leaders or protectors. The scholars among them sought the old beauty, and were anxious to revive old traditions, while the first Flemish authors of the Belgian kingdom pointed to the glorious history of the Flemings, and were always striving for the improvement of intellectual life among them, and for the respect of the rights of their tongue. The first novel of our great Hendrik Conscience is "Het Wonderjaar," an episode of the sufferings and struggles of the Flemish people under the Spanish tyranny in 1566; it was published in 1836, and contained a proud apology for the Flemish tongue, and it is very curious to note that the author insisted especially on its fitness for music. The poets Theodoor and Jan van Ryswyck, the uncle and the father of Antwerp's late great Burgomaster, and most bright and popular speaker Jan van Ryswyck, the fertile Prudens van Duyse, and the stately Karel Ledeganck, constantly made the past glory, actual intellectual slavery, and possible splendid future of the Flemings the 20 Peter Benoit and the Modern Flemish School. subjects of their poems. The prose-writers who joined Hendrik Conscience in working for the people, told of the people's weal and woe in their stories and novels, if they did not teach or even scoff at it when they thought it fit for their patriotic purpose. When Conscience wrote ' De Leeuw van Vlaanderen," the book by which he most deserved the significant praise that" he taught his people to read," he told with words of fire the story of the struggle of Flemish town democracy against feudal and royal French autocracy in the 13th century, and of the tremendous Flemish victory of the Battle of the Golden Spurs, fought at Kortryk in 1302, so that at the present day this book is classic in the Flemish provinces; no book is asked for so often in our public lending libraries, and every Flemish boy has entered literary or political life by reading "De Leeuw van Vlaanderen." The city of Antwerp published a splendid edition of this book two years ago, as a memorial of the centenary of Conscience's birthday, and of the gorgeous festivities which commemorated it. Throughout the whole Flemish country, every year on the 13th of July, the Battle of the Golden Spurs is commemorated by public festivities, concerts and meetings, where the aims of the Flemish movement are explained afresh. Of course now we know better than in Conscience's days the history and true significance of the Battle of the Golden Spurs, but the fact was so important at the moment of the greatest height of communal power in Flanders that we consider it AS a symbol.