Irène Fuerison, née Van Santen, (8 January 1875 - 26 June 1931) was a Belgian composer.

Biography

Irène Van Santen was born in

Ghent Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded in ...

to a tradesman, August Van Santen, and a contralto singer, Florine Lepla, who was a graduate of the conservatoire of Ghent (class of Louis Cabel, 1867) and who performed in public at least until 1878. Irène learned to play piano and maybe to sing as well. In 1893, she married the lawyer Joseph Fuerison and assumed his name. They had one daughter in 1899, named Madeleine. The Fuerisons lived in a mansion in Ghent and, while being fluent in Flemish, belonged to the French-speaking middleclass. They spent the First World War in Ghent. Fuerison was widowed in 1921 after her husband suffered a stroke. She had been visually impaired for several years by then. Fuerison died at her home in

in 1931. She bequeathed a fund for a prize to encourage promising young Belgian composers; the Irène Fuerison-prize is being awarded every two years since 1934.

Work

Fuerison's music compositions include over 70

songs A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetition ...

for voice and piano, but also a couple of pieces for piano solo and for

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

, some

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

works and one

music theatre Music theatre is a performance genre that emerged over the course of the 20th century, in opposition to more conventional genres like opera and musical theatre. The term came to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s to describe an avant-garde approach ...

work. Her vocal work is mostly in French language. Her compositional activity occurred in three periods. * Her earliest works are nine songs dated "1908" and "1909" (op. 1 to 9). * Her most prolific activity occurred during the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

and until her husband's death in 1921 (op. 10 to 75 or 76). * She resumed composing in 1923-1924 (op. 76 or 77 to 86 or 87) and again in 1926 (op. 87 or 88 to 95).All the manuscripts are held by the music conservatoire of Ghent. Almost all bear opus numbers and many a date as well. Over the course of the years, her style matured towards a distancing from tonal harmonic frameworks, until in 1926 she stopped writing key signatures. Her style is impressionistic, post-romantic but not atonal.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fuerison, Irene Belgian women composers 1875 births 1931 deaths

Biography

Work

See also

References