De Smedt, Kristin

Kristin De Smedt is a composer and teacher. After her first music lessons in Asse, she studied at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where she combined violin studies with theoretical subjects. She obtained several diplomas there, including a Master’s degree in composition techniques (schriftuur) and a diploma in composition in the class of Raphaël D’Haene. She was awarded, among others, the Gevaert Prize (harmony), the Horlait-Dapsens Prize, and the Marguerite Koenigsberg Prize (music history). Since 1985, she has been affiliated with the Conservatory of Brussels as a lecturer in harmony, counterpoint and fugue, pedagogy of composition techniques, and head of the composition techniques department.

In her work, De Smedt brings together tradition and modernity: classical structures and influences from Bach, Beethoven and Berg are combined with a contemporary, often atonal idiom. Notable works include the single-movement String Quartet (1998, awarded by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts), Sinfonia per organo (1990), Landschap (1994), and Tableaux Sonores (‘d’après James Ensor’, 2001). The latter in particular reflects how art and literature serve as important sources of inspiration for her. She also composed songs on texts by Guido Gezelle (1989) and Paul Van Ostaijen (1994), as well as the choral work Stimmungen (2002) on a text by the Swiss poet Conrad Ferdinand Meyer.