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Fontyn, Jacqueline

° Antwerpen, 27/12/1930

Christine Dysers

Jacquline Fonyn (born 27 December 1930 in Antwerp) is a Belgian composer, director, pianist and pedagogue.

Fontyn started to express an interest in music from a very early age. For her fifth birthday; her parents gift her with private lessons with the Russian pianist Leonid (Ignace) Bolotin (1902-1942). When Bolotin suddenly and prematurely passed away in 1942, she transfers to study the piano with Marcel Maas (1897-1950). At the young age of fourteen, Fontyn reveals to her parents her dream of becoming a composer. Merely two years later, she starts to study music theory, counterpoint and composition with Marcel Quinet (1915-1986) in Brussels. In 1949 she founds the chamber choir Le Tympan, which she directs until 1956. Under her baton, the group receives nationwide attention.

It is Quinet who in 1954 advises her to travel to Paris, to study with Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979). Due to some minor creative disagreements with Boulanger upon her arrival in Paris, however, Fontyn almost immediately transfers to study with Austrian composer Max Deutsch (1892-1982). Being a student of Arnold Schönberg himself, Deutsch immersed Fontyn in the stylistic worlds of the European avant-garde. After assimilating Schönberg’s rigid twelve-tone technique, Fontyn’s compositional language quickly evolves into a strict (in work such as Capriccio for piano, 1954), and eventually a more flexible serialism (in works such as Psalmus Tertius for baritone, choir and orchestra, 1959; Spirales for two piano’s, 1971; and Per Archi for string orchestra, 1973).

In 1956, Fontyn leaves Paris to study choral and orchestral direction with Hans Swarowsky (1899-1975) at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She returns to Belgium later that same year to resume her studies with Marcel Quinet. Fontyn receives a Second Prize in the Belgian Prix de Rome competition for music in 1959 – the year in which no First Prize is awarded. That same year, she graduates from a short course in composition at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel – a preeminent institution that offers specialised training to young music practitioners.

The increasing flexibility of Fontyn’s compositional language during this period suggests the influence of the Parisian music scene at the time, which was characterised by an urge towards intuition and atmosphere. The influence of French composer Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013) is particularly noticeable in Fontyn’s oeuvre since the late 1960s, as she increasingly starts to focus on parameters such as timbre, harmony, and personal expression. Sara Huysmans (1967) describes this development as a move towards ‘a modern impressionism’:

In relation to Jacqueline Fontyn’s music, one could speak of a modern impressionism, that is reflected in a romantic way of moving, which is governed by a dreamy, warmly coloured, lucid, and passionate power of expression.[1]

The year 1963 marks the beginning of Fontyn’s professional career as lecturer in music theory and counterpoint at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. As time goes by, she becomes a prominent musical figure in the city. However, in 1970, Fontyn leaves Antwerp behind as she takes on a lecturing position at the French department of the Royal Conservatoire of Brussels. There, she single-handedly sets up a French-speaking composition course. In 1976, the Queen Elizabeth Competition commissions Fontyn to write the violin concerto Rêverie et turbulence, which is set as a mandatory piece for its contestants that same year. The exposure she gains as a result of this adds an international dimension to her career. From 1976 onwards, Fontyn is frequently invited for masterclasses at universities and conservatories all over the world (e.g. in Germany, France, Hungary, The Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, the United States, Israel, Egypt, China, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and New Zealand).

In other words, the 1970s mark a period of heightened professional activity for Fontyn. Nonetheless, she does not stop composing. Stronger even: the 1970s are a decade of radical transformation in Fontyn’s compositional thought. Influenced by Polish composer and personal friend Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994), Fontyn arrives at what she calls a ‘controlled indeterminism’. She uses this term to describe a compositional technique in which chance operations play an important role during the compositional process, but in which the composer does not give up responsibility over the sounding result (as opposed to much of Cage’s aleatoric music). This move towards a freer and distinctly individual compositional language is completed with Éphémères (1979), written for mezzo-soprano and chamber orchestra. The work uses six poems by the Antwerp-based writer Robert Guiette (1895-1976) as its textual basis and is characterised musically by its complex rhythms, its clear linear voice-leading, a remarkable metric fluidity and frequent contrasts in timbre. The score for Éphémères also contains numerous extended playing techniques – the use of which would become common practice in Fontyn’s later works.

The search for intuitive association continues throughout the rest of her career. From that focus on intuition and personal expression, Fontyn’s oeuvre develops into the intensely diverse and heteronomous entity it is today. Although her work is therefore hard to fit into any one category, it is bound by a profoundly poetic power of expression. The sounding result is one that reminds the listener of a late French impressionism, mixed with quasi modal elements and surprising rhythmic, harmonic, and timbral turns. The composer comments:

I believe intuition always has, and always should continue to play an important role. I do not believe that creative work, either in music or the arts, is just an elaboration of the rational mind. Instead, I believe it to be an intuitive way of expressing oneself.[2]

Fontyn continues to compose up until this very day. She is one of the only composers in Belgium who has gained popularity across both sides of the country’s linguistic border. It came as no surprise then, when in 1993, King Baudouin of Belgium granted her the title of baroness in recognition of her artistic and creative merit. On the eve of the composer’s 90th birthday, her work continues to be performed and researched on a global scale. Today, Fontyn’s work is as youthful as ever, as she has not lost her sense of adventure and experiment. To put it in her own words: ‘I am continuously evolving and always on the lookout for innovation. Standing still is the same as moving backwards.’[3]

[1] Sara Huysmans (1967), Muziek in België: Hedendaagse Belgische componisten (Brussel: CeBeDeM), p.74.

[2] Jacqueline Fontyn, in: ‘Diapason: Jacqueline Fontyn’ (Televised documentary series, VRT (VIAA) 1992). Accessed on 18 november 2019.

[3] Jacqueline Fontyn, in: ‘Diapason: Jacqueline Fontyn’ (Televised documentary series, VRT (VIAA) 1992). Accessed on 18 november 2019.

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