Lunssens, Martin

Lien Alaerts (translation: Jo Sneppe)

Martin Lunssens was born in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek in 1871. His father was an esteemed craftsman by profession, but in his leisure time he was a member of the choral society ‘Les Artisans réunis’. While pursuing his hobby, Lunssens senior very soon discovered his young son's musical talent. In those days the Academy and the Conservatory of Brussels were allowed to accept pupils at an early age in order to encourage their aptitude. Thus Martin Lunssens was able to start his musical training even before finishing his general education.

At the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Jean Baptiste Van Volxem taught him the principles of solfège, while Gustave Huberti gave him lessons of harmony and Joseph Dupont taught him to play the piano. The theoretical studies were imparted to him by Ferdinand Kufferath, himself a former student of Mendelssohn. Lunssens eventually graduated for solfège (1883), harmony (Gustave Huberti, 1887) and counterpoint and fugue (Ferdinand Kufferath, 1892). In addition he also took composition classes with François-Auguste Gevaert.

In 1893 and 1895 he participated in the Prix de Rome competition, earning the second and the first prize respectively with his cantatas Lady Macbeth (1893) and Callirhoé (1895). The journeys resulting from this took him to Munich, Bayreuth, Paris, Firenze and Rome. The latter cities inspired him to two of his symphonies: Symphonie Florentine (1898-1916) and Symphonie Romaine (1902-1916).

Upon his return to Belgium he again went to the Brussels Conservatory, this time to take on the position of harmony teacher for the coming twenty-four years. He combined this appointment with the directorship at the music school in Kortrijk from 1905 to 1921 and subsequently at the Municipal Conservatory of Leuven. From 1924 on he held the same function at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent, where he also taught counterpoint (until 1929) and fugue (until 1936). Among the students of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels he was notorious for his strictness, being a tyrannical yet correct teacher of harmony. From 1916 to 1924 he was also teacher of harmony, counterpoint and fugue at the Conservatoire of Charleroi.

In addition to his work as a composer, teacher and director, his conducting skills were much appreciated throughout Belgium from 1893 onwards. Thus he conducted concerts in the casino of Blankenberge and organised concerts with the conservatories of Ghent and Brussels. At one of these concerts in Brussels he created and conducted his own Symphonie Romaine. Furthermore he was the conductor for the performances of Tannhäuser by the 'Nederlandsch Lyrisch Tooneel' (Dutch Lyrical Theatre) in Antwerp during the season 1901-1902. In 1921-1922 he conducted two performances of the oratorio Franciscus by Edgar Tinel and he also wrote and created a Vaderlandsche Cantate (National Cantata) in the Alhambra Theatre.

Martin Lunssens was a romantic latecomer, having assumed the strong partiality for Wagner manifest in his oeuvre from his teachers Gustave Huberti and Joseph Dupont. Other great German masters such as Beethoven and Brahms can also be traced in his work. Mendelssohn and Saint-Saëns likewise set an example as to the suppleness with which Lunssens wrote his work and the elegance of his orchestration. These Wagnerian and romantic musical elements account for the fact that as a composer he was rather conservative, influences of modern masters being a single exception. His songs, too, are marked by this conservative artistic creed, also characterised by a mitigated lyricism often marred by seedy formulas. Some examples are Seule, La Nuit and Brume du soir.

Besides he was a symphony adept, frequently making use of counterpoint as a basis, causing some of his works to be rather abstract and long-winded. Also the endless belabouring was a recurring tendency in Lunssens' work, answerable for the fact that a lot of his chamber music may structurally be considered as symphonic poems, though devoid of an orchestral strength. Yet some of his compositions he himself labelled as orchestral works: Phèdre (1909), Le Cid (1910), Thimon van Athene (1908-1918) and Romeo en Julia (1907-1917).

Lunssens’ oeuvre consists of three major groups: orchestral works, chamber music and vocal music. Apart from the above-mentioned symphonies and symphonic poems the orchestral works also contain violin concertos, cello concertos and one viola concerto. His chamber music includes some sonatas, romances and string quartets. Furthermore he wrote Idylle for five string instruments and Sextuor (1902) for woodwinds. The vocal music is represented by songs, as mentioned before, and a number of cantatas as well as choral music. Lunssens' work is still being performed at present.