Van Durme, Jef

Jan Dewilde (translation: Jo Sneppe)

Jef Van Durme came of a composers family from the Waas region (East Flanders). He is the grandson of Ferdinand Van Durme, Edgar Tinel's teacher, and the nephew of Fernand, Gerard, Oscar and Prudent Van Durme.

His father Jef gave the initial solfège and piano lessons to the boy, who during the First World War apprenticed himself to Firmin Karel Paermentier, organist at the main church of Sint-Niklaas. After the war the Van Durmes moved to Antwerp, where Jef Jr. was a pupil at St.-John Berchmans' college (cf. grammar school). Meanwhile he also took lessons at the Antwerp Royal Flemish Conservatory. Upon obtaining a first prize for solfège with great distinction in 1923 as a student of Jan Broeckx, he discontinued his studies at the college in order to fully apply himself to music. At that time he was already composing small pieces in the style of Haydn and Mozart.

At the conservatory he continued his music studies with Frans Lenaerts (piano), Lodewijk De Vocht (harmony) and Flor Alpaerts (counterpoint and fugue). In fact it was the latter who presented his student's first orchestral works to the public. In the concert cycle of the Zoological Society he conducted Van Durme's Romance for Violin and Orchestra in 1928 and a year later he created the symphonic poem Hamlet. Also in 1929 Van Durme won the Fester Prize with his violin sonata.

With a view to broadening his horizon he moved to Paris for a while in 1931. There he got in touch with Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud and a grant enabled him for a number of weeks between December 1931 and February 1932 to take lessons in Vienna from Alban Berg.

Returning home he went hard at it. He frequently performed as a pianist with a predilection for putting Chopin on his programme. Both his chamber music and his larger works attracted a great deal of attention. His work for chamber music could regularly be heard at so-called "Jef Van Durme evenings". One of these was on 23 February 1931 in the Antwerp conservatory concert hall, where together with a violinist and a cellist he gave a recital that was completely devoted to his own work. On this occasion he created his Romantic Sonata for Piano (1930) and Indrukken uit Groothertogdom Luxemburg. Suite voor klavier in 5 delen (Impressions from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Suite for Piano in 5 Parts, 1930). The year 1935 was very prolific: not only did the Royal Flemish Opera in Antwerp create the ballet Dageraad (Dawn), but in Prague Zdenĕk Chalabala conducted his Poème héroïque and in Brussels Hermann Scherchen led the creation of fragments from the opera Remous. Scherchen was very supportive for Van Durme wherever he could and also gave him conducting lessons. Along with Honegger, Albert Roussel and Paul Collaer he was also a member of the jury who in 1937 awarded Van Durme's Sinfonia da camera with the Prix Jeunesse. Even that same year Arthur Löwenstein premièred the work in Antwerp.

Concurrently Van Durme was in the pay of the NIR (National Radio) as modulator. That he continued this function until 1944 he will well have regretted indeed. Nowhere after the war did he get a turn, except for some temporary jobs in the field of education. As such in 1956 he was able to replace Jef Schampaert for some time as harmony teacher at the Antwerp conservatory. Only thanks to some work grants and the support of his family could he keep going. As a composer he came into the limelight again when in 1952 the province of East Flanders awarded a prize to his Breughelsymfonie (1942). It was Daniël Sternefeld, his former fellow-student at the conservatory, who created the symphony in 1953.

Van Durme died at the age of 57 and left behind a rather limited oeuvre, where the focus lies on chamber and orchestral music. He also composed some operas, for which he reached for international literature, such as Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. In addition he wrote songs on texts by René De Clercq or Guido Gezelle, whose De 14 stonden (The 14 Hours) he set to music. This is typical of Van Durme: he had one foot in tradition as it were and the other in modernism. Van Durme, who as a pianist loved to play Chopin, was never an iconoclast though. His short term with Berg has not left any major marks in his work. Thus the Ballade nr. 1, written in 1938 in memory of Berg, is a highly lyrical orchestral work. His second piano trio likewise bears close resemblance to romantic tradition and stays within the tonal line of thought. It is a solid and intense score in which the rare peaceful moments are superseded by fierce outbursts, dramatic accents and wry and agitated passages. This nervousness is indeed present in several of his works. Bohuslav Martinú had in fact advised him to be more sparing in this respect.