Veremans, Renaat

Karolien Selhorst (translation: Joris Duytschaever)

Renaat (Franciscus Gommarus) Veremans owed his initiation into solfège and piano playing to his father, who later also taught his brother Maurits (1904-1964). He took classes in organ and harmony with Paul Van Wassenhoven, who was organist at St Gummarus church in Lier, and enrolled at the Lemmens Institute in Mechelen. His teachers were Arthur Meulemans, Oscar Depuydt and Aloys Desmet. Veremans was barely 16 when he won a competition of the 'Maatschappij voor Taal en Volk' (Association for Language and People) with his song Vlaanderen. In 1914 Veremans graduated from the Lemmens Institute majoring in organ and piano, but he decided to pursue advanced studies at the Conservatory of Antwerp (1914-1917). His teachers there were Arthur De Hovre (organ) and August De Boeck (harmony). He was also tutored privately in counterpoint, fugue and composition by Edward Verheyden.

Meantime Veremans had been appointed as organist of the Dominican church in Lier. Then he succeeded Jan Broeckx as conductor and organist at St Paul's in Antwerp. On 8 July 1918 the wartime journal Het Vlaamsche Nieuws reports that Renaat Veremans had been appointed as teacher of solfège at the Royal Flemish Conservatory of Music in Antwerp by the ministry, but this appointment never materialized. Ten years later he did eventually become teacher of solfège there, and in the period 1928 to 1959 hundreds of young Flemish musicians spent formative years under his guidance. Moreover, from 1921 to 1943 he also served as conductor at the Royal Flemish Opera in Antwerp, where he also successfully performed some of his own lyrical dramas (Het mirakel (The Miracle), Anne-Marie, Bietje). In addition, he taught for 35 years at the City Conservatory of his native Lier.

During the second world war Renaat Veremans became director of the City Conservatory of Bruges. In the aftermath of the war this was held against him, but in Antwerp he was reinstated in his position as teacher of solfège after a brief suspension. He was elected as vice-president of the Board of Directors of the Belgian Association of Authors (SABAM) and became musical adviser and conductor of the Flemish National Song Festivals of the ANZ (Algemeen Nederlands Zangverbond) and the Yser Pilgrimage.

Veremans was one of the most popular composers of his generation. This was due to a certain extent to the sudden success and the rapid distribution of his song Vlaanderen, but also to his accessible, romantic style and his outspoken melodic gift. He ranged across a very wide gamut of genres. His impressive oeuvre features more than 200 songs, three operettas and four operas (Het mirakel, Anne-Marie, Bietje and Lancelooten Sanderien), many choral works, oratorios (such as Maria Oratorio and De bloedige dagvaart ons Heeren (The Blood-stained Passage of our Lord)), some masses, a Requiem, a Stabat Mater...

For orchestra he wrote, amongst others, three symphonies, some symphonic poems (Pallieter, Morgenschemer (Dawn)), concertos for flute, for horn, for oboe, and for trumpet. For the inauguration of the first tunnel under the river Scheldt in Antwerp in 1933 he wrote the inaugural cantata Tunnelgroet (Tunnel greetings), emulating the style of Peter Benoit. Veremans also composed stage music, e.g. for Shakespeare's Macbeth, for Vondel's Jozef in Dothan, and Cyriel Verschaeve's Judas. His versatility was such that he was also a pioneer of film music, composing as early as 1934 music for De Witte by Jan Vanderheyden, the first important fully fledged motion picture in Flanders, adapted from the book with the same title by Ernest Claes. There followed half a dozen more film scores. Veremans also contributed to a book about his friend and fellow townsman Felix Timmermans, earning a literary award from the province of Antwerp.

Typical of Veremans's style throughout his oeuvre were his great melodic talent and his lyrical sensitivity, his solid craftsmanship and his fidelity to traditional harmony. Overriding is his almost childlike loyalty, his great love of nature, of Flanders, of the catholic faith. Veremans was a true romantic at heart. Unlike his contemporaries August L. Baeyens, Karel Albert and Jef Van Durme, who wrote anti-romantic, purely abstract music, Veremans stuck to his guns, cherishing the nineteenth-century Flemish musical tradition, with refined harmonising and orchestration in the vein of August de Boeck. The spontaneity of his style also explains the success of his film music: Veremans was the first one among Flemish composers who managed to respond so completely to the technique and the special demands of the new medium.

The major part of his manuscripts is preserved in the 'Letterenhuis' (formerly AMVC, Archief en Museum voor Vlaams Cultuurleven) in Antwerp.