Paul Gilson

From Wind Repertory Project
Paul Gilson

Biography

Paul Gilson (15 June 1865, Brussel, Bel. – 3 April 1942, Schaarbeek, Bel.) was a Belgian composer and music educator

By the age of 16, Gilson had composed several works for fanfare band. He went to the Royal Brussels Conservatory of Music in 1886 to study composition with François-Auguste Gevaert and was awarded the Premier Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata, Sinai, in 1889.

He first received international recognition with his symphonic sketches Le Mer (1892). Five years later, he gained further recognition with the oratorio Francesca da Rimini.

In 1899, Gilson was appointed professor of harmony at the Royal Brussels Conservatory of Music, and five years later he received the same appointment at the Royal Antwerp Flemish Conservatory. He quit both after becoming inspector of music education in 1909, a post he would keep until 1930.

Gilson was somewhat conservative in his musical outlook. Some of his work is indebted to Wagnerian harmony, and his books on harmony and instrumentation also bear this out.

La Mer, the score which gave him his greatest success, was first performed in Brussels on 20 March 1892, is a set of four impressionistic movements (“symphonic sketches”) in sonata form which were originally intended to illustrate verses by a French-speaking poet, Eddy Levis. Generally considered to form a programmatic symphony depicting the sea, Gilson’s score (also known as De Zee) predated Claude Debussy’s work of the same name by a decade.

Another exceptional work is the brilliant Symphonic Variations (originally scored for brass ensemble), which is also the composer’s only major work without literary associations. His opera Princess Sunray was successfully premiered in 1903.

In 1924, Gilson and Marcel Poot founded the magazine La Revue Musicale Belge, and he remained artistic director of this magazine until 1940, in which Gilson wrote increasingly about music, in theory, criticism, and composition. Gilson was somewhat conservative in his musical outlook. Some of his work is indebted to Wagnerian harmony, and his books on harmony and instrumentation also bear this out.

Among his talented pupils were August De Boeck, Jef van Hoof, Jean Absil, Marcel Poot, and Daniel Sternefeld.

Paul Gilson composed over 400 works and is considered “the father of modern Belgian wind music”.


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