Marcel Poot (1901-1988), the son of Jan Poot, director of the Royal Flemish Theatre, grew up in an artistic milieu. He took his first music lessons with the organist Gerard Nauwelaerts and subsequently studied solfège, piano and harmony from 1916 to 1919 at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels with Arthur De Greef, José Sevenans and Martin Lunssens. His first prizes in counterpoint (1922) and fugue (1924) were earned at the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp with Lodewijk Mortelmans. He also studied composition and orchestration privately with Paul Gilson.

Together, Poot and Gilson published La Revue Musicale Belge, a periodical that appeared starting in 1925. In that same year, he and seven other of Gilson’s students set up the group known as Les Synthétistes, which aimed to create a synthesis of the achievements of current musical evolutions, without sacrificing their individuality. In 1930, he won the Rubens Prize, which allowed him to study for three years with Paul Dukas at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris.

Marcel Poot began his career at the State Secondary School in Vilvoorde and also taught piano, solfège and music history at the music academy in that city. He taught practical harmony (1939) and counterpoint (1940-1949) at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels before becoming director of that school (1949-1966). Besides this, he was a lecturer at the Institut Supérieur des Arts Décoratifs, headmaster of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel (1970-1976), a member of the Royal Flemish Academy for Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts, a jury member for the Queen Elisabeth Competition (1963-1981), chairman of SABAM (composers’ rights organisation), the Union of Belgian Composers and CISAC (the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers), and he was a jury member for various composition competitions.

Henk Badings was born in 1907 in Bandung (Java). He studied mining technology at the University of Technology in Delft, received his degree cum laude in 1931 and worked at the university until 1937. In the meantime he developed his skills as a composer. He was also active with painting, sculpting and writing poetry. The only music lessons he followed were lessons in orchestration with Willem Pijper. Already in the same year of his graduation, his First Cello Concerto was performed in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, after which performances of other works followed quickly.

In 1937 his violin sonata was played at the International Music Festival in Prague. The next year this sonata and a string quartet were published with Schott in Mainz. Badings gained public interest in a very short time. In 1934 he was appointed as composition teacher at the Rotterdam Conservatory and the High School of Music of Amsterdam, of which he became director in 1938. In 1937 he decided to dedicate himself to music definitively. From 1941-1945 he was director of the Conservatory in The Hague and in 1949 he became a member of honour of the Flanders Academy of Sciences. He was lecturer of composition at the organ academy of Haarlem, lead orchestration courses for conductors in Hilversum, and was from 1961 to 1972 professor at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart.

In 1956 he received a commission from the Holland Festival, which was the direct motive for Roelof Vermeulen to found the electronic music studio of Philips in Eindhoven. Badings realised his ballet music Kaïn and Abel there, and wrote many electronic compositions in that period of time. The studio of Philips was meant to be temporary, still it remained open until the end of 1960, and continued under the name STEM as part of the University of Utrecht. After the departure of Vermeulen Badings became director of STEM for a short period. This ended in June 1964 and STEM continued under the guidance of Gottfried Michael Koenig and Frank de Vries. Badings would never return there.

As a guest conductor he went to Australia and the United States. He received commissions to write orchestral works for the centenary celebration of the Wiener Philharmoniker and the 60th anniversary of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, an opera and Psalmensymfonie for the Holland Festival, an overture for the Cork Festival in Ireland, etc. In 1972 he settled as composer in the province Noord-Brabant.

Oscar Esplá, born in Alicante, Spain, studied composition with Saint-Saëns in Paris (1912-13), and in 1932 became professor at the Madrid Conservatoire. After voluntary exile in Belgium after the Spanish Civil War, he returned home in 1960 to teach at the Oscar Esplá Conservatory, Alicante.

His compositions include operas and ballets, choral works, and a wide variety of instrumental pieces. Esplá’s Levantine Impressions are elegant miniatures, short and intense, presenting, in the manner of folk-songs, catchy melodies characterized by strong rhythmic patterns.

Karl Höller studied composition, conducting and organ in Munich. As from 1937 he taught composition at the Musikhochschule in Frankfurt am Main and gave master classes in composition at the Munich Musikhochschule as from 1949, the school of which he would later become President.

Marcel Quinet (1915-1986) attended the music academy of his native town Binche before completing his studies at the Royal Conservatory of Mons. By 1934, he entered the Royal Music Conservatory of Brussels where he earned several successes: a first prize in fugue (Prix Gevaert, 1938), Master Degree in piano (Prix Ella Olin, 1942), a composition prize (Prix Agniez, 1946), etc.

Marcel Quinet studied with major teachers such as Fernand Quinet (harmony), Léon Jongen (fugue), and Marcel Maas (piano). He learnt composition with Léon Jongen and more particularly with Jean Absil.

In 1945, he was awarded the Premier Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata “La Vague et le Sillon”. This marked the start of his career as a composer. He received a Second Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Composition Competition, with his “Variation pour Orchestre” (1957). In 1959, the CeBeDeM awarded Marcel Quinet the Prize of Composition Emile Doehaert for his “Divertimento”. He received the Prix de l’Union de la Presse Musicale Belge in 1964, the Prix Irma de la Hault in 1966, la bourse Koopal in 1970, le Prix SABAM in 1972 and the Prix de la Fondation Darche in 1978.

He first taught at the Academy of Binche (1939-1943) before teaching piano at the Academy of Etterbeek (1941-1969). As of 1943, he was piano lecturer at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels; he then became a professor of written harmony (1948-1959) and later fugue (1959-1979). In both Saint-Josse-Ten-Noode and Schaerbeek, he was director of the Music Academy (1951-1975); he repeatedly taught as a special and later associate professor of composition at the Chapelle Reine Elisabeth of Belgium (1968-1979). At the SABAM, he held the positions of managing-director (1976-1980) and chairman of the Mutual Aid and Solidarity Fund (1980-1986).

By 1959 he has become a well-known figure in 20th century music. «In Marcel Quinet’s first works, especially through Hindemith there were signs of a strong will to return to Bach. Elsewhere there are clear signs of his admiration for Bartok but Absil’s influence proved undoubtedly decisive in his works. This influence clearly materialised in the way he developed his melodies, in his elegant countrepoint writing and in his firm handling of orchestration. Quinet admirably succeeded in writing for piano. Above all, he enjoyed working out formal sets in which heightened sensibility was visible» wrote Robert Wangermée. In his creative work, Marcel Quinet assimilated the most radical novelties and integrated them into his own personal expression including various influences from Bartok, Stravinsky and the Viennese School. Although he has started with tonal music, he later concentrated on plurimodality and non-serial atonal chromatic music. In 1969 he discovered the importance of the music of ancient Greece and more specially its metric structure, as his later works tend to show it.

He was appointed Correspondent in 1976 and later member in 1978 of Fine Arts Class at the Royal Academy of Belgium.

Marcel Quinet left behind hundreds of listed works, expressed in modern language, remarkably written in a very personal way without excess, with the refinement that was so typical of his expression.

Camille Schmit (1908-1976) took his complete music studies at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels from 1928 to 1937. He was an active member of the Séminaire des Arts founded by André Souris.

From 1923 to 1939 he was an organist at Longwy (France). Afterwards, from 1940 to 1948, he played the organ at the cathedral of Arlon. Between 1947 and 1965 he was on the staff of the Royal Conservatory of Liège, first as professor of harmony, later as professor of counterpoint and fugue. From 1966 until his retirement in 1973, he was director of the French section of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.

As a composer he did not create abundantly and his severe self-criticism gave him the unfortunate habit of regularly destroying some of his works. Initially he used a style where polytonality was the strong feature. Later on he tended towards a rigorous application of the dodecaphonic system.