FÉTIS, FRANÇOIS JOSEPH

Composer, critic, and musicographer whose writings exerted a great influence on music in France and Belgium; b. Mons, Belgium, March 25, 1784; d. Brussels, March 26, 1871. Fétis began his music studies with his father, an organist, and continued them at the Paris Conservatory, where he took the Prix de Rome in 1807. He was librarian of the conservatory from 1826 to 1833, and almost single-handedly edited the Revue Musicale from 1827 to 1835. When the Brussels Conservatory was founded in 1833, he was appointed director and at the same time chapel master to Leopold I of the Belgians. About 1807 the music of the past had begun to command his attention, probably through the researches of Choron, who had published his first editions of desprez and palestrina in 1805. Fétis himself spent many years preparing a critical edition of gregorian chant, which was never brought to completion. His important publications are the eight-volume Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique (1835) and five-volume Histoire générale de la musique depuis les temps les plus anciens (1869–75). These works, which are still consulted profitably despite their errors and assumptions, bespeak his informed and broad view of music history. Far from regarding the harmonic system of his own time as the only one possible, Fétis recognized the value of non-Western systems and in that respect is one of the great precursors of ethnomusicology. He also foresaw the development of atonality and even of serial (tone-row) technique. Among his own compositions are pianoforte, chamber, and symphonic works; operas and comic operas; and, in the sacred category, a five-voice Mass, several "easy" Masses, a Requiem, Te Deum, and Vesper Psalm settings.

Bibliography: r. wangermÉe, François Joseph Fétis (Brussels 1951); Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. f. blume (Kassel-Basel 1949–) 4:129–136. c. r. halski, Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. e. blom, 9 v. (5th ed. London 1954) 3:75–77. Histoire de la musique, ed. roland-manuel, 2 v. (Paris 1960–63); v. 9, 16 of Encyclopédie de la Pléiade v. 2. m. i. arlin, ed. Esquisse de l'histoire de l'harmonie: An English-Language Translation of the François-Joseph Fétis "History of Harmony" (Hillsboro, N.Y. 1994). d. lewin, "Concerning the Inspired Revelation of F.-J. Fétis," Theoria: Historical Aspects of Music Theory, 2 (1987) 1–12. d. m. randel, ed., The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music (Cambridge, Mass. 1996) 265. n. slonimsky, ed., Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (8th ed. New York 1992) 534. r. wangermÉe, "François-Joseph Fétis," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ed. s. sadie, v. 6 (New York 1980) 511–514.

[s. corbin]