C’est aussi beau que du Fauré. August De Boeck’s orchestral songs rediscovered

The Brussels publisher and music merchant Joris Vriamont maintained good relations with the French
composer Maurice Ravel. In one of the anecdotes about this, Ravel came to Vriamont one day – it must have
been in the 1920s or 1930s – with the question whether there were any interesting works by Belgian composers
available. In response, Vriamont allegedly brought out two songs by August De Boeck, Mystère and Pour tes
dents de nacre, to which Ravel would have remarked: 'C'est aussi beau que du Fauré' (De Beehouwer &
Teirlinck, 2011, p. 389).
The orchestral songs of August De Boeck remain little known today – all possible hidden agendas of this
anecdote notwithstanding. The present research project aims at a broad contextual study of this repertoire,
within which the orchestral songs will be unlocked, studied, and published. To this end, the project combines
two angles: the first angle places the songs among contemporaries and focuses on (inter)national stylistic
influences in the score – building on the earlier literature on De Boeck (cf. De Beenhouwer & Teirlinck, 2011).
As a second approach, the project makes use of previously unexamined documents from the De Boeck
archive, which has recently been transferred to the library of the Antwerp Royal Conservatory.
The research results in a fresh look at De Boeck's oeuvre in general, and in a critical edition of the collected
orchestral songs, concerts and recordings in particular.