Joseph Ryelandt

Joseph Ryelandt (7 April 1870 – 29 June 1965) was a Belgian classical composer.

Life

Joseph Victor Marie Ryelandt was born in Bruges, into a wealthy bourgeois family, for whom culture, tradition, and the Roman Catholic religion mattered. So did music, which the family practiced a lot. From his childhood on Joseph had lessons in music, which he studied assiduously, up to 2½ hours per day.

Even as an adolescent Joseph realized that his real destiny was music. But at the insistence of his mother, he first went to college, to study philosophy and later law—his father, who had died when Joseph was only seven, had been a lawyer. While at university, however, he continued his musical activities, including composition, although he had had only a few lessons in harmony. Eventually he persuaded his mother to let him show some of his compositions to Edgar Tinel, at the time one of Belgium’s most esteemed musicians. Tinel had never taken on private students (nor would he ever again), “but,” he wrote, “I let myself be conquered because this young man will one day be someone. He played me a sonata of his. I was stupified. He already is someone, but he has never studied. This fellow has written sonatas, trios, variations, duos …” His mother relented, and from 1891 to 1895 Joseph studied with Tinel.