Fétis, François-Joseph

FÉTIS, FRANÇOIS-JOSEPH. - Musician, historian and music critic, b. at Mons on 15 March 1784, d. at Brussels on 26 March 1871. He studied at the Paris Conservatory, where he returned as a professor in 1821, after wandering in the Ardennes.

In 1826 he founded the Revue musicale and in 1837 he was librarian of the Conservatory. In 1833 he went to Brussels as director of that Conservatory and remained there until his death. He composed music for orchestra, some operas, performed with a certain success, sacred pieces, among them a Requiem, and theoretical works, but above all he wrote on the history of music, with the Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique (8 vols., Brussels 1838-44, continued and completed by A. Pougin in 1850-65); Esquisse de l'histoire de l'harmonie (Paris 1840); Notice biographique de Nicolò Paganini (ibid. 1851); Antoine Stradivari (ibid. 1856). A Histoire générale de la musique (5 vols., ibid. 1869-76) stops at the 15th century; in it the abundance of information is not always joined by reliability of the information.

Silverio Mattei