FETIS, 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 professor in 1821, after wandering through the Ardennes.
In 1826 he founded the Revue musicale, and in 1837 he became librarian of the Conservatory. In 1833 he went to Brussels as director of that Conservatory and remained there until his death. He composed orchestral music, several operas, performed with some success, sacred pieces, including a Requiem, and theoretical works; but above all he wrote on the history of music, with 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 fifteenth century; in it, the abundance of information is not always matched by the reliability of the data.