Welffens, Peter

Peter Welffens – Prayer before the Apocalypse (1980) for six horns in F

(Antwerp, May 7, 1924 – Deurne, February 11, 2003)

Warmly dedicated to André Van Driessche

Peter Welffens had his first music lessons from his father Louis Welffens (1885-1985), after which he studied at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire in his native city. There he won first prizes under eminent composers such as Jef Van Hoof (harmony, 1943), Marinus de Jong (piano, 1947), and Karel Candael (counterpoint, 1949). In the mid-fifties, he took composition lessons at the Mozarteum with Egon Kornauth and Wolfgang Fortner, and orchestral conducting with Igor Markevitch. Also during his studies, he gained practical experience as a repetiteur at the Opera of Ghent from 1943 and as a pianist and resident composer at the Royal Youth Theatre in Antwerp from 1945. For more than forty years, until his retirement in 1898, he remained associated with the Youth Theatre as its music director. He also taught practical harmony at the Antwerp Conservatoire and occasionally worked as a composer and conductor for almost all Antwerp (music) theatres and dance companies.

In addition to a great deal of stage music, Welffens also composed a rich oeuvre including two symphonies, a harpsichord concerto, works for chamber orchestra, ballets, the opera Stroppe la corde (1964) and the children’s opera De dubbeldroom (1989), chamber music, choral works and songs.

His early works are steeped in late Romanticism, but after a thorough study of Stravinsky and Bartók, he evolved towards an expressionist idiom and introduced sharp dissonances, polytonality, ametric accents and rapid time signature changes.

Read full preface  > HERE