Adolphe Samuel

Adolphe-Abraham Samuel (11 July 1824 – 11 September 1898) was a Belgian music critic, conductor and composer.

Samuel was born in Liège. He spent much time in Brussels, where he was a pupil of François-Joseph Fétis, and where he was a friend of Hector Berlioz. He also studied with Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul at the Royal Conservatory of Liège.

In 1838, together with his family, Samuel moved to Brussels and continued his studies at the Brussels Conservatory with François-Joseph Fétis (counterpoint), Charles Bosselet (harmony), Jean-Baptiste Michelot (clavier) and Christian Friedrich Girschner (organ). For the first time he was noticed by the general public, accompanying the violinist Charles Auguste de Bériot on the piano as part of the young Pauline Viardot's concert tour.

Samuel, who won the Belgian Prix de Rome in 1845 by the cantata "Vendetta", went to Rome through Germany and Austria, met on the road with Felix Mendelssohn, Giacomo Meyerbeer and Ferdinand Hiller. In Rome, he worked on the opera Giovanni da Procida and the Second Symphony, premiered by Fétis in Brussels in 1849 after the return of Samuel. 1850s in the works of Samuel were under the sign of the influence of Hector Berlioz (their friendship began with an enthusiastic review of the London premiere of the opera Berlioz "Benvenuto Cellini", which Samuel published in Belgium).

Samuel became in 1860 Professor of Harmony in Brussels and 1871 Conservative Director of Ghent. In 1865 he founded in Brussels a series of public concerts, based on the model of Jules Pasdeloup, during which he promoted the music of contemporary composers, especially Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. With this he wanted to make classical music accessible to everyone and to promote the musical and intellectual level of the Brussels people.

Since 1871, he headed the Ghent Conservatory , in Ghent also acted as an adherent of a new German school; the last concert Samuel conducted shortly before his death was completely composed of orchestral fragments of Wagner.

In 1871, after conducting an orchestra for some years and (beginning in 1865) directing a series of Popular Concerts in which works by Peter Leonard Leopold Benoit and Anton Rubinstein among others were featured, Samuel resigned and became director of the Ghent Conservatory.

Samuel's own compositional work combines the influences of Berlioz, Wagner and Liszt. His central works are the monumental program Sixth symphony, based on the Old Testament (1891) and the Seventh, based on the New Testament (1893).

In 1895 Samuel was baptized and became a Roman Catholic, converted from Judaism late in life. He died in Ghent. At the composer's wish, his mass was presented during his funeral. His son Eugene Samuel was also a composer.

In his homeland, he enjoyed the reputation of composer of five operas (1845–54), cantats (and a cantata for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the coronation of Belgium's first king, Leopold I (1856, L'union fait la force)., choir songs, motets, two string quartets, seven symphonies (1846–94), and driving symphony Christ, as well as performer as a music publisher, including a harmonic (1867). He was also music journalist at Le Télégraphe, National, La Civilization, L'Echo de Bruxelles, L'indépendance belge, La Revue trimesterielle, L'Art universel and La Flandre libérale.

Thierry Levaux: Le Dictionnaire of the Compositeurs de Belgique du Moyen-Age à nos jours, S. 550-551, Editions: "Art in Belgium" 2006, ISBN 2-930338-37-7.