Joseph Jongen

Joseph Jongen studied at Royal Conservatory of Liège. Lucie Vellère and Eugène Guillaume are recorded as having studied under Joseph Jongen. The recorded working language is French. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are opera. Employment is recorded with Royal Conservatory of Brussels. Work by Joseph Jongen is recorded in the collections of Royal Library of Belgium. Distinctions recorded are Grand Officer of the Order of the Crown, Grand Officer of the Order of Leopold II, Commander of the Order of Leopold and Civic Cross, 1st class.

Jongen was born in Liège, where his parents had moved from Flanders. He was the elder brother of Léon Jongen. Because of his precocity for music, he was admitted to the Liège Conservatoire at age of seven and spent the next sixteen years there. Jongen studied composition with Jean-Théodore Radoux. In 1892 he was awarded the gold medal in the piano competition, and later that same year he joined the organ class of Charles-Marie Danneels. He won a First Prize for Fugue in 1895, an honors diploma in piano the next year, and another for organ in 1896. Jongen had been composing since the age of 13, and by the time he published his opus 1 - the Concerto Symphonique (1892) - he already had dozens of works to his credit. His opus 3, the monumental and massive First String Quartet, was composed in 1894, and it won the top prize in an annual competition for fine arts held by the Royal Academy of Belgium. In 1897, he won the Belgian Prix de Rome, which allowed him to travel to Italy, Germany and France over a four year period, during which (among many others) he encountered Richard Strauss, Vincent D'Indy and Florent Schmitt. In 1902 he returned to Belgium, and in 1903 he was named a professor of harmony and counterpoint at his old Liège college. With the outbreak of World War I, he and his family moved to England, where he founded a piano quartet with violinist Désiré Defauw, violist Lionel Tertis, and cellist Émile Doehaerd. His String Quartet No 2, op. 50, was composed there in 1916. After the end of the war, he returned to Belgium and was named professor of fugue at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. From 1925 until 1939, he served as director of that institution and was succeeded by his brother Léon. Fourteen years after leaving the directorship, Joseph Jongen died at Sart-lez-Spa, Belgium.