Jacqueline Fontyn elected as ‘Honorary Member’ of the ISCM
On June 3, 2025, the General Assembly of the ISCM elected two new Honorary Members. With this title, the internationally connected organisation aims to recognise individuals who have built remarkable international careers and have made significant contributions to contemporary music. Alongside Karen Rehnqvist from Sweden, Jacqueline Fontyn (b. 1930) now joins this select circle of 76 honorary members. Some other illustrious names in this honorary gallery include Louis Andriessen, Béla Bartók, John Cage, Friedrich Cerha, Sofia Gubaidulina, György Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen, Maurice Ravel, Kaija Saariaho, Arnold Schönberg, Igor Stravinsky, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Iannis Xenakis. She is the third Belgian to be included, following Paul Collaer—who once taught her at the Royal Music Chapel Queen Elisabeth—and André Laporte.
An international profile
That Fontyn receives this recognition from an international organisation is exemplary of her musical career, which was more prominent on various continents than in Belgium itself. Although she remained firmly rooted as a teacher at the conservatories of Antwerp (1963–1970) and Brussels (1970–1990), her compositions took her all over the world, from the United States to Australia and Asia. The combination of her distinctive musical language, her adventurous spirit and entrepreneurial drive, and her pedagogical gifts made her the ideal artist to invite for masterclasses and seminars. In this way, she became not only an internationally known but also an internationally oriented composer.
During these many travels, Jacqueline Fontyn met more musical personalities than one might imagine. Her autobiography, aptly titled Nulla Dies Sine Nota and published by Universal Edition, reads almost like a panorama of twentieth-century music history through its leading figures. There are, of course, the more obvious encounters with compatriots such as Vic Legley, Louis De Meester, David Van de Woestyne, Karel Goeyvaerts, Denijs Dille, Daniël Sternefeld, Frederic Devreese, Robert Groslot, and many others. Additionally, she crossed paths with the likes of Goffredo Petrassi, Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen, Zoltán Kodály, Max Deutsch, David Oistrakh, Henri Dutilleux, and Witold Lutosławski. The list goes on; with some of these composers or musicians she maintained close relationships, while with others a brief encounter was enough to leave a lasting impression.
A personal language
Throughout the fascinating journey of her life—which Jacqueline Fontyn can recount and describe down to the finest detail—she developed a highly personal musical language. In her earlier works, the influence of Schönberg is certainly noticeable, largely due to her studies with his pupil Max Deutsch, a fervent advocate of atonality and twelve-tone technique. When new compositional techniques and aesthetics such as serialism emerged in the 1950s from Schönberg’s musical thought, she chose her own path. Bartók’s music is also among her favourites, thanks in part to her close contact with Bartók specialist Denijs Dille.
It is not always easy to gain insight into the precise compositional procedures she employs. She herself attaches little importance to explaining her methods or strategies. What is unmistakably clear, both in her scores and in the way she speaks about them, is the primacy of musical expression. Emotion and expressivity are crucial for her, though this does not mean her music is sentimental or conformist—quite the contrary. Both in terms of sonic palette and musical atmosphere, there is often an affinity with impressionism, which is also linked to her virtuosic orchestration skills. Her orchestral works demonstrate complete mastery of the symphony orchestra—her favourite instrument. Colourful instrumentation and a sophisticated use of special playing techniques create fascinating sound worlds, a quality equally present in her extensive chamber music output.
In some scores, Jacqueline Fontyn departs from conventional music notation to allow for a degree of freedom, introducing elements of aleatoric music within well-defined boundaries. This is just one example of how she uses whatever techniques and styles best serve to musically convey a specific imaginative idea. This makes her oeuvre highly diverse and richly nuanced. This is evident, for example, in her various works for wind band—a type of ensemble that developed its own repertoire in the twentieth century, influenced by military tradition, film music, and light music. Fontyn approaches the wind band with her own fresh perspective on this familiar sound world, creating a new idiom that does justice to the unique qualities of such an ensemble. Likewise, in other compositions she never merely applies existing concepts to a given context, but instead creates the musical universe necessary for that particular work.
A disarming openness
We are fortunate that the life and work of Jacqueline Fontyn are well documented. She meticulously preserves her letters, documents, writings, and memories, and even now she continues to respond to inquiries, whether in writing or in front of a camera. In her accounts, we read and hear how deeply music permeated her life from a young age. The boundary between her family history and private life on the one hand, and her career on the other, is very thin, and she speaks about all these aspects with remarkable openness and humility. Across all these (written and spoken) sources, what stands out is the clear-sightedness and gratitude with which she reflects on her own life. That she, as a woman, forged such an exceptional path over the past decades is not something she herself highlights as a major theme—though certain anecdotes show that it did indeed play a role, sometimes positive, sometimes negative. All in all, it was always her music that opened doors, inspired musicians and programmers, and moved audiences. When she appeared on stage in 1976 to greet the audience as the composer of the compulsory work for the Queen Elisabeth Competition, she was met with both admiring applause and indignant boos. For her, this was not discouraging but rather a sign that not everyone in the hall was ready for her more modern sound world. At no point in the following half-century would she compromise musically. The international recognition she continues to receive today proves that she chose the right path.
More info online
Video interview (in French) for the Belgian National Orchestra
Personal website of the composer
Profile on the website of Le Forum de la Création Musicale
Profile on the website of MATRIX New Music Centre, including links to online recordings.