Moi, je suis musicien, E.L.T Mesens as a musician (1919-1927)

In the end of 1920s and the 1930s Brussels became an important centre of musical modernism. For example, the first performances of Strawinsky’s Psalm Symphony (1930), Prokofiev’s Le joueur (1929) and Alban Bergs Wozzeck in a French translation (1932) serve as testimonies of the city’s high status comparable to other major European centres of modern music. Brussels created a unique platform for French, German and Russian modernism.

This paper is part of a broader research on modernistic music in Brussels and Antwerp between 1919 and 1940, based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of historical data sources collected and centralized in relational database (ca. 5.000 records relating to Belgian modernism, including ca. 1000 articles of ca. 30 Belgian Journals in Arts, ca. 2000 Brussels concerts, letters, documents of archives of composers, directors, musicians…)

Thanks to this relational database it is possible to gain insights in the rise and fall of modernistic music in Brussels and Antwerp in the interwar period (the advent (1920-1927), growth (1927-1932), decline (1933-1936) and the revival (1936-1939))