RYELANDT Oboe Sonatina, Op 28 Aria Balder Dendievel Terra Nova Collective

JOSEPH RYELANDT (1870-1965)
TERRA NOVA COLLECTIVE
ROMANTIC MUSIC IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE IN BRUGES

‘A composer’. How else could we describe the professional activities of a man such as Joseph Ryelandt (1870-1965) during the first thirty years of his adult life? On a professional level, Ryelandt did nothing except compose music from the last decade of the 19th century until his appointment as director of the Bruges conservatory in 1924. The music on this CD is essentially the result of Tinel’s teaching.

When Ryelandt took his place at the piano to perform the work himself for the first time in public on Tuesday 3 April 1900, the Gazette de Louvain praised its fluent instrumental writing and rich harmonies, adding that Ryelandt’s music could well stand comparison with the chamber works of Johannes Brahms.
To go by press reports, the piece must have appealed to its audiences. There was also praise for the composer’s piano playing and for the playing of the eighteen- year-old cellist François Frelinckx, what at that time was still a student at the Brussels conservatory.
The sonata is in three movements, the first of which is a lively Allegro that is constructed according to the classical sonata form, alternating a heroic with a more pensive theme. After a slow and noble Adagio, the work ends with a series of variations on a Bruges folk melody that Ryelandt had known since childhood. The work as a whole can clearly be placed within the Classical and Romantic traditions.
He had particularly warm memories of the composition and the first performance of his Horn Sonata Op. 18; this had been composed for the horn class of the Ghent conservatory, which had an excellent reputation at that time. Albert Solvyns, an industrialist from Ghent who had encouraged Tinel to accept Ryelandt as a private pupil, was a friend of the Ryelandt family and also had close connections with the conservatory in Ghent. Solvyns therefore organised a small recital to be given in the office of Adolphe Samuel, the director of the conservatory; Ryelandt composed his sonata for horn in E especially for this occasion. The Ghentian horn school of the time emphasised tonal colour above virtuosity, and Ryelandt's preference for the key of E — instead of F — that was commonly used in horn works of the time — had its roots in the versatility of the Van Cauwelaert valve horn that was in general use in Belgium at the end of the nineteenth century. Ryelandt himself performed the work, together with the Ghent horn student Louis Seghers. According to reports Samuel was very pleased with the piece and afterwards made a few small suggestions to Ryelandt that he could possibly use to strengthen the work’s musical structure. The work itself has only two movements, the first of which, Lento, opens with a nervous introduction that swiftly gives way to a lyrically melancholy passage on the horn that shifts between major and minor. The following Allegro also displays Ryelandt’s preference for simple but sensitive lyricism.
The Trois morceaux for clarinet and piano op. 17 were originally intended as sections of a clarinet sonata, but Ryelandt seems to have had difficulties with the formal structure and solved the problem by transforming it into a type of suite. This liberation from a standard form shows Ryelandt’s growing interest in French music of the time, and in Debussy’s works in particular; he shared this love with his good friend and colleague Joseph Jongen. The first piece is a Romance, which then leads us over a babbling brook (Au ruisseau) towards a
twilight Soir. We have partnered this piece here with another work that Ryelandt composed for clarinet, his Fantaisie pour clarinette et piano, Op. 40 (1904). This piece was written for B flat clarinet, whilst Op. 17 was written for A clarinet. The Fantaisie was not composed for any particular occasion and was also not included in the selection of works that Ryelandt had sent to Breitkopf on Tinel’s instigation.
The Sonatina for oboe Op. 28 (1899), however, dates from the same earlier period. This is also a short work, as can be seen from its title. Ryelandt himself said that it was primarily intended as a pedagogical piece, and this little jewel indeed often appeared as a set piece for oboe examinations in Belgian conservatories during the 1920s. Ryelandt would have heard the piece often enough at his own conservatory, but the piece was also taken up readily and willingly elsewhere.