BENOIT, PETER LEONARD LEOPOLD ), Flemish composer, was born on Aug. 17, 1834, at Harlebeke, Flan ders. In 1851 he entered the Brussels conservatoire, where he studied under Fetis. During this period he composed music to many melodramas, and to an opera Le Village dans les montagnes for the Park theatre, of which in 1856 he became conductor. He won a government prize and a money grant in 1857 by his cantata Le Meurtre d' Abel, and this enabled him to travel through Ger many. In the course of his travels he wrote an essay L'Ecole de musique flamande et son avenir. On his return he produced at Brussels his Messe Solennelle, which was praised by Fetis. In 1861 he visited Paris for the production of his opera Le Roi des Aulnes ("Erlkonig"), which, though accepted by the Theatre Lyrique, was never mounted; while there he conducted at the Bouffes-Parisiens. Returning to Belgium he produced at Antwerp a sacred tetralogy, consisting of his Cantate de Noel, the above mentioned Mass, a Te Deum and a Requiem, written in ac cordance with his own special theory. Later he gathered round him a small band of enthusiasts, who strove, but with little success, to form a national Flemish school whose music should differ com pletely from that of the French and German schools. Benoit's more important compositions include the Flemish oratorios De Schelde and Lucifer, the latter of which met with complete failure on its production in London in 1888 ; the operas Het Dorp int Gebirgte and Isa, the Drama Christi; an enormous mass of songs, choruses, small cantatas and motets. He died at Antwerp, March 8, I9oI.
See Stoffel's, Peter Benoit (Igor).