Ensor: a composing painter
As dark as the themes of Ensor’s paintings often were, his music was light and simple. Was he a musician too? Absolutely. And he was also a director and writer. The deeper you delve into the life of James Ensor, the clearer it becomes that he cannot be confined to a single box. On 4 October 2024, the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra will present a musical tribute to the master from Ostend.
Ensor’s musical roots
When creativity runs through your veins, it often manifests itself in more than one field. Just look at James Ensor. His experimental drive overflowed into etchings, texts… and music. He may not have been a brilliant composer, but he certainly did not lack inspiration.
Ensor developed a love of music from an early age. Like many middle-class families in the 19th century, the Ensor household had a piano in the living room. With the German composer Richard Wagner as his example, but without any formal musical training, Ensor improvised his first melodies. The compositions existed mainly in his head—he was unable to write a single note on paper. Seriousness was not a criterion. Ensor enjoyed entertaining his audience, sometimes even by playing a small flute through his nose. With Ensor as a friend, boredom was not an option; if necessary, he would sit down at your piano to imitate dramatic storms.
A world full of music
Ensor did not only enjoy music in the living room. He attended both variety shows, featuring chansons, dance and magic acts, and more serious concerts at the Kursaal in Ostend. In Ensor’s time, Ostend itself was a fashionable top destination, and the Kursaal a venue where great musical figures were eager to perform. The symphony orchestra of Ensor’s friend Léon Rinskopf was renowned, enabling Ensor to meet the French composer and pianist Camille Saint-Saëns and the Austrian composer Johann Strauss Jr.
At the Kursaal, the “queen of seaside resorts,” Ostend, welcomed the great figures of the world.
Set design for La Gamme d’Amour
A garden of love in motion
All that musical effervescence of the Belle Époque… As always, Ensor wanted more. Not merely to compose a score, but to create an entire ballet. La Gamme d’Amour tells the story of a love affair between a musician and a shop girl, whose parents oppose the relationship. When the carnival masks come to life, the parents change their minds in a playful way.
Ensor reportedly composed the music for La Gamme d’Amour around 1889 on the black keys of his harmonium, an instrument gifted to him by his close friend Emma Lambotte. The music waltzes along cheerfully—light-footed and playful. Yet Ensor expert Herwig Todts notes: “On the harmonium, the piece loses so much of its frivolity that I find this unlikely.” In any case, Ensor had to have his scores written out while he continued working on the sets, costumes and scenario.
Ensor drew inspiration from many different sources. In his time, the commedia dell’arte was once again in vogue. This 16th-century Italian improvisational theatre featured archetypal characters, each with their own grotesque mimicry, personality and mask. These figures live on, to some extent, in La Gamme d’Amour.
From the French Rococo painter Antoine Watteau and his jardins d’amour, Ensor learned to infuse refinement into his own gardens of love—on canvas, but equally in musical pieces filled with innocent relationships between men and women. La Gamme d’Amour feels like a kind of live-action version of such a somewhat naïve painting, seemingly far removed from Ensor’s wild spectacles teeming with skeletons, masks and ominous crowds. If Ensor can be captured in a single word, it is surely “versatile.”
Ensor attempted to promote La Gamme d’Amour to the highest circles, including the sensational Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev—unfortunately without success. Nevertheless, he did see it performed at least a few times himself. One such occasion was in 1924, when the Royal Flemish Opera of Antwerp filled for the premiere of La Gamme d’Amour.
Ensor in concert: symphonic paintings
On 4 October 2024, exactly 100 years after that performance at the Antwerp Opera, the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra will pay tribute to James Ensor with Flor Alpaerts’ James Ensor Suite from 1929. The evening will also feature Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto, known for his film music, performed by the young violinist Benjamin Beilman. In addition, the orchestra will play Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.
Prior to the concert, Ensor expert Herwig Todts and pianist Jan Michiels will give a musical introduction. Information and tickets can be found on the concert page Ensor in Concert: Symphonic Paintings.
Experience even more at the KMSKA this fall
In the fall of 2024, Ensor takes over the KMSKA with the exhibition In your wildest dreams. Ensor beyond impressionism. Featuring 39 paintings and over 600 drawings, the museum houses the finest and largest James Ensor collection in the world. In collaboration with the University of Antwerp, we also analyze Ensor’s paintings in the Ensor Research Project.
