Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, Op. 68, No. 5 (First Version, by request)

Flor Peeters (Baron Peeters) (born 4 July 1903 in Tielen, died 4 July 1986 in Mechelen) was an important Belgian composer, organist and teacher. Born and raised in the village of Tielen (in the Kempen region, just on the Belgian side of the Belgian-Dutch border), he was the youngest child in a family of eleven. When sixteen years old, he began his studies at the Lemmens Institute in Mechelen (since moved to Leuven), which was named after the nineteenth-century organist Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens. At this college, Peeters's teachers were Lodewijk Mortelmans, Jules Van Nuffel and Oscar Depuydt. Depuydt was well known at the time for his collaboration with the Desmet brothers on the first set of Gregorian accompaniments produced by the Lemmens Institute.

Peeters would later collaborate with Van Nuffel and the Institute's other professors, to produce the Nova Organi Harmonia. In 1923 he became an organ teacher at the Institute; simultaneously he acquired the position of chief organist at the St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen, which he held for most of the rest of his life; Van Nuffel had already been choirmaster there for many years.

As an organist and pedagogue, Peeters enjoyed great renown, giving concerts and liturgical masterclasses all over the world. He also made recordings of sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century organ music; some of these have been reissued in recent years on compact disc. Most of his own pieces were for his own instrument, for choir, or for both. He died on his eighty-third birthday; fifteen years before, he had been made a baron by King Baudouin.

Peeters studied Renaissance music, particularly of the school of Flemish polyphony. This style was also absorbed into his music. In addition, he showed an interest in twentieth-century techniques such as polyrhythms & polytonality.

Attached below are several "life spanning photos" of Peeters & of St. Rumbold's Cathedral.

Performance notes are in the FIRST COMMENT.