Choral - #37 Sixty Short Pieces

Flor Peeters (4 July 1904 – 4 July 1986) was one of the most renowned organists and composers for organ of the twentieth century. He was also a great teacher and a respected researcher of older Flemish music. Peeters attended the Lemmens Institute in Mechelen where he studied organ with Oscar De Puydt. He won the highest award, the Lemmens-Tinel Prize and at the age of twenty and was appointed a professor at Lemmens. In addition, in 1923, he became assistant organist at the Cathedral of St. Rombout in Mechelen.

When De Puydt died in 1925, Peeters was appointed to succeed him as professor of organ and as the principal organist at St Rombout’s Cathedral.

Peeters became a close friend of Charles Tournemire (1870-1939), one of the great line of French organist-composers, from which he is said to have derived some of the style and technique of his improvisations. In his will, Tournemire bequeathed to Peeters the organ console that the great Belgian composer César Franck had used as organist of St. Clotilde.

He was in much demand as a teacher and gave master classes in addition to concerts throughout the world.

Peeters was a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium and an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London. With Olivier Messiaen he was nominated an adviser for the Vatican Council II, but neither of them was ever consulted.

Flor Peeters was made doctor honoris causa in music by the Catholic University in Washington (1962) and by the Catholic University of Louvain (1971). In 1971 King Baudouin elevated him to the Belgian peerage as Baron Peeters. A few weeks before his death he received the State Award for an artistic career from the Belgian Government.