Holland’s done it, so have Great-Britain and Germany, and now for Belgium: the search for the greatest Belgian!
My personal shortlist of worthy contenders: Django Reinhardt, Jacques Brel, Adolphe Sax, René Magritte, Victor Horta and obviously: Hergé.
I swear if they choose a footballplayer or a politician, I am moving to Montana.
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Meta
i’d add to that list the good ol’ Pieter Bruegel…
…and Bart De Pauw!!
I’d like to add the Cistercian Trappist monk, who figured that brewing beer was a good idea, in 1862, for the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Scourmont.
Marie Daulne?…
The Germans have done it as well, by the way with very positive symbolic value as for the current state of Germany. Just have a look at the results.
My favorite Belgian is ( yes, yes) Orlando di Lassus. The FZ from the 16th century ( 2000 compositions, both musical & intellectual rigour, etc. ). Just have an introductory look :
http://www.karadar.com/Worterbuch/lassus.html
http://www.klassiekemuziekgids.net/componisten/lassus.htm
By the way
– his music is still recorded , over and over again by classic ensembles.
– the NY avant garde is still performing ( 1993 ) his compositions , for instance John Zorn’s interpretation / deconstruction of Prophetia Sybillarum… almost 500 years later. Not bad.
It just happens to be .. multi layered music . Layers were / are : purely musical, cultural , etc. Cultural? He wrote music for texts in four different languages.. never before having masterded that language ” the master’s way”.
Interesting , slightly enigmatic man.
Dr Sharl: I am humbled by your exquisite taste in mediaeval flemish painters — yes Breughel should be part of the list. As for Bart De Pauw: he’ll have to die live on tv whilst waving about a copy of his autobiography before I vote for him (inside joke folks, please ignore)
SOFA: how could I forget! Can you really credit one single person for inventing Belgian beer though?
bernard: didn’t know about the german election — it’s been added to the post, thanks. Must say I’ve never ever heard of Orlando di Lassus. His name doesn’t sound very belgian…
balint: hah! Marie Daulne… Zap Mama is a great little vocal ensemble, but — greatest belgian ever? (btw: who do you think is greatest hungarian ever?)
Lassus is from Mons.In that period the area ( geographic banana) Boulogne – Jodoigne provided a wealth of very good composers.
Well, well – “The Greatest Hungarian” is the “nickname” of István Széchenyi, who, being a count, offered his one year income for founding the Hungarian Academy, and he even made the Chain-Bridge (now called “Széchenyi Chain Bridge”, after him), the first bridge to cross river Danube, and so on – this all happened in the XIXth century. But:
The interesting thing is, that a few years ago there was a vote for the most favorit hungarian ever, and – big surprise: Mr. János Kádár was in between the first 5!!!! Yes: he was the last kommunist dictator here, making a kind of “soft dictatorship”, as they say. And after the change of the regime quite a few thing changed: dictatorship was over, but freedom had its price: more homelesses, unemployment, political fights… So there are quite a few guys here (mostly simple persons, the “man on the street”) that feel that “under Kádár it was better”. Shaaaaaaame!
Well, stange, but this country is in a strange position right now – well, sometimes funny. But anyway, we hope for the best.
And: Who I think tha greates hungarian ever? I have to think about it, welll, we had quite a few Nobel-prize winners, and other guys… I dont know. I’ll think about it.
PS.:
Well, and there’s a guy, a kind of punk-figure, might be close to Jello Biafra, who called himself the “Cockroach of the Nation”, his name is Nagy Feró (“Frank ‘The Great’ Balkan”, hehe). Well, he was a great guy, I have quite a few tapes from him.
James Ensor, Belgium’s famour painter.
http://www.missingimages.com/jamesensor/
What, nobody listens to They Might Be Giants on here?
I think this is a link for the album of Nagy Feró and his group BIKINI – a text in english about him, just for fun.
Herge- dodgy in WW2 so he won’t get it. Magritte or I’ll eat my hat.
à Balint. Just have a look at the results in Germany. 1. Adenauer ( ” the west is the best”); 2. Luther ( spirituality ) ; 3. Karl Marx.
Marx #3: both the result of the weight of East Germny and the refusal to overlook the social aspect.
Thus : Kadar amongst the top 5 people in Hungary , not that much a surprise.
re:(btw: who do you think is greatest hungarian ever?)
Wouldn’t Bartók be among the top 5 ??
(And what about Kodály? Liszt ? Rubik?)
“SOFA: Can you really credit one single person for inventing Belgian beer though?”
Of course not… The brewing arts in Belgium were firmly established by then. But there was one guy who suggested that the monks of the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Scourmont could make a brew salable to the public to augment their income. Without him, there’d be no Chimay…
Well, there’d be Chimay, just not as we know it ; )
“Adolphe Sax”
That’s not the inventor of the saxophone is it? If it is, he get’s my vote…
(Yes, even over Chimay)
It is, it is…
Aw shit, then; no contest. The guy who invented the saxophone is GREAT regardless of country of origin…
By the way : just have a look at the collections of the Brussels Instrument Museum, http://www.mim.fgov.be/.
The way the saxophone ( user friendly indstrument) developed & got more and more sophisticated. Amazing.