Edgar Tinel

He was born in Sinaai, today part of Sint-Niklaas in East Flanders, Belgium, and died in Brussels.

In 1877 his cantata Klokke Roeland won him the Belgian Prix de Rome, and in 1881 he succeeded Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens as director of the Mechelen Institute of Religious Music.

He devoted himself to a study of old church music, and his ideas gave rise to Pope Pius X's Motu proprio.

Appointed inspector of music education in 1889, he moved to the Brussels Conservatory to become professor of counterpoint and fugue in 1896, and director at the end of 1908.

His liturgical music is polyphonic in the Palestrina style, but this technique conflicted with Tinel's lyrical and mystical temperament, and he had much greater success in his two concert settings of the Te Deum, the oratorio and the religious dramas.