Jules Van Nuffel

[1] After graduating from high school, Van Nuffel studied for the priesthood at the Grand Seminary of Mechelen, where he also had occasional lessons in piano, violin, organ, harmony and counterpoint.

[2][3] Shortly after his ordination,[4] he was appointed music teacher at the Mechelen episcopal high school, a position he'd hold for ten years.

In that period Edgar Tinel, the director of the episcopal Ecole de Musique Religieuse (later Lemmensinstituut), insisted that he train at the school.

But this one and only period in which Van Nuffel took formal music courses ended after a mere three months in a dispute between teacher and student.

Following Pope Pius X's Tra le sollecitudini, which Van Nuffel considered the "norm and codex" of his work,[10] it sang a great deal of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony.

International invitations also followed, culminating in a 1934 concert tour to Italy, where they sang for Pope Pius XI.

[11] In his work in St. Rumbold's Van Nuffel was greatly aided by the cathedral organist, the renowned Flor Peeters.

His late Romantic harmony is a highly personal synthesis of old church modes and impressionism, sometimes daringly modern for its time.

A nationally prominent composer, Van Nuffel is not very well known outside his native land,[16] though his work is still occasionally performed abroad.

One work that has become well-known abroad and that is one of his crowning achievements is Nova Organi Harmonia ad Graduale juxta Editionem Vaticanam, a collection of accompaniments of the Gregorian chants of the entire liturgical year.

He wrote some 90 motets, his favorite genre;[18] among the most popular of these are Of his four masses, all with organ accompaniment, only the first, Missa in honorem SS.

Van Nuffel’s first priority was attracting good teachers, and he appointed some superb ones: Henri Durieux, Lodewijk Mortelmans, Flor Peeters, Marinus De Jong and Staf Nees.

In it, Van Nuffel, a member of its editorial board, published a number of major articles on various subjects, as well appendices with scores by contemporary composers.

[27] On 12 January 1926 Cardinal Mercier made Van Nuffel an honorary canon of St. Rumbold's Cathedral,[28] and on 11 March 1946, at the recommendation of Cardinal Van Roey, Pope Pius XII made him a Supernumerary Privy Chamberlain.

[30] Except Fellerer, Van den Borren and the shortened English version of Leytens, all these sources are in Dutch.