Mathieu Crickboom was a Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

ist, who was born in Verviers

Verviers

Verviers is a Walloon city and municipality located in the Belgian province of Liège. The Verviers municipality includes the old communes of Ensival, Lambermont, Petit-Rechain, Stembert, and Heusy...

 (Hodimont) and died in Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

.

Crickboom was the principal disciple of Eugène Ysaÿe

Eugène Ysaÿe

Eugène Ysaÿe was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor born in Liège. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tzar"...

, who dedicated to him his Sonata for Violin Alone No. 5. In the same vein, Ernest Chausson

Ernest Chausson

Amédée-Ernest Chausson was a French romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish.-Life:Ernest Chausson was born in Paris into a prosperous bourgeois family...

 dedicated his string quartet to Crickboom, who for some years played second violin in the Ysaÿe Quartet

Ysaÿe Quartet (1886)

The Ysaÿe Quartet was established in 1886 by Eugène Ysaÿe.Its members were:* Eugène Ysaÿe, 1st violin* Mathieu Crickboom, 2nd violin* Léon van Hout, viola* Joseph Jacob, celloThe quartet premiered Claude Debussy's String Quartet on December 29, 1893....

.

He lived for a while in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, where he directed a violin school and a concert society. The year 1897 saw the formation of Crickboom's own quartet, with Pablo Casals

Pablo Casals

Pau Casals i Defilló , known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time...

, cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

; Josep Rocabruna, second violin; and Rafael Gálvez, viola

Viola

The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...

.

Having returned to Belgium, he became a professor at the Conservatoire of Liège

Liège

Liège is a major city and municipality of Belgium located in the province of Liège, of which it is the economic capital, in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium....

 and, subsequently, at the Conservatoire of Brussels. It was in Brussels that he spent most of his later life. He edited numerous violin concertos by great composers of the 18th and 19th centuries, but his principal work was his violin method, arranged into progressive etudes, duos, popular melodies and technical themes. Most of the pieces in this method were by great violin pedagogues of the 19th century, though some were by Crickboom himself.

External links

• Frédérique Petrides - Orchestrette Classique