Léon-Philippe-Marie, Chevalier de Burbure

Léon-Philippe-Marie de Burbure, Knight of Burbure, was a Belgian music historian born in Dendermonde on 16 August 1812 and died in Antwerp on 8 December 1889. His significance lies in combining, within a single career, musical practice, legal training and a sustained commitment to researching Flemish archives, which allowed him to recover the memory of music in the Southern Netherlands.

From childhood he received musical instruction from the choirmaster Troch at the Onze-Lieve Vrouwkerk in Dendermonde, and later studied the cello with François Devigne. He pursued humanities at the Royal College of Ghent and took his doctorate in law at the university of that city in 1832, without ever abandoning music. He began composing at around the age of eighteen and, shortly after arriving at university, founded a symphonic society, the Lyre Académique. In 1836 his work on behalf of music earned him a post on the state jury of the Prix de Rome.

His vocation for research arose when he was appointed churchwarden of the church in his native town, where he undertook the cataloguing of the old parish archive. He subsequently catalogued the archives of the Cathedral of St Lambert in Liège and of the Cathedral of Antwerp, thereby assembling an exceptional source on the golden age of Flemish music. He published numerous monographs, among them, perhaps the most important, Les oeuvres des anciens musiciens belges (1882). He reportedly wrote thirty books and minor studies and left 168 musical works. In his will he bequeathed to Antwerp ten volumes of notes on the history of the city and four others relating to the choir school and the cathedral archive.

His legacy endures above all in the documentation he catalogued and in his studies of harpsichord makers, lutenists and court composers of the imperial court, such as Charles Luython. He was elected a member of the Class of Fine Arts of the Royal Academy of Belgium in 1862 and became its director in 1879.