Vic Nees

Vic Nees was born in Mechelen on 8 March 1936 and became one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century Flemish choral music, both as a composer and as a conductor. The son of the musician Staf Nees, he studied at the Antwerp Conservatory with several teachers, among them Marcel Andries, Renaat Veremans, Mortelmans and Decadt, and in Flor Peeters's composition class he won the De Vleeshouwer Prize.

His specialisation in choral conducting came through Kurt Thomas, in Hamburg. Between 1961 and 1970 he worked as a choral music producer for the Belgian broadcaster BRT, and from 1970 until his retirement in 1996 he directed the BRT Choir. In 1994 he was admitted to the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.

From his earliest works onwards, he deliberately distanced himself from the Flemish Romantic tradition and took as his models twentieth-century German choral music, as well as Renaissance and early Baroque repertoire, with Schütz as a special model. His writing is pictorial and expressive, and often starts from key words in the text. He combines traditional procedures with innovative resources, such as repetitive elements, tone clusters or complex rhythms. Almost all of his output is vocal, comprising sacred and secular pieces, as well as numerous arrangements of folk songs.