Fétis

François-Joseph Fétis (1789–1871) was a Belgian musicologist, composer, and critic who became a foundational figure in 19th-century musicology. Born in Mons, he pursued a career as a musician and teacher before turning to research and writing. He is best known for authoring the Biographie universelle des musiciens, a comprehensive reference work that documented composers from antiquity to his own era and became a standard resource for scholars and performers for many decades. He also published theoretical and practical treatises on music, including Traité de musique théorique et pratique, and produced numerous articles that helped shape 19th-century musical historiography.

Fétis played a significant educational and institutional role in Belgium. He served as a professor at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and contributed to the reform and development of music education in the country. Through his dictionaries and critical writings, he promoted rigorous historical research and a renewed interest in early music, while also shaping contemporary aesthetics and debates. His work influenced generations of students and later musicologists, contributing to the professionalization of musicology as an academic discipline.

While celebrated for his breadth and scholarly zeal, Fétis's work has been examined for biases typical of 19th-century historiography and occasional reliance on secondary sources. Nevertheless, his Biographie universelle des musiciens remains a key historical source, and his other writings laid groundwork for the systematic study of music history and theory in the modern era. Fétis died in Brussels in 1871.