Léon Dubois (also Du Bois; born Brussels, 9 January 1859; died Boitsfort [Bosvoorde], 19 November 1935) was a composer, organist and conductor. He studied organ with Alphonse Mailly and composition with Joseph Dupont in Brussels, and went on to work as a conductor and organist. In 1885 he won the renowned Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata “Au Bois de Elphes”. He held seasonal engagements as a conductor at the opera houses of Nantes (1889), Brussels (1890, 1892–1897) and Liège (1891). In 1899 he was appointed director of the municipal music school in Leuven (Louvain), and in 1913 the Brussels Conservatoire named him its director. As a composer he wrote mainly stage works, along with pieces for organ and a few instrumental works.
These three octet movements for 8 horns are dedicated “son ami Louis Merck” (“his friend Louis Merck”). The hornist Louis-Henri Merck (1831–1900) taught horn at the Brussels Conservatoire from 1862. Dubois may have written the three pieces for the eight horn players of the Belgian Guides Band. Alternatively, the scoring for 8 horns, or 4 horns and 4 Wagner tubas, which was emerging in late 19th-century symphonic music (Mahler, Bruckner and others), may have inspired the idea for this octet. The three movements do not form a single cohesive composition but were written one after another: the first movement was probably composed around 1885, the second was completed on 25 May 1888 and performed at the Brussels Conservatoire on 11 November 1888, and the third bears the note “finished on 5 June 1894”.
Jeroen Billiet made a significant contribution to this edition. His dissertation “200 Years of Belgian Horn School” (Dissertation for the Approval of a Laureate Programme, Orpheus Institute Ghent, Belgium, 2008) is a milestone in the history of Belgian horn playing and discusses Dubois’s work and its context in much greater detail. Please visit his website www.corecole.be, where the dissertation can also be purchased.
