Jan Brandts Buys

Who was Jan Brandts Buys?

Jan Willem Frans Brandts Buijs was a Dutch-Austrian composer who came from a long line of Dutch organists and composers of protestant church music.

His father was an organ player in the town of Zutphen in the Netherlands, where Jan was born. He studied at the Raff Conservatory in Frankfurt and in 1892 settled in Vienna where he got to know Johannes Brahms, who, along with Edvard Grieg, praised his early works. His piano concerto won an important international prize and such famous artists as Lilli Lehmann often included his songs on the same program with those of Franz Schubert.