“Soir héroïque” Belgian refugee musicians in Mid Wales during the First World War

Art in Exile, an exhibition of paintings and sculpture produced in Wales by George Minne, Valerius de Saedeleer, Gustave van de Woestijne and Edgar Gevaert, was held at National Museum Cardiff and the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, in 2002. The catalogue referred to “several well-known musicians from Brussels” who also came to Wales during the First World War, but who were they and why had their narrative disappeared? This discrepancy was the spur to my research and an extraordinary story has emerged of the “Celebrated Belgian Artistes” who toured Wales as a concert-party and composed in response to their experience of living here. Drawing on sources in Wales and Belgium, this paper aims to restore these forgotten refugees to rightful attention.