Peter (Leonard, Leonardus) Leopold Benoit (August 17, 1834, Harelbeke Flanders – March 8, 1901), was a Flemish composer.
His father and a local village organist were his first teachers. In 1851 Benoit entered the Brussels Conservatoire, where he remained till 1855, studying chiefly under FJ Fétis. During this period he composed music to many melodramas, and to an opera Le Village dans les montagnes for the Park theatre, whose conductor he became in 1856. He won a government prize and a money grant in 1857 with his cantata Le Meurtre d'Abel, and this enabled him to travel through Germany. In course of his journeyings he found time to write a considerable amount of music, as well as an essay L'École de musique flamande et son avenir.
In 1861 he visited Paris for the production of his opera Le Roi des Aulnes ("Erlkonig"), which, though accepted by the Théâtre Lyrique, was never mounted; while there he conducted at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens. Again returning home, he astonished a section of the musical world by the production at Antwerp of a sacred tetralogy, consisting of his Cantate de Noël, the above-mentioned Mass, a Te Deum and a Requiem, in which were embodied to a large extent his theories of Flemish music.
It was in consequence of his passion for the founding of an entirely separate Flemish school that Benoit changed his name from the French Pierre to the Dutch equivalent Peter. By prodigious efforts he succeeded in gathering round him a small band of enthusiasts, who affected to see with him possibilities in the foundation of a school whose music should differ completely from that of the French and German schools.
In its main features this school failed, for its faith was pinned to Benoit's music, which is hardly more Flemish than French or German. Benoit's more important compositions include the Flemish oratorios De Schelde (The river Scheldt) and Lucifer, whose London production in 1888 met with complete failure; the operas Het Dorp in 't Gebergte (The village in the mountains) and Isa, the Drama Christi; plus an enormous mass of songs, choruses, small cantatas and motets. Benoit also wrote a great number of essays on musical matters. He died in Antwerp on the 8th of March 1901.
