Pieter Joseph Kessels

José Kessels (30 October 1856 – 10 February 1928), born Pieter Jozef Frans Kessels, was a Dutch musician and composer who settled and worked in El Salvador. He is known for having been a teacher to various Salvadoran composers, notably David Granadino. A memorial and park in the central square of Santa Ana, El Salvador is dedicated to him.

Life and career Kessels was born on 30 October 1856 to Pieter Jozef Kessels and Maria Catharina Wetzels in Heerlen, Netherlands. A music director from Aachen offered to allow Jos Kessels to continue his studies there, but he was not allowed by his parents until he was 18-years-old. He continued to receive music education for cello and brass wind instruments.

The Kessels brothers eventually began to trade in sheet music, founding a music publishing company in their hometown in 1880. Jos Kessels began working as a conductor for singing associations and concert bands. He was appointed as a solo cellist for the Tivoli Theatre in Amsterdam in 1883, but soon left to focus on composition which appealed to him more. His brother joined him in Tilburg in 1886 and eventually became a successful entrepreneur in musical instrument manufacturing; Mathieu is also notable for being the father of Marietje Kessels, the victim of a controversial unsolved murder. Jos continued working as a conductor and composer in the same city.

By 1889, he had composed 2 symphonies, around 30 overtures, various fantasies, waltzes, genre pieces, and marches, as well as choral works for orchestras and without orchestras, masses, and cantatas. The same year, he was working on an opera called .

Starting in 1896 and into the 1900s, Kessels was the director of the of Santa Ana, which would often play in the city's parks and was recognized as the second most important military band in the country. In 1897, he would chose students from the music school directed by Daniel González and Pío Paredes González as new members for the band, including among them Filadelfo Mirón, Miguel Menéndez, Antonio Sánchez, Joaquín Alvarado, and David Granadino. He would also become a teacher of composition, and had the future composers David Granadino and Ciriaco de Jesus Alas as students.

On 4 October 1913, the was founded in the town of Concepción de Ataco to promote its members' advancement in music through the establishment of classes under the direction of a competent teacher.

Kessels retired in 1924 and was given the rank of colonel.

Works Kessels composed orchestral works, symphonies, overtures, fantasies, waltzes, genre pieces, and marches; he also composed choral works with and without orchestra, masses, cantatas, songs for one voice and songs for male choirs.

In the 1960s, the created a monument with Kessels' bust in a park named after him adjacent to the theater of Santa Ana and facing another monument with the bust of his former student, David Granadino; this has become one of the prominent monuments in the city of Santa Ana.

When Martin van der Waals of wrote a jubilee book for Asterius with Piet Jacobs, he made contact with Kessels' descendants in November 2022. His Salvadoran family donated a 1913 medal, which was awarded to their great-grandfather, to the Kessels Museum, named after José Kessels' brother, in Tilburg. The museum received the medal on 24 August 2023. His family, however, had to clean out his archive of sheet music which had been damaged with time.