 This appears most clearly in his ideas about music.Even as a young boy, Ryelandt had a mind of his own.Much as he revered his “best piano teacher,” Franz Devos (of the Ghent Conservatory) who gave him private lessons, he wrote that Devos “did not pay enough attention to technique, which left me unsatisfied.” While he learned a lot from Tinel, whose technical mastery he greatly admired, he also let himself be influenced by Wagner, whom Tinel detested, and by French composers such as Franck, Fauré and Debussy, whereas Tinel was primarily German-oriented.