Karel Goeyvaerts Karel Goeyvaerts

KAREL GOEYVAERTS was born in Antwerp in 1923.
After having received a humanistic education in Antwerp, he took courses
at the Lemmens Institute in Malines. From 1943 until 1947 he studied at the
Royal Flemish Conservatoire of Antwerp. From 1947 until 1950 he studied
composition with Darius Milhaud, music analysis with Olivier Messiaen and
was in addition the pupil of Maurice Martenot at the "Conservatoire
National" in Paris. In 1949 he was awarded the 2nd Prize for Composition
and the Lili Boulanger Prize at the same Conservatoire. He obtained the
Halphen Prize in 1950.
During the winter of 1950-51, he wrote the "Sonata for two pianos".
Because of its decisive and total stylistic novelty he designated this work
as "Composition No 1", thus rejecting all his former work. With this sonata
he created a structural synthesis of the dodecaphonic system of Anton
Webern and the teachings of Olivier Messiaen and laid the foundations for
generalized "punctual" serialism. He demonstrated the application of this
technique on the electronic medium in his compositions Nrs. 4, 5 and 7.
During the period 1951-1956, he influenced directly through personal contact
and intensive correspondence the musical creativity of Karlheinz
Stockhausen, whom he met during the summer-courses of 1951 in
Darmstadt. In 1953, Goeyvaerts and Stockhausen produced the first electronic
music in the studio of the NWDR in Cologne.
In 1 970 th e BRT app oin ted h im as pr oducer at th e "Institute of
Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music" (IPEM) in Ghent. Since 1974 he is
in charge of the New Music productions for BRT-3 in Brussels. Karel
Goeyvaerts received several awards, such as the Koopal Prize in 1967 and
the Visser-Neerlandia Prize in 1969. He also was given commissions by
the BRT, the Festiv al o f Fland ers and the NOS (Nede r- lan ds e
Omroepstichting). His works have been performed in several European
countries, in Canada, the United States, Japan and at the festivals of the
"International Society for Contemporary Music" (ISCM) Brussels 1950,
Oslo 1953, Graz 1972 and Bonn 1977.