Library Person
Karel Goeyvaerts
Belgian composer, a founder of total serialism who later joined IPEM in Ghent.
Karel Goeyvaerts (1923–1993) met Karlheinz Stockhausen at the 1951 Darmstadt summer courses, and the two — both devout Catholics who folded numerological ideas into serial technique — became close collaborators in total serialism’s earliest years. When Stockhausen began work at the Studio für elektronische Musik des WDR in Cologne in July 1953, he helped Goeyvaerts realize Compositie Nr. 5 met zuivere tonen (“Composition No. 5 with Pure Tones”), one of the studio’s first sine-tone electronic pieces. After withdrawing from public musical life for much of the 1960s, Goeyvaerts accepted a position in 1970 at IPEM in Ghent, where he taught composition with computers, later synthesizing his serial background with minimalist technique in works including the opera Aquarius (1983–92).