phonic principle. In this compositional technique the twelve pitches within the octave are arranged in a series which then goes to form the structural basis (the grammar) of a composition. By this time Webern had so improved upon this serial principle that the original series directly generated both the musical content and the musical form. With his Sonata for two Pianos (1950-1951), Karel Goeyvaerts was the first in the history of music to manage to adapt this serial technique not only to pitch, but also to rhythm, dynamics and articulation. This is possibly the most abstract music ever written. The aesthetic consistency and the breathtaking constructivism of Goeyvaerts' Sonata were to serve as a model for the whole of the European avant-garde in the fifties. This was already apparent in July 1951 at the Internationale Ferienkurse für neue Musik in Darmstadt, where Goeyvaerts presented his No. i (as he called his Sonata) in the seminar of Theodor W. Adorno. This authoritative (music) philosopher with his pre-war classifications did not appreciate Goeyvaerts' radically innovative composition, but for Karlheinz Stockhausen and the other young composers who attended the event, No. i was a revelation.
Goeyvaerts was also one of the first to experiment with electronic music, in which he could exercise even greater discipline over both composition and performance (by means of a once and forever fixed tape). The subtitle of his
No. 5 - With Pure Tones - speaks volumes in that respect: the abstract sound structure exudes absolute purity both technically and aesthetically. From the sixties onwards, Goeyvaerts was no longer
Darmstadt, 1951 (from left to right): Luigi Nono, Karel Goeyvaerts and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
the pioneer of radical changes in new music he had been in the fifties, but he did follow those changes very closely and made a valuable contribution to many different forms of experimental music. A fine example of this is the orchestral work composed in 1971 entitled
According to ..., a sort of ‘mobile’ which allowed the public to influence the actual performance. In the first instance, Goeyvaerts provided the audience with stethoscopes and sphygmomanometers. These would communicate the physical and mental experiences of the listeners to a computer which would redirect this information straight to the conductor, who would then adapt the interpretation to the reactions of the audience during the performance. Repetitive music did not escape Goeyvaerts' attention either. The five repetitive
Litanies written between 1979 and 1982 using this technique are undoubtedly the culminating point of this group of works. The austerity and economy of means characteristic of this ‘minimal music’ were intensified in Goeyvaerts' work, on the aesthetic level also. Finally, he did not shy away from the expressive intentions and tonal techniques typical of the neo-romantic music of the eighties.
All this came together in his opus ultimum, the large-scale opera Aquarius (1983-1993). The vocal contingent features eight sopranos and eight baritones who only perform collectively; there is an orchestra, there is a vague apocalyptical cum astrological theme (the evolution towards a more harmonious society), but for the rest there are no characters, there is no real libretto and hardly any semantically intelligible text. Only in an indirect manner do we come to learn of Goeyvaerts' perception of the staging of Aquarius: from his correspondence with a visual artist it appears that the composer had in mind a non-symbolic and geometric-abstract visualisation. Two conclusions can be drawn from this: despite the many sudden changes in style and seemingly restorative tunes, Goeyvaerts remained an innovative artist to the end, and after the strictly serial music of the fifties his predilection for abstraction never left him. Thus, on closer examination the successive stylistic shifts are at the most but different embodiments of the same aesthetic idea, concealing a remarkably homogeneous compositional oeuvre.
Karel Goeyvaerts brought the world of new music to Flanders, and conversely he put Flanders back on the map of European music. The international orientation of later generations of Flemish composers was almost a matter of course, thanks to his open mind and unflagging interest in all that was innovative. Since Goeyvaerts, Flemish music has no longer lagged decades behind, but eager young composers have been relatively quick to participate in new musical developments. At the same time, Goeyvaerts has gone down in the history of music as having initiated serial and electronic music but, in addition to that, he will be remembered for the quality of his oeuvre as a whole. That honour has not been conferred upon a Flemish composer