Lucien Goethals


Lucien Goethals was a Belgian composer.

Life

Lucien Goethals was born in Ghent, but spent his formative years in Argentina, where he studied at the Dima Conservatory of Buenos Aires. When he returned to Belgium, he continued his studies at the Royal Conservatory in Ghent up to 1956, where he earned his first prize in organ, music history, counterpoint, and fugue. He later studied orchestration with Norbert Rosseau, and serial technique and electronic composition with Gottfried Michael Koenig and De Meester. He worked at the IPEM in Ghent ever since it was founded in 1962, and was its artistic director from 1970 to 1987. He died in Ghent, aged 75.

Aesthetics

Goethals was a stubborn proponent of "high" culture, in opposition to postmodernism thinking, which wants to dissolve the separation between "high" and "low" culture into the function of a global post-industrial culture of consumption.

Compositions