Godfried-Willem Raes is a
Belgian
Belgian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to, Belgium
* Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent
* Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German
*Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...
composer, performer and instrument maker. He is the founder of the
Logos Foundation
The Logos Foundation is a professional artistic organisation founded in 1968. It focuses on the promotion of new musics and audio related arts by means of new music production, concerts, performances, composition, technological research projects ...
of which he is still the president. He holds a PhD from
Ghent University
Ghent University ( nl, Universiteit Gent, abbreviated as UGent) is a public research university located in Ghent, Belgium.
Established before the state of Belgium itself, the university was founded by the Dutch King William I in 1817, when th ...
and is professor of experimental music composition at the Ghent Royal Conservatory.
Life
Raes was born in
Ghent
Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded i ...
,
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
in 1952. He studied
musicology and philosophy at the
Ghent State University as well as piano, clarinet, percussion and composition at the
Royal Conservatory of Music of Ghent.
As a concert-organizer he has been responsible from 1973 until 1988 for the new-music concert programming of the Philharmonic Society at the
Palais des Beaux Arts
The Centre for Fine Arts (french: Palais des Beaux-Arts, nl, Paleis voor Schone Kunsten) is a multi-purpose cultural venue in Brussels, Belgium. It is often referred to as BOZAR (a homophone of ''Beaux-arts'') in French or PSK in Dutch. The ...
in Brussels. As a composer/performer and instrumentmaker he is the founder of the Logos- Group in 1968, out of which grew the Logos Duo, with
Moniek Darge as well as the experimental M&M (Man and Machine) ensemble, operating with selfbuilt musical robots.
He has also published many critical essays and articles in specialized publications. In 1982 he received the
Louis Paul Boon
Louis Paul Boon (15 March 1912, in Aalst – 10 May 1979, in Erembodegem) was a Belgian writer of novels, poetry, pornography, columns and art criticism. He was also a painter. He is best known for the novels ''My Little War'' (1947), the diptych ...
Award for the social engagement in his artistic work.
In 1990 he designed and constructed the
Logos Tetrahedron (a tetrahedron-shaped concert-hall) for th
Logos Foundationin Ghent, a project for which it received the Tech-Art prize 1990.
Next to his reputation as a composer, he is also a well known expert in computer technology and electronic art. His PhD from Ghent State University he got on the basis of his dissertation on the technology of virtual instruments of his design and invention. He is the author of an extensive real time algorithmic music composition programming language GMT, running on the
Wintel platform. He made a musical robot upon request from
Aphex Twin.
References
Godfried-Willem Raes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Raes, Godfried-Willem
1952 births
Belgian composers
Male composers
Belgian male musicians
Flemish academics
Belgian computer programmers
Musicians from Ghent
Ghent University alumni
Living people