Raoul De Smet

Raoul De Smet, born 1936 in Borgerhout (Antwerpen - Belgium). Basical musical education at the Music Academy of Deurne. Afterwards he obtained a MD in Philosophy, Linguistics and History of Arts at the Catholic University of Louvain, he completed his studies in Madrid and Salamanca following a postgraduate on Hispanic Linguistics and Literature. Then he has been travelling and teaching for four years in Tunisia. In the meantime he initiated himself in modern musical techniques, studying scores and theoretical works (Rimski-Korsakof, Schönberg, Koechlin, Krenek, Leibowitz, Boulez, Stockhausen, …). At the IPEM-studio in Ghent, Lucien Goethals introduced him in the electronic music, and Ton de Leeuw, in Amsterdam, gave him some private lessons in composition. He assisted, 1972, the Ferienkurse für neue Musik in Darmstadt, where one of his solo pieces for cello was performed by Siegfried Palm and where he organised with Julio Estrada a project of musical concept art. In 1973 he assisted the Gaudeamus seminar in Holland and in 1976, the American Seminar on Contemporary American Music, in Salzburg. During the Biannual of Venice in 1977, he represented the IPEM- studio at the International Symposium on Electronic Music. 1974, De Smet started organising in Antwerp, the 'Orphische Avonden', concerts for the promotion of modern chamber music. 1981, he started coordinating the publication of contemporary chamber music scores by Flemish composers. 1987, organised for the first time the 'Orpheus-prijs', a contest for the interpretation of contemporary chamber music. Although his first compositions were most of them orchestral pieces, Raoul De Smet concentrates his latest production on electronic and instrumental chamber music. Besides a lot of solo works for all kind of instruments, he wrote duo's, trio's, quartets, quintets, sextets and so on, in different combinations. In his vocal music we like to mention specially his two chamber operas: "Ulrike, an ancient tragedy" (1989), on the theme of terrorism; and "The last hour of Vincent" (1990), a tribute to Vincent van Gogh.