Karel Goeyvaerts'Litanie Vfor harpsichord and tape or several harpsichords
Christine Wauters, Mark Delaere, Jef Lysens · Contemporary Music Review · 2000
Article based on collaboration between a performer (Chr. Wauters), discussing performance modalities, and K. U. Leuven's Department of Musicology (M. Delaere and J. Lysens), analysing composition techniques. K. Goeyvaerts composer of five ‘Litanies’, with a number of common characteristics, in addition to their title, e.g. the repetitive technique, gradual construction and destruction in different layers of small elements. Litanie V as a ‘multiple form’, performer determines a number of modalities himself (number of layers, order of ‘sequences’, place and degree of superimposition). Composer ensures, in spite of given freedom and certain contradicational instructions, a coherent musical system, made clear by analysis. Macro-structure as an extrapolation of micro-structure (cyclicity, symmetrical inversion, use of scale, superimposition). Moreover, a series of techniques creates a network of relations (contrast or reference) between sequences, in this way guiding the performer's freedom. Score-excerpt as illustration. Litanie V as a synthesis of different composition techniques, used by Goeyvaerts in the course of his career (serialism, aleatorism, minimalism, electronic music, repetitive music). Challenges (tape or instruments, amount of layers, order of sequences, places of overlap) as starting point for motivation of choices by performer. Diagram and examples as illustration.