Lucien Goethals was born on 26 June 1931 in Ghent. His spent his most important formative years in Argentina, where he studied at the Dima Conservatory of Buenos Aires (1933-1946). When he returned to Belgium, he continued his studies at the Royal Conservatory in Ghent until 1956. Here he earned his first prize in organ, music history, counterpoint and fugue. Despite the conservative climate of the Flemish musical landscape, Goethals’ musical interest turned increasingly to the new international developments (serialism, electronic music, aleatory music). This interest was further stimulated by Norbert Rosseau, who introduced him to dodecaphonic techniques, although Goethals was largely self-taught in his evolution towards and thinking through of total serialism. As a composer and a producer for the Belgian radio, he was, like Louis de Meester, associated with the Institute for Psycho-Acoustic and Electronic Music (IPEM) in Ghent, from its founding in 1963. This offered him the opportunity to experiment with tape and electronic sound generators. He continued to work there until 1987. His many years of commitment to the IPEM explains the large share of electro-acoustic compositions in his oeuvre. Together with other young composers and musicologists, he was part of the SPECTRA work group (1963-1967).

Goethals’ intensive involvement with the musical avant-garde of the 1960s was also evident in his participation in courses in Darmstadt and Bilthoven. Besides studies with Gottfried Michael Koenig, he furthered his studies in Utrecht (Instituut voor Sonologie) as well as in the use of the computer as a compositional medium. From 1971 he taught music analysis at the conservatory in Ghent. His students have included such composers as Filip Rathé, Petra Vermote and Frank Nuyts. In 1996 the Lucien Goethals Society was founded. This society concentrates both on the dissemination of the music of Goethals and his generation, and on the promotion of contemporary music in general. Goethals has already been awarded numerous prizes, most recently the ANV-Visser Neerlandiaprijs (1999). Lucien Goethals died in Ghent on 12 December 2006.