Frans Geysen

Frans Geysen (born 29 July 1936) is a Belgian composer and a writer on music topics. Biography Frans Geysen was born in Oostham, and studied music at the Lemmens Institute in Mechelen, and at the conservatories of Antwerp and Ghent. In 1962 he became professor of harmony and analysis at the Lemmens Institute, and since 1975 has taught at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels. Musical style In 1962 he started using serial techniques, but in 1967 turned against the rhythmic aperiodicity and discontinuity characteristic of that technique. Instead, he began to use repetitive rhythmic structures similar to those of American minimalists such as Glass, Reich, Riley, and Young, though he developed these rhythmic ideas independently and retained the constructivism of serial thinking. He also continued to use twelve-tone rows often in his music, utilizing rows lacking thirds, perfect fifths, and semitones, in order to avoid suggestions of tonality and mutual attraction between pitches. His music is abstract, excluding emotion as either expression or goal. He explores a purposeful monotony, inspired by the monotony of the landscape of Flanders—and especially its easternmost province, Limburg, wh