Logos Library

Logos Bibliotheek

History:

Ever since it's start in 1968, Logos has been collecting books and publications relevant to the international contemporary music scene. Up to 1984, we bought all books we needed to underbuild our artistic work and to make sure we were in line with international trends and tendencies. Of course we were limited by what we could afford, as we were not subsidized at all. As in 1985 we got some more substantial subsidy, we could invest in an even more systematic way of collecting relevant book publications. This accounts for the major growth of the library in this period. Since 2012 however, we had to cancel this more systematic approach, as the government forced us to break down the development of our library. Instead, 'Matrix' was founded and well subsidized to serve as a 'professional' documentation center. Obviously, their approach and scope is quite different compared to what we where doing at Logos, as we never even attemped to cover 'flemish music' as such, nor new music activity regardless style and content. Our focus allways was on the most innovative aspects of musical creation internationally. There is and was clearly an ideological bias at Logos: mainstream- , academic- and symphonic/opera work is almost unrepresented, as we consider it quite irrelevant to musical innovation. However, even after 2012 we went on adding the most essential items to the library. Nowadays this library holds a substantial amount of extremely rare and hard to find publications.

The library is organised in a mixed thematic and regional/geographic way.

Library sections:

Contemporary music:

organised by country / linguistic group. Note that these book are in different languages, mainly English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portugese. Classification within any category is in principle by author, except for biographies and monographs, which are classified by name of the composer. Thus we have following categories:

• USA
• Canada
• UK - Ireland
• Germany
• Austria
• Switserland
• Flanders
• Netherlands
• Poland -Tschechia - Slowakia
• Soviet Union
• Portugal
• Spain
• Latin America (Brasil, Argentina, Peru, Chili, Uruguay)
• Japan
• France
• Wallonia and Bruxelles
• Romania
• Hungary
• Scandinavia (Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland)

As a consequence of this system of classification, a book in German on an American composer, will be classified under USA. Next to these categories, there also is a category bringing together general musicological and music history related books. Also quite a few encyclopedic works (the complete MGG, Groves Dictionary etc...) are available. A catalogue of titles available in this library is published on the internet. However, due to the many budget cuts we have undergone in the last ten years, it is no longer up to date and many titles are missing in the database. Physically, this library was moved to the first floor in our building at Bomastraat 24, in the year 2020.

Acoustics:

This is a very specialised scientific library covering the themes related to musical acoustics. For many years this library constituted the base of Godfried-Willem Raes teachings in acoustics at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Ghent.

This library is in our building at Kongostraat 35, first floor.

Organology and instrument building, including audio art

Here you find many specialised books on organ building, construction of wind instruments, violin building, bell casting, historical percussion instruments etc. Publications on instruments used in other cultures are represented as well. Next to covering traditional instruments, this library also covers experimental instrument building and very modern types of audio art: constructions and installations. This library also contains a substantial amount of books on automated instruments, historical as well as contemporary.

Electronics:

This is a technical and highly specialised library covering the complete history of electronic design and circuit theory. It contains a lot of rare books on 19th century very early electronic experiments and research as well as an extensive collection of books on vacuum tube circuitry. Also, there are many books on early circuit design for audio and electronic music using discrete components. There is no catalogue available as yet.

Physically this library is split over two rooms in our facilities: one at Bomastraat 24, first floor the other at Kongostraat 35, second floor, where also our electronics laboratory found a place. Journals on electronics (Elektor, Circuit Cellar...) are available as well.

Philosophy:

As Godfried-Willem Raes was also trained as a philosopher, it will not come as a surprise that there is quite an extensive philosophical library at Logos Foundation. The focus here in on positivism, philosophy of science, epistemology. However there also is quite a substantial amount of books on marxism, Frankfurther Schule, critical theory.

Religion, belief systems and primitive thought:

A wide collection of bibles, qurans, thoras in different translations and languages, as well as books on hinduism, taoism, budhism, tantrism.

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