Edgard Varese’s ground-breaking atonal pieces made much use of unpitched percussion, complex rhythms, and unconventional instruments to produce his “organised sound,” as he called his music. He was one of the first to use a tape recorder in music, producing early electronic pieces. Although his total output was quite small, his influence on 20th-century music was enormous.
Varése was born in Paris on December 22, 1883- He studied under Vincent d’Indy and Albert ROUSSEL at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, and later with Charles Widor at the Paris Conservatory. For a few months, Varese lived in Germany, where he met Busoni, the Italian composer who had settled in Berlin. Although Busoni had a slight influence on him, Varese’s main inspiration was the 12th-century composer Perotin. In 1915, Varese moved to the U.S.
The music from his early period, most of which is now lost or destroyed, was of a Romantic or Impressionist nature. It included the Rhapsodie romane (1905), Les Cycles du Nord (1914), Oedipus und die Sphinx (1910-14), and the symphonic poem Bourgogne (1908), which Varese himself destroyed in the early 1960s.
During the 1920s, Varese was one of the most active composers in the United States, organising concerts of “new music,” both American and European, in New York and elsewhere. The works from this second period use fairly small wind and percussion ensembles (he disliked strings). Varese also introduced extra percussion, employing the instruments as much for timbre as for rhythm, and “noise instruments” such as sirens. Important pieces from this period were Ameriques, for orchestra and siren (1917-21); Hyperprism, a short work for wind, percussion, and siren (1922-23); Octandre, for wind, brass, and double bass (1923); and Integrates, for chamber orchestra and percussion (1924-25). Arcana (1925-27) was written for a large orchestra. In 1928, Varese returned to Paris for an extended period. Here he became increasingly interested in the need for and potential of electronic instruments, and this period produced some of his most innovative music. Ionisation (193D, scored for 41 percussion instruments and two sirens, is almost entirely unpitched. Ecuatorial (1934) was written for voice, brass, organ, percussion, and two theremins or ondes martenot (early electronic instruments); and Density 21.5 (1935) was composed for solo flute.
Varèse wrote very little during the next 18 years. Then, in 1953, someone gave him a tape recorder, and this enabled him to record and cut in the “found sounds” (everyday sounds from the world around) that he used in Deserts (1954), which was scored for wind, percussion, and tape. This was followed by Poeme electronique, a piece of pure musique concrete (using natural sound sources) for a three-track tape. This piece was constructed of both electronically generated and manipulated sounds in the Philips electronic laboratories at Eindhoven in the Netherlands. It was played through 400 loudspeakers inside the Philips Pavilion, designed by the architect Le Corbusier, at the World’s Fair in Brussels in 1958.
Back in the U.S. Varese began to receive recognition for his work, which was recorded and also performed live. He became interested in the themes of night and death, and worked intermittently on a new project, Nocturnal, which was performed incomplete at a concert in 1961. It was still unfinished at the time of Varese’s death on November 6, 1965.
Richard Trombley
SEE ALSO: AMPLIFICATION; ELECTRONIC MUSIC
FURTHER READING
Bernard, Jonathan W. The Music of Edgard Varese (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987);
Quellette, Fernand, trans. Derek Coltman. Edgard Varese (New York: Da Capo Press, 1981).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Ameriques; Density 21.5; Deserts; Ecuatorial; Integrates; Ionisation; Nocturnal; Poeme electronique.