Edgard Varèse

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(b Paris, 22 Dec 1883; d New York, 6 Nov 1965). American composer of French origin. He studied with d′Indy at the Schola Cantorum (1903-5) and Widor at the Paris Conservatoire (1905-7), then moved to Berlin, where he met Strauss and Busoni. In 1913 he returned to Paris, but in 1915 he emigrated to New York; nearly all his compositions disappeared at this stage, with the exception of a single published song and an orchestral score, Bourgogne (1908), which he took with him but destroyed towards the end of his life. His creative output therefore effectively begins with Amériques for large orchestra (1921), which, for all its echoes of Debussy and of Stravinsky's early ballets, sets out to discover new worlds of sound: fiercely dissonant chords, rhythmically complex polyphonies for percussion and/or wind, forms in continuous evolution with no large-scale recurrence.

In 1921 he and Carlos Salzedo founded the International Composers Guild, who gave the first performances of several of his works for small ensemble, these prominently featuring wind and percussion, and presenting the innovations of Amériques in pure, compact form: Hyperprism (1923), Octandre (1923) and Intégrales (1925). Arcana (1927), which returns to the large orchestra and extended form with perfected technique, brought this most productive period to an end.

There followed a long stay in Paris (1928-33), during which he wrote Ionisation for percussion orchestra (1931), the first European work to dispense almost entirely with pitched sounds, which enter only in the coda. He also took an interest in the electronic instruments being developed (he had been calling for electronic means since his arrival in the USA), and wrote for two theremins or ondes martenot in Ecuatorial for bass, brass, keyboards and percussion (1934). The flute solo Density 21. 5 (1936) was then his last completed work for nearly two decades.

During this time he taught sporadically and also made plans for Espace, which was to have involved simultaneous radio broadcasts from around the globe; an Etude pour Espace for chorus, pianos and percussion was performed in 1947. Then, with electronic music at last a real possibility owing to the development of the tape recorder, he produced Déserts for wind, percussion and tape (1954) and a Poème électronique (1957-8), devised to be diffused in the Philips pavilion at the Brussels Exposition of 1958. His last years were devoted to projects on themes of night and death, including the unfinished Nocturnal for voices and chamber orchestra (1961).

works:
Surviving works

• Un grand sommeil noir, 1 v, pf (1906)
• Amériques, orch (1921)
• Offrandes, S, small orch (1921)
• Hyper-prism, 9 wind, 7 perc (1923)
• Octandre, 7 wind, dbn (1923)
• Intégrales, 11 wind, 4 perc (1925)
• Arcana, orch (1927)
• Ionisation, 13 perc (1931)
• Ecuatorial, B, ens (1934)
• Density 21. 5, fl (1936)
• Etude pour Espace, chorus, 2 pf, perc (1947)
• Déserts, 14 wind, pf, 5 perc, tape (1954)
• La procession de Vergès, tape (1955)
• Poème électronique, tape (1958)
• Nocturnal, S, B chorus, small orch (1961)

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Edgard Varèse (1883-1965), French-American composer, was one of the major prophets of the new music after World War II. In 1958 John Cage wrote, "More clearly and actively than anyone else of his generation he established the present nature of music."

Edgard Varèse was born in Paris of a Corsican family, but his youth was spent in Italy, where he received an engineer's training and degree. He was equally interested in music, and after preliminary study at the Turin Conservatory, he continued at the Schola Cantorum in Paris under Vincent d'Indy and Albert Roussel and at the conservatory under Charles Widor. He was a brilliant student and won a composition prize sponsored by the city.

In 1907 Varèse moved to Berlin, where he came under the influence of Richard Strauss and Ferruccio Busoni. He conducted a chorus and wrote an opera, Oedipus und die Sphinx, with a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Varèse also wrote a symphony which was performed, but all of these early compositions were destroyed in a fire.

With the outbreak of World War I, Varèse went to the United States. At first he was active as a conductor and as a propagandist for new music. He founded the International Composers' Guild and presented first performances of important contemporary pieces. In the following years he composed a series of very noisy compositions that baffled the critics but were acknowledged as landmarks of new music 30 years later. In these works Varèse went beyond the most advanced use of melody, rhythm, harmony, form, and instrumentation to create startlingly novel sounds.

During the 1920s Varèse wrote Amériques, Offrandes, Octandre, Hyperprism, Intégrales, and Arcana. Octandre (1924), for seven wind instruments and double bass, is a good example of his unconventional use of instruments and his new concept of musical form. The strident and extremely dissonant blocks of sound, almost resembling factory whistles, form the content of the piece without the rhythmic or tonal developments normally used by composers. Intégrales (1925), for wind instruments and percussion, also suggests big-city sounds. The first section consists of two unchanging chord structures around which a melodic pattern oscillates. It is one of the first of those "crystal" musical forms that were to be used so much in the following years. This term implies that the basic sound material of the piece is unchanging and that the shifting relationships between its elements is the only thing that "happens."

In the 1930s Varèse wrote Ionisation, Métal, Density 21.5, and Equatorial, of which Ionisation (1931) is best known. Written for percussion instruments plus a siren, it is one of the first of the many all-percussion pieces that were to follow. Equatorial, calling for two Theremins, shows his interest in new sound sources.

In 1937 Varèse stopped composing because he was no longer interested in seeking new sounds in conventional instruments; it was not until the tape recorder and electronic music became available that he finally gained the vast new sound resource he had been seeking. His mature works, utilizing noises and electronically produced sounds, are Déserts (1954) and the Poème électronique (1958). Déserts has two basic sound groups. The first is produced by the instruments; the second consists of a two-channel stereophonic tape of electronically produced sound. According to the composer, the instrumental parts produce a sense of movement in space, associated with the element within which the human operates, and the taped section is associated with distance and the nonhuman elements of the universe.

The Poème électronique was written to be performed in the Phillips Pavilion at the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels. The pavilion was planned as a "total environment" meant to result in a complex, multimedia experience for the audience. The music was heard from over 400 loudspeakers as the visitors walked through the building, seeing at the same time a series of projected images. Varèse's music consists of a combination of taped "natural" sounds, such as bells and voices, and noises such as clicks and motor roars. It is not meant to be listened to in the usual attentive manner.

Varèse's contributions to music are his widening of the material of music to include noise as well as "musical" sound, his development of new ways of organizing musical compositions, and writing of music to be heard as a part of an environment. All of these revolutionary ideas proved to be of great importance to the composers of the so-called avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s.

Further Reading

Some of Varèse's writings on music are extracted in Elliott Schwartz and Barney Childs, eds., Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music (1967). The only book-length study of the composer is Fernand Ouellette, Edgard Varèse (1966; trans. 1968). William W. Austin, Music in the Twentieth Century: From Debussy through Stravinsky (1966), has an interesting discussion of Varèse's life and work. Other studies which contain information on Varèse are Joseph Machlis, Introduction to Contemporary Music (1961), and Joan Peyser, The New Music: The Sense behind the Sound (1971).

• Period: Modern (1910-1949)
• Country: USA
• Born: December 22, 1883 in Paris, France
• Died: November 06, 1965 in New York, NY
• Genres: Chamber Music, Electronic/Computer Music, Orchestral Music, Vocal Music

Biography

Despite his output of only slightly more than a dozen compositions, Edgard Varèse is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century. His concept of "organized sound" led to many experiments in form and texture. He was constantly on the lookout for new sound sources (working throughout his life with engineers, scientists and instrument builders), and was one of the first to extensively explore percussion, electronics, and taped sounds. He was, as Henry Miller called him, "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound."

Varèse spent his early childhood in Paris and Burgundy. His father wanted him to study math and engineering in preparation for a career in business. However, Varèse pursued music, studying at the Schola Cantorum with Albert Roussel and Vincent d'Indy and at the Paris Conservatoire with Charles Marie Widor. Varèse moved to Berlin in 1907, in part to meet Ferruccio Busoni; Varèse had been impressed with Busoni's Sketch for a New Aesthetic in Music (1907), which anticipated many of Varèse's own later explorations. Unfortunately, of the music Varèse wrote during that time, only one song survives. The other manuscripts were destroyed in a warehouse fire.

Unable to find regular work, Varèse moved to the United States in 1915, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1926. The first work he completed after the emigration is in fact titled Amériques, an extroverted celebration of his new life. In addition to composing, Varèse promoted new music through the establishment of his New Symphony Orchestra in 1919, the International Composers' Guild in 1921, and the Pan American Society in 1926. He continued to have difficulty making money, though, and spent some time as a piano salesman; he also made a brief appearance in a 1918 John Barrymore film.

Varèse maintained his connection with Europe, and had an extended stay in Paris between 1928 and 1933 during which he continued his sonic explorations and heard many of his works performed. In 1931 he completed Ionisation, a notorious piece for thirteen percussionists playing about forty different instruments. Back in the U.S., he attempted to get Bell Telephone and others interested in creating a center for electric instrument research. The failure of that project led to an extended depression. Over the next ten-plus years, Varèse completed only one work, Density 21.5 for solo flute, spending the time teaching (at Santa Fe's Arsuna School of Fine Arts, Columbia University, and Darmstadt) and thinking about what new direction his music should take.

The anonymous gift of an Ampex tape recorder in 1953 was the motivation Varèse needed. He set to work on the tape portion of his work Déserts, which was premiered in Paris in 1954 in a concert which was broadcast live in stereo, the first stereo music broadcast ever in France. He was involved with several film projects, writing music for documentaries on Léger and Joan Miró. He also wrote the Poème électronique for tape for Le Corbusier's pavilion at the 1958 Brussels exhibition, where Varèse's music was heard through more than 400 loudspeakers, accompanied by Le Corbusier's visuals.

Varèse and his music received much attention in the 1960s. His works were widely performed, recorded and published, and he received honors from the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the Royal Swedish Academy. He also won the first Koussevitzky International Recording Award in 1963. But Varèse wrote little music during these last years. His final work, the unfinished Nocturnal (with text by Anaïs Nin), was performed at a tribute concert in 1961 and completed years later by composer Chou Wen-chung. ~ Chris Morrison, All Music Guide