Edgard Varèse | |
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 Varèse in 1910 | |
| Born | (1883-12-22)December 22, 1883 Paris, France |
| Died | November 6, 1965(1965-11-06) (aged 81) New York City, U.S. |
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Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (French:[ɛdɡaʁviktɔʁaʃilʃaʁlvaʁɛz]; also spelledEdgar;[1] December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965)[2] was a French and American composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizestimbre andrhythm;[3] he coined the term "organized sound" in reference to his own musical aesthetic.[4] Varèse's conception of music reflected his vision of "sound as living matter" and of "musical space as open rather than bounded".[5] He conceived the elements of his music in terms of "sound-masses", likening their organization to the natural phenomenon ofcrystallization.[6] Varèse thought that "to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been callednoise", and he posed the question, "what is music but organized noises?"[7]
Although his complete surviving works only last about three hours, he has been recognized as an influence by several major composers of the late 20th century. Varèse saw potential in using electronic media for sound production, and his use of new instruments andelectronic resources led to his being known as the "Father of Electronic Music";[8]Henry Miller described him as "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound".[9]
Varèse actively promoted performances of works by other 20th-century composers and founded theInternational Composers' Guild in 1921 and the Pan-American Association of Composers in 1926.[10]
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse was born in Paris; when he was a few weeks old, he was sent to be raised by his maternal great-uncle and other relations in the village ofLe Villars in theBurgundy region of France. There he developed a very strong attachment to his maternal grandfather, Claude Cortot (also grandfather to the pianistAlfred Cortot, a first cousin of Varèse[11]). His affection for his grandfather outshone anything he felt for his own parents.[12]
After being reclaimed by his parents in the late 1880s, in 1893 young Edgard was forced to relocate with them toTurin, Italy, in part, to live amongst his paternal relatives, since his father was of Italian descent. It was there that he had his first real musical lessons, with the director of theTurin Conservatory,Giovanni Bolzoni. In 1895, hecomposed his firstopera,Martin Pas, which has since been lost.[13] Now a teenager, Varèse, influenced by his father, an engineer, enrolled at thePolytechnic of Turin and started studying engineering, as his father disapproved of his interest in music and demanded an absolute dedication to engineering studies. This conflict grew greater and greater, especially after the death of his mother in 1900, until 1903 when Varèse left home for Paris.[14]
In 1904, he commenced his studies at theSchola Cantorum (founded by pupils ofCésar Franck), where his teachers includedAlbert Roussel. Afterwards, he went to study composition withCharles-Marie Widor at theParis Conservatoire. In this period, he composed some ambitious orchestral works, but these were only performed by Varèse inpiano transcriptions. One such work was hisRhapsodie romane, from about 1905, which was inspired by the Romanesque architecture of theChurch of St. Philibert inTournus. In 1907, he moved to Berlin and married the actressSuzanne Bing, with whom he had a daughter. They divorced in 1913.
During these years, Varèse became acquainted withErik Satie andRichard Strauss, as well as withClaude Debussy andFerruccio Busoni, who particularly influenced him at the time. He also gained the friendship and support ofRomain Rolland andHugo von Hofmannsthal, whoseŒdipus und die Sphinx he began setting as an opera that was never completed. On January 5, 1911, the first performance of hissymphonic poemBourgogne was held in Berlin.
After being invalided out of the French Army duringWorld War I, he moved to the United States in December 1915.
In 1918, Varèse made his debut in America conducting theGrande messe des morts by Berlioz.[15]
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He spent the first few years in the United States, where he was aRomany Marie'scafé regular[16] inGreenwich Village, meeting important contributors to American music, promoting his vision of newelectronic art music instruments,conducting orchestras, and founding the short-lived New Symphony Orchestra. In New York, he metLeon Theremin and other composers exploring the boundaries of electronic music.
It was also about this time that Varèse began work on his first composition in the United States,Amériques, which was finished in 1921 but would remain unperformed until 1926, when it was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted byLeopold Stokowski (who had already performedHyperprism in 1924 and would premiereArcana in 1927). Virtually all the works he had written in Europe were either lost or destroyed in a Berlin warehouse fire, so in the U.S. he was starting again from scratch. The only surviving work from his early period appears to be the songUn grand sommeil noir, a setting ofPaul Verlaine. (He still retainedBourgogne, but destroyed the score in a fit of depression many years later.)
At the completion ofAmériques, Varèse, along withCarlos Salzedo, founded theInternational Composers' Guild, dedicated to the performances of new compositions of both American and European composers. The ICG's manifesto in July 1921 included the statement, "[t]he present day composers refuse to die. They have realised the necessity of banding together and fighting for the right of each individual to secure a fair and free presentation of his work."[17] In 1922, Varèse visited Berlin where he founded a similar German organisation withBusoni.
Varèse contributed a poem to the Dadaist magazine391 after an evening of drinking withFrancis Picabia on the Brooklyn Bridge.[18] The same magazine claimed that he was orchestrating a "Cold Faucet Dance".[19] Later that year, he met Louise Norton, who edited another Dadaist magazine,Rogue, with her then-husband.[20] She was to becomeLouise Varèse and a celebrated translator of French poetry whose versions of the work ofArthur Rimbaud forJames Laughlin'sNew Directions imprint were particularly influential.
Varèse composed many of his pieces for orchestral instruments and voices for performance under the auspices of the ICG during its six-year existence. Specifically, during the first half of the 1920s, he composedOffrandes,Hyperprism,Octandre, andIntégrales.
He took American citizenship in October 1927. After arriving in the US Varèse commonly used the form 'Edgar' for his first name but reverted to 'Edgard', not entirely consistently, from the 1940s.[1][21]
In 1928, Varèse returned to Paris to alter one of the parts inAmériques to include the recently constructedondes Martenot. Around 1930, he composedIonisation, the first Classical work to feature solelypercussion instruments. Although it was composed with pre-existing instruments,Ionisation was an exploration of new sounds and methods to create them.
In 1928, when he was asked about jazz, he said it was not representative of America but instead was, "a negro product, exploited by the Jews. All of its composers here are Jews," meaningGruenberg andBoulanger students includingCopland andBlitzstein.[22]
In 1931, he was the best man at the wedding ofNicolas Slonimsky in Paris. In 1933, while still in Paris, he wrote to theGuggenheim Foundation andBell Laboratories in an attempt to receive a grant to develop an electronic music studio. His next composition,Ecuatorial, was completed in 1934, and contained parts for two fingerboardTheremin cellos, along withwinds, percussion, and abass singer. Anticipating the successful receipt of one of his grants, Varèse eagerly returned to the US to realize his electronic music. Slonimsky conducted its premiere in New York on April 15, 1934.
Varèse soon left New York City for Santa Fe, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 1936, he wrote his solo flute piece,Density 21.5. He also promoted the theremin in his Western travels, and demonstrated one at a lecture at theUniversity of New Mexico in Albuquerque on November 12, 1936. (The university has an RCA theremin in its archives which may be the same instrument.) By the time Varèse returned to New York in late 1938,Theremin had returned to Russia. This devastated Varèse, who had hoped to work with him on a refinement of his instrument.
He was approached by music producerJack Skurnick resulting inEMS Recordings #401. The record was the first release on LP ofIntegrales,Density 21.5,Ionisation andOctandre and featuredRené Le Roy, flute, the Juilliard Percussion Orchestra and the New York Wind Ensemble conducted byFrederic Waldman.Ionisation had also been the first work by Varèse to be recorded in the 1930s, conducted by Nicolas Slonimsky and issued on 78rpm Columbia 4095M.[23][24] Likewise,Octandre was recorded and issued on 78rpm discs in the later 1930s, complete (New Music Quarterly Recordings 1411)[25] and as an excerpt (3rd movement, Columbia DB1791 in Volume V of their History of Music).[23] Le Roy was the soloist also on a 1948 (78rpm) recording ofDensity 21.5 (New Music Recordings 1000).[25]
When, in the late 1950s, Varèse was approached by a publisher about makingEcuatorial available, there were very few theremins—let alone fingerboard theremins—to be found, so he rewrote the part forondes Martenot.[26] This new version was premiered in 1961. (Ecuatorial has been performed again with fingerboard theremins in Buffalo, New York, in 2002 and at the Holland Festival, Amsterdam, in 2009.)
While living with his father, an engineer, Varèse was pushed to further his scientific understanding at the Institute Technique, a high school in Italy that specialized in teaching mathematics and science. Here, Varèse became interested in the works ofLeonardo da Vinci. It was through Varèse's love of science that he began to study sound, as he later recalled:
When I was about twenty, I came across a definition of music that seemed suddenly to throw light on my gropings toward music I sensed could exist.Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, the Polish physicist, chemist, musicologist and philosopher of the first half of the nineteenth century, defined music as 'the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sounds.' It was a new and exciting conception and to me the first that started me thinking of music as spatial—as moving bodies of sound in space, a conception I gradually made my own."[27]
Varèse began his music studies withVincent d'Indy (conducting) at theSchola Cantorum de Paris from 1903 to 1905.[14] While he was in Paris, Varèse had another pivotal experience during a performance ofBeethoven'sSeventh Symphony at theSalle Pleyel. As the story goes, during thescherzo movement, perhaps due to the resonance of the hall, Varèse had the experience of the music breaking up and projecting in space. It was an idea that stayed with him for the rest of his life, that he would later describe as consisting of "sound objects, floating in space."[27]
From the late 1920s to the end of the 1930s, Varèse's principal creative energies went into two ambitious projects which were never realized, and much of whose material was destroyed, though some elements from them seem to have gone into smaller works. One was a large-scale stage work called by different names at different times, but principallyThe One-All-Alone orAstronomer (L'Astronome). This was originally to be based onNorth American Indian legends; later it became a futuristic drama of world catastrophe and instantaneous communication with the starSirius. This second form, on which Varèse worked in Paris in 1928–1932, had a libretto byAlejo Carpentier,Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes andRobert Desnos. According to Carpentier, a substantial amount of this work was written but Varèse abandoned it in favour of a new treatment in which he hoped to collaborate withAntonin Artaud. Artaud's librettoIl n'y a plus de firmament was written for Varèse's project and sent to him after he had returned to the US, but by this time Varèse had turned to a second huge project.
This second project was to be achoral symphony entitledEspace. In its original conception, the text for the chorus was to be written byAndré Malraux. Later, Varèse settled on a multi-lingual text ofhieratic phrases to be sung by choirs situated in Paris, Moscow, Beijing and New York City, synchronized to create a global radiophonic event. Varèse sought input on the text fromHenry Miller, who suggests inThe Air-Conditioned Nightmare that this grandiose conception—also ultimately unrealized—eventually metamorphosed intoDéserts. With both these huge projects Varèse felt ultimately frustrated by the lack of electronic instruments to realize his aural visions. Nevertheless, he used some of the material fromEspace in his shortÉtude pour espace, virtually the only work that had appeared from his pen for over ten years when it was premiered in 1947. According toChou Wen-chung, Varèse made various contradictory revisions toÉtude pour espace which made it impossible to perform again, but the 2009Holland Festival, which offered a 'complete works' of Varèse over the weekend of June 12–14, 2009, persuaded Chou to make a new performing version (using similar brass and woodwind forces toDéserts and making use ofspatialized sound projection). This was premiered at the Gashouder concert hall, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam byAsko/Schönberg Ensemble and Cappella Amsterdam on Sunday June 14, conducted byPéter Eötvös.
By the early 1950s, Varèse was in dialogue with a new generation of composers, such asPierre Boulez andLuigi Dallapiccola.[28] When he returned to France to finalize the tape sections ofDéserts,Pierre Schaeffer helped arrange for suitable facilities. The first performance of the combined orchestral and tape sound composition came as part of anORTF broadcast concert, between pieces byMozart andTchaikovsky and received a hostile reaction.[citation needed]
Le Corbusier was commissioned byPhilips to present a pavilion atExpo 58 and insisted, against the sponsors' resistance, on working with Varèse, who developed hisPoème électronique for the venue, where it was heard by an estimated two million people. Using 400 speakers separated throughout the interior, Varèse created a sound and space installation geared towards experiencing sound as it moves through space. Received with mixed reviews, this piece challenged audience expectations and traditional means of composing, breathing life into electronic synthesis and presentation.
In 1962, he was asked to join theRoyal Swedish Academy of Music, and in 1963 he received the premier Koussevitzky International Recording Award.
In 1965, Edgard Varese was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal by the MacDowell Colony.
In his formative years, Varèse was greatly impressed byMedieval andRenaissance music – in his career, he founded and conducted several choirs devoted to this repertoire – as well as the music ofAlexander Scriabin,Erik Satie,Claude Debussy,Hector Berlioz andRichard Strauss. There are also clear influences or reminiscences ofStravinsky's early works, specificallyPetrushka andThe Rite of Spring, onArcana.[29] He was also impressed by the ideas of Busoni, who christened himL'illustro futuro in a signed copy of his orchestra workBerceuse élégiaque.[30]
Varèse taught many prominent composers includingChou Wen-chung,Lucia Dlugoszewski,André Jolivet,Colin McPhee,James Tenney, andWilliam Grant Still. See:List of music students by teacher: T to Z#Edgard Varèse.
Composers who have claimed, or can be demonstrated, to have been influenced by Varèse includeMilton Babbitt,[31]Harrison Birtwistle,Pierre Boulez,John Cage,Morton Feldman,Brian Ferneyhough,Roberto Gerhard,Olivier Messiaen,Luigi Nono,John Palmer,Krzysztof Penderecki,Silvestre Revueltas,Wolfgang Rihm,Leon Schidlowsky,Alfred Schnittke,William Grant Still,Karlheinz Stockhausen,Iannis Xenakis, andFrank Zappa.
The modern music conductorRobert Craft recorded two LP's of Varèse music in 1958 and 1960 with percussion, brass, and wind sections from theColumbia Symphony Orchestra for Columbia Records (Columbia LP catalog Nos.MS6146 and MS6362). These recordings brought Varèse wide attention among musicians and musical aficionados beyond his immediate sphere. Much of the percussion music ofGeorge Crumb in particular owes a debt to works such asIonisation andIntégrales.[citation needed]
Varèse's emphasis ontimbre,rhythm, and new technologies inspired a generation of young musicians starting in the 1960s and 1970s. This group includesRobert Lamm andTerry Kath from the band Chicago, as well as composerJohn Zorn.
One of Varèse's most devoted fans was the Americanguitarist and composerFrank Zappa, who, upon hearing a copy ofThe Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Vol. 1 (EMS Recordings, 1950) became obsessed with the composer's music.[32][33] Zappa wrote an article titledEdgard Varèse: The Idol of My Youth, for Stereo Review magazine in June 1971. At the age of 15 Zappa talked to Varèse by phone and received a personal letter, but the two were not able to meet in person. Zappa framed this letter and kept it in his studio for the rest of his life. Zappa's final project wasThe Rage and the Fury, a recording of the works of Varèse. This album has remained in the Zappa private collection.
Henry Threadgill details Varèse's influence in his 2023 autobiography.
On several occasions, Varèse speculated on the specific ways in which technology would change music in the future. In 1936, he predicted musical machines that would be able to perform music as soon as a composer inputs his score. These machines would be able to play "any number of frequencies," and therefore the score of the future would need to be "seismographic" in order to illustrate their full potential.[34] In 1939, he expanded on this concept, declaring that with this machine "anyone will be able to press a button to release music exactly as the composer wrote it—exactly like opening up a book."[35] Varèse would not realize these predictions until his tape experiments in the 1950s and 1960s.
Some of Edgard Varèse's works, particularlyArcana[36] make use of theidée fixe, a fixed theme, repeated certain times in a work. Theidée fixe was most famously used byHector Berlioz in hisSymphonie fantastique; it is generally nottransposed, differentiating it from theleitmotiv, used byRichard Wagner.
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