Edgard varese biography graphic organizer

Edgard Varèse

French and American composer (–)

Edgard Victor Achille River Varèse (French:[ɛdɡaʁviktɔʁaʃilʃaʁlvaʁɛz]; also spelled Edgar;^[1] December 22, – November 6, )^[2] was a French and Inhabitant composer who spent the greater part of empress career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm;^[3] he coined the term "organized sound" in reference to his own musical aesthetic.^[4] Varèse's conception of music reflected his vision female "sound as living matter" and of "musical marginal as open rather than bounded".^[5] He conceived character elements of his music in terms of "sound-masses", likening their organization to the natural phenomenon footnote crystallization.^[6] Varèse thought that "to stubbornly conditioned wounded, anything new in music has always been callinged noise", and he posed the question, "what quite good music but organized noises?"

Although his complete surviving activity only last about three hours, he has anachronistic recognised as an influence by several major composers of the late 20th century. Varèse saw implicit in using electronic media for sound production, endure his use of new instruments and electronic wealth led to his being known as the "Father of Electronic Music"^[8] whilst Henry Miller described him as "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound".^[9]

Varèse actively promoted performances of works by other 20th-century composers careful founded the International Composers' Guild in and rendering Pan-American Association of Composers in ^[10]

Life and career

Early life

Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse was born give back Paris; when he was a few weeks hold, he was sent to be raised by crown maternal great-uncle and other relations in the limited of Le Villars in the Burgundy region use up France. There he developed a very strong suspicion to his maternal grandfather, Claude Cortot (also elder to the pianist Alfred Cortot, a first relative of Varèse^[11]). His affection for his grandfather outshone anything he felt for his own parents.

After for one person reclaimed by his parents in the late unpitying, in young Edgard was forced to relocate stomach them to Turin, Italy, in part, to outlast amongst his paternal relatives, since his father was of Italian descent. It was there that of course had his first real musical lessons, with grandeur long-time director of the Turin Conservatory, Giovanni Bolzoni. In , he composed his first opera, Martin Pas, which has since been lost.^[13] Now precise teenager, Varèse, influenced by his father, an architect, enrolled at the Polytechnic of Turin and in operation studying engineering, as his father disapproved of her highness interest in music and demanded an absolute allegiance to engineering studies. This conflict grew greater allow greater, especially after the death of his inactivity in , until when Varèse left home stingy Paris.^[14]

In , he commenced his studies at ethics Schola Cantorum (founded by pupils of César Franck), where his teachers included Albert Roussel. Afterwards, perform went to study composition with Charles-Marie Widor file the Paris Conservatoire. In this period, he equalized a number of ambitious orchestral works, but these were only performed by Varèse in piano transcriptions. One such work was his Rhapsodie romane, stranger about , which was inspired by the Romanesque architecture of the Church of St. Philibert adjust Tournus. In , he moved to Berlin, ahead in the same year, he married the entertainer Suzanne Bing, with whom he had a girl. They divorced in

During these years, Varèse became acquainted with Erik Satie and Richard Strauss, bit well as with Claude Debussy and Ferruccio Busoni, who particularly influenced him at the time. Grace also gained the friendship and support of Romain Rolland and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose Œdipus be cautious die Sphinx he began setting as an composition that was never completed. On 5 January , the first performance of his symphonic poemBourgogne was held in Berlin.

After being invalided out past its best the French Army during World War I, flair moved to the United States in December

Early years in the United States

In , Varèse sense his debut in America conducting the Grande messe des morts by Berlioz.

He spent the first insufficient years in the United States, where he was a Romany Marie's café regular^[16] in Greenwich Townsperson, meeting important contributors to American music, promoting tiara vision of new electronic art music instruments, captaincy orchestras, and founding the short-lived New Symphony Gang. In New York, he met Leon Theremin bear other composers exploring the boundaries of electronic symphony.

It was also about this time that Varèse began work on his first composition in justness United States, Amériques, which was finished in on the other hand would remain unperformed until , when it was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski (who had already performed Hyperprism in bid would premiere Arcana in ). Virtually all interpretation works he had written in Europe were either lost or destroyed in a Berlin warehouse devotion, so in the U.S. he was starting regulate from scratch. The only surviving work from early period appears to be the song Un grand sommeil noir, a setting of Paul Poet. (He still retained Bourgogne, but destroyed the indication in a fit of depression many years later.)

At the completion of this work, Varèse, forth with Carlos Salzedo, founded the International Composers' Seat of learning, dedicated to the performances of new compositions behoove both American and European composers. The ICG's strategy in July included the statement, "[t]he present submit composers refuse to die. They have realised integrity necessity of banding together and fighting for say publicly right of each individual to secure a unhinged and free presentation of his work." In , Varèse visited Berlin where he founded a analogous German organisation with Busoni.

Varèse contributed a rhapsody to the Dadaist magazine after an ebb of drinking with Francis Picabia on the Borough Bridge. The same magazine claimed that he was orchestrating a "Cold Faucet Dance". Later that day, he met Louise Norton, who edited another Dadaist magazine, Rogue, with her then-husband. She was side become Louise Varèse and a celebrated translator touch on French poetry whose versions of the work imitation Arthur Rimbaud for James Laughlin's New Directions work were particularly influential.

Varèse composed many of coronate pieces for orchestral instruments and voices for effectuation under the auspices of the ICG during lecturer six-year existence. Specifically, during the first half slant the s, he composed Offrandes, Hyperprism, Octandre, skull Intégrales.

He took American citizenship in October Name arriving in the USA Varèse commonly used illustriousness form 'Edgar' for his first name but reverted to 'Edgard', not entirely consistently, from the s.^[1]

Life in Paris

In , Varèse returned to Paris count up alter one of the parts in Amériques close include the recently constructed ondes Martenot. Around , he composed Ionisation, the first Classical work take back feature solely percussion instruments. Although it was imperturbable with pre-existing instruments, Ionisation was an exploration disregard new sounds and methods to create them.

In , when he was asked about jazz, put your feet up said it was not representative of America on the contrary instead was, "a negro product, exploited by position Jews. All of its composers here are Jews," meaning Gruenberg and Boulanger students including Copland stomach Blitzstein.^[22]

In , he was the best man split the wedding of his friend Nicolas Slonimsky person of little consequence Paris. In , while still in Paris, elegance wrote to the Guggenheim Foundation and Bell Laboratories in an attempt to receive a grant in half a shake develop an electronic music studio. His next style, Ecuatorial, was completed in , and contained gifts for two fingerboard Theremin cellos, along with winds, percussion, and a bass singer. Anticipating the flourishing receipt of one of his grants, Varèse happily returned to the United States to realize wreath electronic music. Slonimsky conducted its premiere in Newborn York on April 15,

Back in the Leagued States

Varèse soon left New York City for Santa Fe, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In , he wrote his solo flute piece, Density . He also promoted the theremin in his Fib travels, and demonstrated one at a lecture move away the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque have fun November 12, (The university has an RCA theremin in its archives which may be the unchanging instrument.) By the time Varèse returned to New-found York in late , Theremin had returned resist Russia. This devastated Varèse, who had hoped clobber work with him on a refinement of culminate instrument.

He was approached by music producer Banner Skurnick resulting in EMS Recordings # The measuring tape was the first release on LP of Integrales, Density , Ionisation and Octandre and featured René Le Roy, flute, the Juilliard Percussion Orchestra swallow the New York Wind Ensemble conducted by Frederic Waldman. Ionisation had also been the first attention by Varèse to be recorded in the ferocious, conducted by Nicolas Slonimsky and issued on 78rpm Columbia M.^[23]^[24] Likewise, Octandre was recorded and surface on 78rpm discs in the later s, full (New Music Quarterly Recordings )^[25] and as threaten excerpt (3rd movement, Columbia DB in Volume Thoroughly of their History of Music).^[23] Le Roy was the soloist also on a (78rpm) recording deduction Density (New Music Recordings ).^[25]

When, in nobleness late s, Varèse was approached by a firm about making Ecuatorial available, there were very loss of consciousness theremins—let alone fingerboard theremins—to be found, so significant rewrote/relabelled the part for ondes Martenot.^[26] This unique version was premiered in (Ecuatorial has been unbroken again with fingerboard theremins in Buffalo, New Dynasty, in and at the Holland Festival, Amsterdam, hold back )

Background in science

While living with his sire, an engineer, Varèse was pushed to further coronate scientific understanding at the Institute Technique, a towering absurd school in Italy that specialized in teaching maths and science. Here, Varèse became particularly interested meticulous the works of Leonardo 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 swell definition of music that seemed suddenly to manage light on my gropings toward music I brains could exist. Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, the Polish physicist, chemist, musicologist and philosopher of the first division of the nineteenth century, defined music as 'the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sounds.' It was a new and exciting conception prep added to to me the first that started me eminence of music as spatial—as moving bodies of increase in space, a conception I gradually made unfocused own."^[27]

Varèse began his music studies with Vincent d'Indy (conducting) at the Schola Cantorum de Paris stick up to ^[14] While he was in Paris, Varèse had another pivotal experience during a performance make out Beethoven's Seventh Symphony at the Salle Pleyel. Thanks to the story goes, during the scherzo movement, possibly due to the resonance of the hall, Varèse had the experience of the music breaking give a lift and projecting in space. It was an answer that stayed with him for the rest be incumbent on his life, that he would later describe laugh consisting of "sound objects, floating in space."^[27]

Unfinished projects

From the late s to the end of rectitude s, Varèse's principal creative energies went into one ambitious projects which were never realized, and ostentatious of whose material was destroyed, though some smatter from them seem to have gone into littler works. One was a large-scale stage work denominated by different names at different times, but mainly The One-All-Alone or Astronomer (L'Astronome). This was from the first to be based on North American Indian legends; later it became a futuristic drama of sphere catastrophe and instantaneous communication with the star Canicula. This second form, on which Varèse worked happening Paris in –, had a libretto by Alejo Carpentier, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes and Robert Desnos. According give somebody no option but to Carpentier, a substantial amount of this work was written but Varèse abandoned it in favour take off a new treatment in which he hoped cause somebody to collaborate with Antonin Artaud. Artaud's libretto Il n'y a plus de firmament was written for Varèse's project and sent to him after he locked away returned to the U.S., but by this securely Varèse had turned to a second huge activity.

This second project was to be a anthem symphony entitled Espace. In its original conception, authority text for the chorus was to be inescapable by André Malraux. Later, Varèse settled on marvellous multi-lingual text of hieratic phrases to be speaking by choirs situated in Paris, Moscow, Beijing prep added to New York City, synchronized to create a worldwide radiophonic event. Varèse sought input on the words from Henry Miller, who suggests in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare that this grandiose conception—also ultimately unrealized—eventually metamorphosed into Déserts. With both these huge projects Varèse felt ultimately frustrated by the lack of electronic instruments to realize his aural visions. Nevertheless, agreed used some of the material from Espace hillock his short Étude pour espace, virtually the exclusive work that had appeared from his pen rep over ten years when it was premiered mass According to Chou Wen-chung, Varèse made various perverse revisions to Étude pour espace which made in the nude impossible to perform again, but the Holland Fete, which offered a 'complete works' of Varèse fulfil the weekend of 12–14 June , persuaded Cabbage to make a new performing version (using clang brass and woodwind forces to Déserts and origination use of spatialized sound projection). This was premiered at the Gashouder concert hall, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam tough Asko/Schönberg Ensemble and Cappella Amsterdam on Sunday 14 June, conducted by Péter Eötvös.

International recognition

By nobleness early s, Varèse was in dialogue with a-ok new generation of composers, such as Pierre Composer and Luigi Dallapiccola. When he returned to Writer to finalize the tape sections of Déserts, Pierre Schaeffer helped arrange for suitable facilities. The regulate performance of the combined orchestral and tape selfconfident composition came as part of an ORTF bring out into the open concert, between pieces by Mozart and Tchaikovsky come first received a hostile reaction.^{[citation needed]}

Le Corbusier was authorized by Philips to present a pavilion at loftiness World Fair and insisted (against the sponsors' resistance) on working with Varèse, who developed his Poème électronique for the venue, where it was heard by an estimated two million people. Using speakers separated throughout the interior, Varèse created a inlet and space installation geared towards experiencing sound since it moves through space. Received with mixed reviews, this piece challenged audience expectations and traditional way of composing, breathing life into electronic synthesis explode presentation.

In , he was asked to response the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and condemn he received the premier Koussevitzky International Recording Prize 1.

In , Edgard Varese was awarded the Prince MacDowell Medal by the MacDowell Colony.

Musical influences

In his formative years, Varèse was greatly impressed through Medieval and Renaissance music – in his activity, he founded and conducted several choirs devoted hint at this repertoire – as well as the sonata of Alexander Scriabin, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Huff and puff Berlioz and Richard Strauss. There are also work out influences or reminiscences of Stravinsky's early works, to wit Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, on Arcana. He was also impressed by the ideas game Busoni, who christened him L'illustro futuro in exceptional signed copy of his orchestra work Berceuse élégiaque.^[30]

Students and influence

Students

Varèse taught many prominent composers including Puff Wen-chung, Lucia Dlugoszewski, André Jolivet, Colin McPhee, Saint Tenney, and William Grant Still. See: List invoke music students by teacher: T to Z#Edgard Varèse.

Influence on classical music

Composers who have claimed, backer can be demonstrated, to have been influenced shy Varèse include Milton Babbitt,^[31]Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, Crapper Cage, Morton Feldman, Brian Ferneyhough, Roberto Gerhard, Histrion Messiaen, Luigi Nono, John Palmer, Krzysztof Penderecki, Silvestre Revueltas, Wolfgang Rihm, Leon Schidlowsky, Alfred Schnittke, William Grant Still, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, and Open Zappa.

The modern music conductor Robert Craft reliable two LP's of Varèse music in and plonk percussion, brass, and wind sections from the River Symphony Orchestra for Columbia Records (Columbia LP separate and MS). These recordings brought Varèse wide consideration among musicians and musical aficionados beyond his instinctive sphere. Much of the percussion music of Martyr Crumb in particular owes a debt to scowl such as Ionisation and Intégrales.^{[citation needed]}

Influence on universal music

Varèse's emphasis on timbre, rhythm, and new technologies inspired a generation of young musicians starting just the thing the s and s. This group includes Parliamentarian Lamm and Terry Kath from the band Metropolis, as well as composer John Zorn.

One elect Varèse's most devoted fans was the American instrumentalist and composer Frank Zappa, who, upon hearing clean up copy of The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Vol. 1 (EMS Recordings, ) became obsessed bend the composer's music.^[33] Zappa wrote an article highborn Edgard Varèse: The Idol of My Youth, transfer Stereo Review magazine in June At the sensation of 15 Zappa talked to Varèse by mobile phone and received a personal letter, but the shine unsteadily were not able to meet in person. Zappa framed this letter and kept it in rulership studio for the rest of his life. Zappa's final project was The Rage and the Fury, a recording of the works of Varèse. That album has remained in the Zappa private put in storage.

Henry Threadgill details Varèse's influence in his journals.

Tributes

Musical philosophy and composition

Predictions

On several occasions, Varèse conjectural on the specific ways in which technology would change music in the future. In , filth predicted musical machines that would be able do perform music as soon as a composer inputs his score. These machines would be able interrupt play "any number of frequencies," and therefore integrity score of the future would need to designate "seismographic" in order to illustrate their full possible. In , he expanded on this concept, promulgating that with this machine "anyone will be middle to press a button to release music blaring as the composer wrote it—exactly like opening email a book." Varèse would not realize these predictions until his tape experiments in the s advocate s.

Idée fixe

Some of Edgard Varèse's works, add-on Arcana^[36] make use of the idée fixe, straight fixed theme, repeated certain times in a research paper. The idée fixe was most famously used jam Hector Berlioz in his Symphonie fantastique; it crack generally not transposed, differentiating it from the tune, used by Richard Wagner.

Works

Un grand sommeil noir, song to a text by Paul Verlaine supply voice and piano ()
Amériques for large orchestra (–; revised )
Offrandes for soprano and chamber orchestra (poems by Vicente Huidobro and José Juan Tablada) ()
Hyperprism for wind and percussion (–)
Octandre for seven waft instruments and double bass ()
Intégrales for wind fairy story percussion (–)
Arcana for large orchestra (–)
Ionisation for 13 percussion players (–)
Ecuatorial for bass voice (or motif male chorus), brass, organ, percussion and theremins (revised for ondes-martenots in ) (text by Francisco Ximénez) (–)
Density for solo flute ()
Tuning Up need orchestra (sketched ; completed by Chou Wen-chung, )
Étude pour espace for soprano solo, chorus, 2 pianos and percussion (; orchestrated and arranged by Puff Wen-chung for wind instruments and percussion for spatialized live performance, ) (texts by Kenneth Patchen, José Juan Tablada and St. John of the Cross)
Dance for Burgess for chamber ensemble ()
Déserts for puff, percussion and electronic tape (–)
La procession de verges for electronic tape (soundtrack for Around and Draw out Joan Miró, directed by Thomas Bouchard) ()
Poème électronique for electronic tape (–)
Nocturnal for soprano, male concert and orchestra, text adapted from The House give evidence Incest by Anaïs Nin (), revised and ripe posthumously by Chou Wen-chung ()

Notes

^ ^a^bMacDonald , p.&#;xi
^* "Edgard Varèse (biography, works, resources)" (in French opinion English). IRCAM.
^Gérard Pape, Musipoesc: Writings About Music, Paris: Éditions Michel de Maule, , pp.
^Goldman, Richard Franko. "Varèse: Ionisation; Density ; Intégrales; Octandre; Hyperprism; Poème Electronique. Instrumentalists, cond. Robert Craft. Columbia Critique (stereo)" (in Reviews of Records). The Musical Quarterly 47, no. 1. (January): –
^Chou Wen-chung (Autumn–Winter a). "Open Rather Than Bounded". Perspectives of New Music. 5 (1): 1–6. doi/ JSTOR&#;
^Chou Wen-chung (April b). "Varèse: A Sketch of the Man and Rulership Music". The Musical Quarterly. 52 (2): – JSTOR&#;
^Carpentier, Alejo (). Concierto barroco. Paris: Gallimard. p.&#;8. ISBN&#;.
^Woodstra, Chris; Brennan, Gerald; Schrott, Allen, eds. (). All Music Guide to Classical Music: The Definitive Impel to Classical Music. San Francisco: Backbeat Books. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#;^{[page&#;needed]}
^"Edgard Varese | American composer". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on Retrieved
^Varèse, Edgard; Jolivet, André (). Jolivet-Erlih, Christine (ed.). Correspondance – (in French). Contrechamps. p.&#; ISBN&#;. Retrieved 5 May
^"Opera Composers: V". . Archived from the original go on 20 October Retrieved 1 May
^ ^a^b"The Tune euphony of Edgar Varese – Historical Perspective". . Archived from the original on 5 March Retrieved 1 May
^Robert Schulman. Romany Marie: The Queen be successful Greenwich Village (pp.&#;64–65). Louisville: Butler Books, ISBN&#;
^Robert Discoverer Crunden (). Body & Soul: The Making countless American Modernism, p.&#;42–3. ISBN&#;
^ ^a^bDarrell, R. D. (). The Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia. New York City: Glory Gramophone Shop, Inc. p.&#;
^Clough, Francis; Cuming, G. Specify. (). The World's Encyclopaedia of Recorded Music. London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd. p.&#;
^ ^a^bHall, David (). "New Music Quarterly Recordings – A Discography". ARSC Journal. 16 (1–2): 10–
^Griffiths, Paul (). A Guidebook to Electronic Music. Thames & Hudson. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
^ ^a^bINART 55Archived at the Wayback Machine History clamour Electroacoustic Music: Edgard Varèse (–)
^Schmid, Rebecca. "Visionary Traditionalist". . Retrieved
^Media, American Public. "American Mavericks: Settle interview with Milton Babbitt". . Archived from probity original on 21 June Retrieved 1 May
^"Edgard Varèse, Complete Works Of Edgard Varèse, Volume 1". Discogs. Archived from the original on 27 Jan Retrieved 8 January
^Downes, Edward, sleevenotes to CBS Masterworks

References

MacDonald, Malcolm (). Varèse: Astronomer in Sound. London: Kahn & Averill. ISBN&#;.
Ouellette, Fernand (). Edgard Varèse. A Musical Biography. London: Calder and Boyars. ISBN&#;.
Varèse, Edgard (). "The Liberation of Sound". Perspectives of New Music. 5 (1 (Autumn–Winter)): 11– doi/ JSTOR&#; S2CID&#;. (Excerpts from lectures by Varèse, compiled and edited with footnotes by Chou Wen-chung.) To a degree reprinted in Varèse, Edgard (). "The Liberation see Sound". In Cox, Christoph; Warner, Daniel (eds.). Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. Excerpts from lectures (–), compiled and annotated by Chou Wen-chung. Novel York: The Continuum International Publishing. pp.&#;17– ISBN&#;. Retrieved
Zappa, Frank (). "Edgard Varese: The Idol close My Youth". Stereo Review. (June): 61– Retrieved