Biography
Criminally overlooked during his lifetime, composer Edgard Varèse ranked among the era’s genuine creative visionaries. He pictured music as sculptural masses of sound moving through space, where its strongest effect registered as a visceral physical sensation. His compositions aimed to discard inherited rules and customs, and their enormous, dissonant force foreshadowed much of the experimental music that emerged later.
Born in Paris on December 22, 1883, Varèse declared his resolve to compose while still in his early teens. He later trained with d’Indy, Roussel, and Widor, and received encouragement from Claude Debussy and Romain Rolland. Following a rupture with his father, he moved to Berlin in 1907, where Richard Strauss and Erik Satie became his friends. There he began formulating the idea that music ought to emulate scientific laws and grew ever more absorbed by the prospects of electronic instruments.
Varèse came back to Paris in 1913; the scores he had left in Berlin were destroyed soon afterward in a fire. After working as a conductor, he established himself in the United States in 1915, created the New Symphony Orchestra, and tried to generate support for his plans to build new electronic instruments. His first major piece after that move, Amériques, was finished only in 1921. That same year he established the International Composers’ Guild, an organization devoted to presenting recent works by both American and European composers. Much of the music performed was his own, among them the 1922 Offrandes, the 1923 Hyperprism, the 1924 Octandre, and the 1925 Intégrales. The guild also introduced important pieces by Alban Berg, Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, and Anton Webern.
In 1928 Varèse returned to Paris to revise portions of Amériques for the newly built ondes martenot, an electrode-controlled instrument resembling the Theremin. Two years afterward he completed Ionisation, his best-known work for acoustic forces alone; scored exclusively for percussion, it was written expressly to discover and produce unfamiliar timbres. After both the Guggenheim Foundation and Bell Laboratories turned down his requests for an electronic-music studio, he composed the 1934 Ecuatorial, which incorporated a part for Theremin. Later that year he went back to the United States only to learn that another grant application had been rejected. The refusal proved devastating; for more than a decade he endured depression and creative paralysis while awaiting technology capable of realizing the sounds he already imagined.
Except for the 1936 flute solo Density 21.5, Varèse remained largely inactive until 1951, when an anonymous donor presented him with an Ampex tape recorder. The machine finally enabled him to begin assembling the sonic materials for Déserts, a project he had started in purely instrumental form nearly thirty years earlier. He went to Paris to collaborate on the piece with musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer. Finished in 1955, Déserts became the first work broadcast in stereo on French radio. Varèse then returned to New York; two years later he received an invitation to create music for the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, resulting in Poeme Electronique, the work for which he is most widely remembered.
Created with architect Le Corbusier, Poeme Electronique was an entirely electronic composition intended for playback through the four hundred loudspeakers installed inside the Philips Pavilion. Its reception finally brought Varèse the acknowledgment he had long been denied, and commercial recordings of his music began to appear. In 1962 he was elected to both the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the Royal Swedish Academy, and he received the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award. The following year he was given the first Koussevitsky International Recording Award. Apart from the 1961 Nocturnal, he devoted most of his remaining years to revising earlier scores, now that technological progress had made many of his original conceptions feasible. His last undertaking, Nuit, remained incomplete when he died in New York City on November 6, 1965.
Born in Paris on December 22, 1883, Varèse declared his resolve to compose while still in his early teens. He later trained with d’Indy, Roussel, and Widor, and received encouragement from Claude Debussy and Romain Rolland. Following a rupture with his father, he moved to Berlin in 1907, where Richard Strauss and Erik Satie became his friends. There he began formulating the idea that music ought to emulate scientific laws and grew ever more absorbed by the prospects of electronic instruments.
Varèse came back to Paris in 1913; the scores he had left in Berlin were destroyed soon afterward in a fire. After working as a conductor, he established himself in the United States in 1915, created the New Symphony Orchestra, and tried to generate support for his plans to build new electronic instruments. His first major piece after that move, Amériques, was finished only in 1921. That same year he established the International Composers’ Guild, an organization devoted to presenting recent works by both American and European composers. Much of the music performed was his own, among them the 1922 Offrandes, the 1923 Hyperprism, the 1924 Octandre, and the 1925 Intégrales. The guild also introduced important pieces by Alban Berg, Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, and Anton Webern.
In 1928 Varèse returned to Paris to revise portions of Amériques for the newly built ondes martenot, an electrode-controlled instrument resembling the Theremin. Two years afterward he completed Ionisation, his best-known work for acoustic forces alone; scored exclusively for percussion, it was written expressly to discover and produce unfamiliar timbres. After both the Guggenheim Foundation and Bell Laboratories turned down his requests for an electronic-music studio, he composed the 1934 Ecuatorial, which incorporated a part for Theremin. Later that year he went back to the United States only to learn that another grant application had been rejected. The refusal proved devastating; for more than a decade he endured depression and creative paralysis while awaiting technology capable of realizing the sounds he already imagined.
Except for the 1936 flute solo Density 21.5, Varèse remained largely inactive until 1951, when an anonymous donor presented him with an Ampex tape recorder. The machine finally enabled him to begin assembling the sonic materials for Déserts, a project he had started in purely instrumental form nearly thirty years earlier. He went to Paris to collaborate on the piece with musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer. Finished in 1955, Déserts became the first work broadcast in stereo on French radio. Varèse then returned to New York; two years later he received an invitation to create music for the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels, resulting in Poeme Electronique, the work for which he is most widely remembered.
Created with architect Le Corbusier, Poeme Electronique was an entirely electronic composition intended for playback through the four hundred loudspeakers installed inside the Philips Pavilion. Its reception finally brought Varèse the acknowledgment he had long been denied, and commercial recordings of his music began to appear. In 1962 he was elected to both the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the Royal Swedish Academy, and he received the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award. The following year he was given the first Koussevitsky International Recording Award. Apart from the 1961 Nocturnal, he devoted most of his remaining years to revising earlier scores, now that technological progress had made many of his original conceptions feasible. His last undertaking, Nuit, remained incomplete when he died in New York City on November 6, 1965.