Biography
Throughout his existence composer Edgard Varèse stayed almost entirely unrecognized yet ranked among the era's authentic innovators, conceiving sound as physical masses moving through space whose force registered most powerfully as bodily sensation; his pieces aimed to discard inherited conventions, their colossal dissonant energy prefiguring much of the exploratory music that emerged afterward. Born in Paris on December 22, 1883, Varèse declared his resolve to compose while still in his early teens, later receiving instruction from d'Indy, Roussel, and Widor while also gaining support from Claude Debussy and Romain Rolland. Following a rupture with his father, Varèse moved to Berlin in 1907, where Richard Strauss and Erik Satie welcomed him; in that city he began formulating the idea that music ought to emulate scientific laws and grew steadily drawn to the potential of electronic instruments.
Varèse came back to Paris in 1913, leaving his earliest scores behind in Berlin where a fire soon destroyed them. After working as a conductor he established himself in the United States in 1915, creating the New Symphony Orchestra and seeking support for his ideas concerning new electronic instruments. His next completed piece, Amériques, waited until 1921; that year he established the International Composers' Guild to present recent works by both American and European composers. He supplied much of the Guild's repertory himself, among them the 1922 Offrandes, the 1923 Hyperprism, the 1924 Octandre, and the 1925 Intégrales, while the organization also introduced important scores by Alban Berg, Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, and Anton Webern.
In 1928 Varèse returned to Paris to revise sections of Amériques for the newly built ondes martenot, a Theremin-like device that generated tones through a movable electrode. Two years afterward he completed Ionisation, his best-known non-electronic composition, scored solely for percussion and intended to discover and shape fresh timbres. After both the Guggenheim Foundation and Bell Laboratories rejected his requests for support to build an electronic studio, he turned to the 1934 Ecuatorial, written partly for Theremin; later that year he went back to the United States only to learn that yet another grant application had failed. The repeated refusals proved devastating, and while awaiting technology capable of realizing the sounds he imagined, Varèse endured more than a decade of depression that halted his creative work.
Apart from the 1936 flute composition Density 21.5, Varèse remained largely inactive until 1951, when an anonymous donor provided him with an Ampex tape recorder. The machine finally enabled him to assemble the sound fragments that complemented Déserts, a project he had begun in acoustic form nearly thirty years earlier. Varèse traveled to Paris to collaborate on the piece with musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, and after its completion in 1955 Déserts became the first work broadcast in stereo on French radio. He then returned to New York, where he stayed until 1957, when he received an invitation to create music for the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels; the result was Poeme Electronique, his most celebrated composition.
Created together with architect Le Corbusier, Poeme Electronique was an entirely electronic piece intended for playback through the 400 loudspeakers installed inside the fair's Philips Pavillion; its reception at last brought Varèse the attention long denied him, 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 received the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award; the following year he was given the first Koussevitsky International Recording Award. Beyond the 1961 Nocturnal, Varèse devoted most of his remaining years to revising earlier works now realizable through contemporary technology. His last undertaking, Nuit, remained unfinished when he died in New York City on November 6, 1965.
Varèse came back to Paris in 1913, leaving his earliest scores behind in Berlin where a fire soon destroyed them. After working as a conductor he established himself in the United States in 1915, creating the New Symphony Orchestra and seeking support for his ideas concerning new electronic instruments. His next completed piece, Amériques, waited until 1921; that year he established the International Composers' Guild to present recent works by both American and European composers. He supplied much of the Guild's repertory himself, among them the 1922 Offrandes, the 1923 Hyperprism, the 1924 Octandre, and the 1925 Intégrales, while the organization also introduced important scores by Alban Berg, Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, and Anton Webern.
In 1928 Varèse returned to Paris to revise sections of Amériques for the newly built ondes martenot, a Theremin-like device that generated tones through a movable electrode. Two years afterward he completed Ionisation, his best-known non-electronic composition, scored solely for percussion and intended to discover and shape fresh timbres. After both the Guggenheim Foundation and Bell Laboratories rejected his requests for support to build an electronic studio, he turned to the 1934 Ecuatorial, written partly for Theremin; later that year he went back to the United States only to learn that yet another grant application had failed. The repeated refusals proved devastating, and while awaiting technology capable of realizing the sounds he imagined, Varèse endured more than a decade of depression that halted his creative work.
Apart from the 1936 flute composition Density 21.5, Varèse remained largely inactive until 1951, when an anonymous donor provided him with an Ampex tape recorder. The machine finally enabled him to assemble the sound fragments that complemented Déserts, a project he had begun in acoustic form nearly thirty years earlier. Varèse traveled to Paris to collaborate on the piece with musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, and after its completion in 1955 Déserts became the first work broadcast in stereo on French radio. He then returned to New York, where he stayed until 1957, when he received an invitation to create music for the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels; the result was Poeme Electronique, his most celebrated composition.
Created together with architect Le Corbusier, Poeme Electronique was an entirely electronic piece intended for playback through the 400 loudspeakers installed inside the fair's Philips Pavillion; its reception at last brought Varèse the attention long denied him, 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 received the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award; the following year he was given the first Koussevitsky International Recording Award. Beyond the 1961 Nocturnal, Varèse devoted most of his remaining years to revising earlier works now realizable through contemporary technology. His last undertaking, Nuit, remained unfinished when he died in New York City on November 6, 1965.