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WD_456/ 2008
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Drawings 5 | | Medium: | oilstick on paper | | Size (inches): | 71.7 x 25.6 (overall) | | Size (mm): | 1820 x 651 (overall) | | Catalog #: | WD_0456 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse/ two sheets.
Edgard Varese: The Idol of My Youth
Submitted by Frank Zappa on 2 June, 1971 - 05:06.
I have been asked to write about Edgard Varese. I am in no way qualified to. I can't even pronounce his name right. The only reason I have agreed to is because I love his music very much, and if by some chance this article can influence more people to hear his works, it will have been worthwhile.
I was about thirteen when I read an article in Look about Sam Goody's Record Store in New York. My memory is not too clear on the details, but I recall it was praising the store's exceptional record merchandising ability. One example of brilliant salesmanship described how, through some mysterious trickery, the store actually managed to sell an album called "Ionization" (the real name of the album was "The Complete Works of Edgard Varese, Volume One"). The article described the record as a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds.
I dashed off to my local record store and asked for it. Nobody ever heard of it. I told the guy in the store what it was like. He turned away, repulsed, and mumbled solemnly, "I probably wouldn't stock it anyway . . .nobody here in San Diego would buy it."
I didn't give up. I was so hot to get that record I couldn't even believe it. In those days I was a rhythm- and-blues fanatic. I saved any money I could get (some- times as much as $2 a week) so that every Friday and Saturday I could rummage through piles of old records at the Juke Box Used Record Dump (or whatever they called it) in the Maryland Hotel or the dusty corners of little record stores where they'd keep the crappy records nobody wanted to buy.
One day I was passing a hi-fi store in La Mesa. A little sign in the window announced a sale on 45's. After shuffling through their singles rack and finding a couple of Joe Houston records, I walked toward the cash register. On my way, I happened to glance into the LP bin. Sitting in the front, just a little bent at the corners, was a strange-looking black-and-white album cover. On it there was a picture of a man with gray frizzy hair. He looked like a mad scientist. I thought it was great that somebody had finally made a record of a mad scientist. I picked it up. I nearly (this is true, ladies and gentlemen) peed in my pants . . . THERE IT WAS! EMS 401, The Complete Works of Edgard Varese Volume I . . . Integrales, Density 21.5, Ionization, Octandre . . . Rene Le Roy, the N. Y. Wind Ensemble, the Juilliard Percussion Orchestra, Frederic Waidman Conducting . . .liner notes by Sidney Finkelstein! WOW!
I ran over to the singles box and stuffed the Joe Houston records back in it. I fumbled around in my pocket to see how much money I had (about $3.80). 1 knew I had to have a lot of money to buy an album. Only old people had enough money to buy albums. I'd never bought an album before. I sneaked over to the guy at the cash register and asked him how much EMS 401 cost. "That gray one in the box? $5.95 - "
I had searched for that album for over a year, and now . . . disaster. I told the guy I only had $3.80. He scratched his neck. "We use that record to demonstrate the hi-fi's with, but nobody ever buys one when we use it . . . you can have it for $3.80 if you want it that bad. "
I couldn't imagine what he meant by "demonstrating hi-fi's with it." I'd never heard a hi-fi. I only knew that old people bought them. I had a genuine lo-fi . . . it was a little box about 4 inches deep with imitation wrought-iron legs at each corner (sort of brass-plated) which elevated it from the table top because the speaker was in the bottom. My mother kept it near the ironing board. She used to listen to a 78 of The Little Shoemaker on it. I took off the 78 of The Little Shoemaker and, carefully moving the speed lever to 33 1/3 (it had never been there before), turned the volume all the way up and placed the all-purpose Osmium-tip needle in the lead-in spiral to Ionization. I have a nice Catholic mother who likes Roller Derby. Edgard Varese does not get her off, even to this very day. I was forbidden to play that record in the living room ever again.
In order to listen to The Album, I had to stay in my room. I would sit there every night and play it two or three times and read the liner notes over and over. I didn't understand them at all. I didn't know what timbre was. I never heard of polyphony. I just liked the music because it sounded good to me. I would force anybody who came over to listen to it. (I had heard someplace that in radio stations the guys would make chalk marks on records so they could find an exact spot, so I did the same thing to EMS 401 . . . marked all the hot items so my friends wouldn't get bored in the quiet parts.)
I went to the library and tried to find a book about Mr. Varese. There wasn't any. The librarian told me he probably wasn't a Major Composer. She suggested I look in books about new or unpopular composers. I found a book that had a little blurb in it (with a picture of Mr. Varese as a young man, staring into the camera very seriously) saying that he would be just as happy growing grapes as being a composer.
On my fifteenth birthday my mother said she'd give me $5. 1 told her I would rather make a long-distance phone call. I figured Mr. Varese lived in New York because the record was made in New York (and be- cause he was so weird, he would live in Greenwich Village). I got New York Information, and sure enough, he was in the phone book.
His wife answered. She was very nice and told me he was in Europe and to call back in a few weeks. I did. I don't remember what I said to him exactly, but it was something like: "I really dig your music." He told me he was working on a new piece called Deserts. This thrilled me quite a bit since I was living in Lancaster, California then. When you're fifteen and living in the Mojave Desert and find out that the world's greatest composer, somewhere in a secret Greenwich Village laboratory, is working on a song about your "home town" you can get pretty excited. It seemed a great tragedy that nobody in-Palmdale or Rosamond would care if they ever heard it. I still think Deserts is about Lancaster, even if the liner notes on the Columbia LP say it's something more philosophical.
All through high school I searched for information about Varese and his music. One of the most exciting discoveries was in the school library in Lancaster. I found an orchestration book that had score examples in the back, and included was an excerpt from Offrandes with a lot of harp notes (and you know how groovy harp notes look). I remember fetishing the book for several weeks.
When I was eighteen I got a chance to go to the East Coast to visit my Aunt Mary in Baltimore. I had been composing for about four years then but had not heard any of it played. Aunt Mary was going to introduce me to some friend of hers (an Italian gentleman) who was connected with the symphony there. I had planned on making a side trip to mysterious Greenwich Village. During my birthday telephone conversation, Mr. Varese had casually mentioned the possibility of a visit if I was ever in the area. I wrote him a letter when I got to Baltimore, just to let him know I was in the area.
I waited. My aunt introduced me to the symphony guy. She said, "This is Frankie. He writes orchestra music." The guy said, "Really? Tell me, sonny boy, what's the lowest note on a bassoon?" I said, "B flat . . .and also it says in the book you can get 'em up to a C or something in the treble clef." He said, "Really? You know about violin harmonics?" I said, "What's that?" He said, "See me again in a few years."
I waited some more. The letter came. I couldn't believe it. A real handwritten letter from Edgard Varese! I still have it in a little frame. In very tiny scientific-looking script it says:
VII 12th/57
Dear Mr. Zappa
I am sorry not to be able to grant your request. I am leaving
for Europe next week and will be gone until next spring. I am
hoping however to see you on my return. With best wishes.
Sincerely
Edgard Varese
I never got to meet Mr. Varese. But I kept looking for records of his music. When he got to be about eighty I guess a few companies gave in and recorded some of his stuff. Sort of a gesture, I imagine. I always wondered who bought them besides me. It was about seven years from the time I first heard his music till I met someone else who even knew he existed. That person was a film student at USC. He had the Columbia LP with Poeme Electronique on it. He thought it would make groovy sound effects.
I can't give you any structural insights or academic suppositions about how his music works or why I think it sounds so good. His music is completely unique. If you haven't heard it yet, go hear it. If you've already heard it and think it might make groovy sound effects, listen again. I would recommend the Chicago Symphony recording of Arcana on RCA (at full volume) or the Utah Symphony recording of Ameriques on Vanguard. Also, there is a biography by Fernand Oulette, and miniature scores are available for most of his works, published by G. Ricordi.
Article taken from Stereo Review, June 1971. pp 61-62. --- James Fei, 3/95
Note: Unless specified elsewhere, copyright 2000-2006 by SSC Media Corporation.
-www.a42.com/node/536
Edgard Varèse -
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse[1] (December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965), was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States.
Varèse's music features an emphasis on timbre and rhythm. He was the inventor of the term "organized sound", a phrase meaning that certain timbres and rhythms can be grouped together, sublimating into a whole new definition of sound. Although his complete surviving works only last about three hours, he has been recognised as an influence by several major composers of the late 20th century. His use of new instruments and electronic resources led to his being known as the "Father of Electronic Music" while Henry Miller described him as "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound".
Biography:
Early life
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse was born in Paris, but after only a few weeks was sent to be raised by his great-uncle's family in the small town of Villars in Burgundy. There he developed an intense attachment to his maternal grandfather, Claude Cortot. Through his mother's family he was related to the pianist Alfred Cortot. His affection for his grandfather outshone anything he would ever feel for his own parents. In fact, from his earliest years Varèse's relationship with his father Henri was extremely antagonistic, developing into what could fairly be called a firm and life-long hatred. Reclaimed by his parents in the late 1880s, in 1893 young Edgard was forced to relocate with them to Turin, Italy. It was here that he had his first real musical lessons, with the long-time director of Turin's conservatory, Giovanni Bolzoni. In 1895 he wrote his first opera, Martin Pas, which is now lost.[2] Never comfortable with Italy, and given his oppressive home-life, a physical altercation with his father forced the situation and Varèse left home for Paris in 1903.
From 1904 he was a student at the Schola Cantorum (founded by pupils of César Franck), where his teachers included Albert Roussel; afterwards he went to study composition with Charles Widor at the Paris Conservatoire. From this period he composed a number of ambitious orchestral works, but these were only performed by Varèse in piano transcriptions, such as his Rhapsodie romane of about 1905, inspired by the Romanesque architecture of the cathedral of St. Philibert in Tournus. He moved to Berlin in 1907 and in the same year married the actress Suzanne Bing. They had one child, a daughter. They divorced in 1913.
During these years, Varèse became acquainted with Erik Satie, Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy and Ferruccio Busoni, the last two being particular influences on him at the time. He also gained the friendship and support of Romain Rolland and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose Œdipus und die Sphinx he began setting as an opera that was never completed. The first performance of his symphonic poem Bourgogne in Berlin in 1910, the only one of his early orchestral works to be properly performed, caused a scandal. After being invalided out of the French Army during World War I, he moved to the United States in 1915. In 1917 Varèse made his debut in America conducting the Grand Messe des morts by Berlioz.
Early years in the United States
He spent the first few years in the United States, where he was a Romany Marie's café regular[3] in Greenwich Village, meeting important contributors to American music, promoting his vision of new electronic art music instruments, conducting orchestras, and founding the New Symphony Orchestra, which was short-lived.
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. Virtually all the works he had written in Europe were either lost or destroyed in a Berlin warehouse fire, so in the USA he was starting again from scratch. The only surviving work from his early period appears to be the song Un grand sommeil noir, a setting of Verlaine. (He still retained Bourgogne, but destroyed the score in a fit of depression many years later.) It was at the completion of this work that Varèse, along with Carlos Salzedo, founded the International 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 that
"The 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".[4]
In 1922, Varèse visited Berlin where he founded a similar German organisation with Busoni.
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 composed Offrandes, Hyperprism, Octandre, and Intégrales.
He took American citizenship in October 1927.[5]
Life in Paris
In 1928, Varèse returned to Paris to alter one of the parts in Amériques to include the recently constructed ondes Martenot. Around 1930, he composed his most famous non-electronic piece entitled Ionisation, the first to feature solely percussion instruments. Although it was composed with pre-existing instruments, Ionisation was an exploration of new sounds and methods to create them.
In 1933, while Varèse was still in Paris, he wrote to the Guggenheim Foundation and Bell Laboratories in an attempt to receive a grant to develop an electronic music studio. His next composition, Ecuatorial, completed in 1934, contained parts for fingerboard theremin cellos, and Varèse, anticipating the successful receipt of one of his grants, eagerly returned to the United States to finally realize his electronic music.
Back in the United States
Varèse wrote his Ecuatorial for two fingerboard Theremins, bass singer, winds and percussion in the early 1930s. It was premiered on April 15 1934, under the baton of Nicolas Slonimsky. Then Varèse left New York City, where he had lived since 1915, and moved to Santa Fe, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 1936 he wrote Density 21.5. By the time Varèse returned in late 1938, Leon Theremin had returned to Russia. This devastated Varèse, who had hoped to work with Theremin on a refinement of his instrument. Varèse had also promoted the theremin in his Western travels, and demonstrated one at a lecture at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque on November 12 1936. The University of New Mexico has an RCA theremin, which may be the same instrument.
He was approached by music producer Jack Skurnick resulting in EMS Recordings #401. The record was the first release of Integrales, Density 21.5, Ionization and Octandre and featured Rene le Roy, flute, the Julliard Percussion Orchestra and the New York Wind Ensemble conducted by Frederic Waldman. The recording is said to have influenced Frank Zappa.
When, in the late 1950s, Varèse was approached by a publisher about making Ecuatorial available, there were very few theremins—let alone fingerboard theremins—to be found, so he rewrote/relabelled the part for ondes Martenot. This new version was premiered in 1961.
Louise Varèse, American-born wife of the composer, was a celebrated translator of French poetry whose versions of the work of Arthur Rimbaud for James Laughlin's New Directions imprint were particularly influential.
Unfinished projects
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 different things at different times, but principally The One-All-Alone or Astronomer (L’Astronome). This was originally to be based on North American Indian legends; later it became a futuristic drama of world catastrophe and instantaneous communication with the star Sirius. This second form, on which Varèse worked in Paris in 1928–1932, had a libretto by Alejo Carpentier, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes and Robert 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 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 had returned to the USA but by this time Varèse had turned to a second huge project.
This second project was to be a choral symphony entitled Espace. In its original conception the text for the chorus was to be written by André Malraux. Later Varèse settled on a multi-lingual text of hieratic phrases to be sung by choirs situated in Paris, Moscow, Peking and New York, synchronized to create a global radiophonic event. Varèse sought input on the text 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 he used some of the material from Espace in his short Étude pour Espace, virtually the only work that had appeared from his pen for over ten years when it was premiered in 1947.
International recognition
By the early 1950s, Varèse was in dialogue with a new generation of composers, such as Pierre Boulez and Luigi Dallapiccola. When he returned to France to finalize the tape sections of Déserts, Pierre Schaeffer helped arrange for suitable facilities. The first performance of the combined orchestral and tape sound composition came as part of an ORTF broadcast concert, between pieces by Mozart and Tchaikovsky and received a hostile reaction.
Le Corbusier was commissioned by Philips to present a pavilion at the 1958 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 400 speakers separated throughout a series of rooms, Varèse created a sound and space installation geared towards experiencing sound as you move 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 the Royal Swedish Academy, and in 1963 he received the premier Koussevitzky International Recording Award.
Musical influences:
In his formative years, Varèse was greatly impressed by Medieval and Renaissance Music (in his career he founded and conducted several choirs devoted to this repertoire) and the music of Alexander Scriabin, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Hector Berlioz and Richard Strauss. There are also clear influences or reminiscences of Stravinsky's early works, specifically Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, on Arcana.[6]
He claimed to have been inspired by the writings on music of Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, and especially the Polish savant's statement that the object of music is "the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sound".[7] He was also impressed by the ideas of Busoni, who christened him L'illustro futuro.
Students and influence:
According to George Perle [8] "his partitioning of the octave in the first ten bars, places Varèse along with Scriabin and the Schoenberg circle, among the revolutionary composers whose work initiates the beginning of a new mainstream tradition in the music of our century."
Students
Varèse's best known student is the Chinese-born composer Chou Wen-chung (b. 1923), who met Varèse in 1949 and assisted him in his later years. He became the executor of Varèse's estate following the composer's death, and edited and completed a number of Varèse's works. He is professor emeritus of composition at Columbia University. Other pupils were Colin McPhee and André Jolivet.
Influence in classical music
Composers who have claimed, or can be demonstrated to have been influenced by Varèse, include Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Roberto Gerhard, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Frank Zappa, and William Grant Still.
Influence in pop music
Varèse's emphasis on timbre, rhythm, and new technologies was an inspiration to a whole generation of musicians who came of age during the 1960s and 1970s. One of Varèse's biggest fans was the American guitarist and composer Frank Zappa, who, upon hearing a copy of The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Vol. 1, which included Intégrales, Density 21.5, Ionisation, and Octandre, became obsessed with the composer's music. On his 15th birthday, December 21, 1955, Zappa's mother, Rosemarie, allowed him a call to Varèse as a present. At the time Varèse was in Brussels, Belgium, so Zappa spoke to Varèse's wife Louise instead. Eventually Zappa and Varèse spoke on the phone, and they discussed the possibility of meeting each other, although this meeting never took place. Zappa also received a letter from Varèse. Varèse's spirit of experimentation and redefining the bounds of what was possible in music lived on in Zappa's long and prolific career[9]. Zappa's final project was The Rage and the Fury a recording of the works of Varèse.
Another admirer was the rock/jazz group Chicago, whose Pianist/keyboardist Robert Lamm credited Varèse with inspiring him to write many number one hits. In tribute, one of Lamm's songs was called "A Hit By Varèse".
Tributes:
* The record label Varèse Sarabande Records is named after him.
Idée fixe:
Some of Edgard Varèse's later works make use of the 'idée fixe', a fixed theme, repeated certain times in a work. The 'idée fixe' was most famously used by Hector Berlioz in his Symphonie fantastique; it is generally not transposed, differentiating it from the leitmotiv, used by Richard Wagner.
Works:
* Un grand sommeil noir, song to a text by Paul Verlaine for voice and piano (1906)
* Amériques for large orchestra (1918–1921; revised 1927)
* Offrandes for soprano and chamber orchestra (poems by Vicente Huidobro and José Juan Tablada)(1921)
* Hyperprism for wind and percussion(1922–1923)
* Octandre for seven wind instruments and double bass (1923)
* Intégrales for wind and percussion (1924–1925)
* Arcana for large orchestra (1925–1927)
* Ionisation for 13 percussion players (1929–1931)
* Ecuatorial for bass voice (or unison male chorus), brass, organ, percussion and theremins (revised for ondes-martenot) (text by Francisco Ximénez) (1932–1934)
* Density 21.5 for solo flute (1936)
* Tuning Up for orchestra (sketched 1946; completed by Chou Wen-Chung, 1998)
* Étude pour espace for chorus, 2 pianos and percussion (1947)
* Dance for Burgess for chamber ensemble (1949)
* Déserts for wind, percussion and electronic tape (1950–1954)
* La Procession de Verges for electronic tape (soundtrack for Around and About Joan Mirò, directed by Thomas Bouchard) (1955)
* Poème électronique for electronic tape (1957–1958)
* Nocturnal for soprano, male chorus and orchestra, text adapted from The House of Incest by Anaïs Nin (1961)
References:
1. ^ After he arrived in the USA he commonly used the form 'Edgar' for his first name but reverted to 'Edgard', not entirely consistently, from the 1940s. Malcolm MacDonald, Varèse, Astronomer in Sound (London, 2003), ISBN 1-871082-79-x p. xi.
2. ^ Opera Glass
3. ^ Robert Schulman. Romany Marie: The Queen of Greenwich Village (pp. 64-65). Louisville: Butler Books, 2006. ISBN 1-88453-274-8.
4. ^ Ouellette, p66
5. ^ Ouellette, p95
6. ^ MacDonald, pp. 200-205.
7. ^ MacDonald, pp.52-53.
8. ^ Perle, George (1990). The Listening Composer, p.12. ISBN 0520069919.
9. ^ Russo, Greg. Cosmik Debris: The Collected History and Improvisations of Frank Zappa. New York: Antique Trader Publications, Crossfire Publications, Chris Sansom, 1998, pp. 9-11
* Bernard, Jonathan W. (1987). The Music of Edgard Varèse. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300035152.
* Ouellette, Fernand (1973). Edgard Varèse. Calder and Boyars. ISBN 074502081.
* Clayson, Alan Edgard Varese (1973). Sanctuary.ISBN 9781860743986
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgard_Var%C3%A8se
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