THE FATHER OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC.
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (December 22, 1883 November 6, 1965) was a French-born composer.
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. 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". He is also known to have re-introduced the 'Idee-fixe', a term first introduced by the French composer Hector Berlioz.
He spent the first few years in the United States meeting important contributors to American music, promoting his vision of new electronic art music instruments, conducting orchestras, and founding the New Symphony Orchestra. It was also about this time that Varèse began work on his first composition in the United States, Amériques, which was finished in 1921. 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, for which he composed many of his pieces for orchestral instruments and voices. Specifically, during the first half of the 1920s, he composed Offrandes, Hyperprism, Octandre, and Intégrales.
He took American citizenship in 1926.
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 theremins, 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.
When, in the late 1950s, Varèse was approached by a publisher about making Ecuatorial available, there were very few thereminslet alone fingerboard thereminsto be found, so he rewrote/relabelled the part for Ondes Martenot. This new version was premiered in 1961.
International recognition
By the early 1950s, Varèse was in dialogue with a new generation of composers, such as Boulez and Dallapiccola. When he returned to France to finalise 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 Phillips 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.
He composed "Poeme Electronique" for use at the 1958 Worlds Fair. Using 400 speakers separated throughout a series of rooms, Varese 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.
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' is generally not transposed, differencing it from the leitmotiv, used by Richard Wagner.
Works
* Un grand sommeil noir (1906)
* Amériques (1918-21)
* Offrandes (1921)
* Hyperprism (1922-23)
* Octandres (1923)
* Intégrales (1924-25)
* Arcana (1925-27)
* Ionisation (1929-31)
* Ecuatorial (1932-34)
* Density 21.5 (1936)
* Tuning Up (1947)
* Dance for Burgess (1949)
* Déserts (1950-54)
* Poème électronique (1957-58)
* Nocturnal (1961)
