Overview
Edgard Varèse
(1883—1965) French-born American composer
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(1883–1965)
French-born US composer and conductor, who pioneered the use of electronic and taped sound in composing.
Varèse initially planned to become an engineer, but at eighteen, having composed his first opera at the age of twelve, he entered the Schola Cantorum in Paris (1904), where he studied with d Indy and Albert Roussel (1869–1937). He also attended Widor's composition classes at the Conservatoire (1905) before destroying all his own compositions and moving to Berlin (1909), where he founded a choir for the performance of ancient music and met Ferruccio Busoni and Richard Strauss. After being discharged from the French army on medical grounds in 1915, Varèse went to the USA and established himself as an advocate and conductor of contemporary music, co-founding the International Composers' Guild for the presentation of new works (1921).
With the encouragement of Leopold Stokowski, who conducted several of his works against vociferous public opposition, Varèse began to combine electronic and taped sound with wind and percussion instruments to develop a unique style that he called ‘organized sound’. Of his early works, Hyperprism (1923), written for a chamber ensemble of wind and percussion, Octandre (1924), and Intégrales (1925) attracted the greatest controversy for their rejection of traditional musical forms. Ionisation (1931), his most celebrated work, was scored for forty-one percussion instruments and two sirens; in contrast was Density 21.5 (1935), which featured an unaccompanied flute. Notable works that made striking use of taped and electronic sound include Déserts (1954) and Poème électronique (1958), which was written to be relayed in a constantly recurring eight-minute cycle over four hundred loudspeakers at the Brussels Exposition.
Subjects: Music
