Few notes on Edgard Varese’s Music. An overview of Edgard Varese’s fundamental compositional concepts.

1. School of Electronic Music A.Y. 2014-15
Few notes on Edgard Varese’s Music.
(An overview of Edgard Varese’s fundamental ideas)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

2.  Very few compositions which have strongly
contributed to the evolution of music language.
 Sound as a living matter, the primary material of
his musical language.
 Electronic music for natural instruments.
 Musicians as sound generators.
 To listen with unadulterated ears.
Edgard Varese fundamentals (1/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

3.  Rhythmic complexity and tonal diversity.
 Indefinite pitched percussion, free
atonality, musical forms which exist
independent of tradition.
 Questing for new timbral sound
possibilities.
Edgard Varese fundamentals (2/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

4. “I had an obsession: a new instrument that would
free music from the tempered system.” (E. Varese)
ORGANIZED SOUND
Introduction (3/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

5. “The instruments that the electronic engineers
must perfect, with the collaboration of musicians,
will make possible the use of all sounds - not only
arbitrary ones - and also, in consequence, the
performance of any tempered scale music. They
will be able to reproduce all existing sounds and
collaborate in the creation of new timbres.”
Edgard Varese fundamentals (4/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

6.  Desert (1950-54): for Orchestra and
magnetic tape.
 Poeme Electronique (1957-58): for
magnetic tape. The first multimedia work of
art.
Edgard Varese fundamentals (5/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

7. “The corporealization of the intelligence that
is in sounds.”
“It was a new and exciting conception and to
me as spatial - as moving bodies of sound in
space, a conception I gradually made my
own.”
Edgard Varese fundamentals (6/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

8. “We have actually three dimensions in
music: horizontal, vertical, and dynamic
swelling or decreasing. I shall add a fourth,
sound projection - that feeling that sound is
leaving us with no hope of being reflected
back.”
Edgard Varese fundamentals (7/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

9. “The music [on tape] was distributed by
425 loudspeakers; there were twenty
amplifier combinations... the loudspeakers
were mounted in groups and in what is
called “sound routes” to achieve various
effects such as that of the music running
around the pavilion, as well as coming from
different directions... etc. For the first time I
heard my music literally projected into
space.”
Edgard Varese fundamentals (8/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

10. “Rhythm is too often confused with metrics.
Cadence or the regular succession of beats and
accents has little to do with the rhythm of
composition. Rhythm is the element in music that
gives life to the work and holds it together. It is the
element of stability, the generator of form. In my
works, for instance, rhythm derives from the
simultaneous interplay of unrelated elements that
intervene at calculated, but not regular, time
lapses. This corresponds more nearly to the
definition of rhythm in physics and philosophy.”
Edgard Varese fundamentals (9/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

11. “One of the greatest assets that electronics
has added to musical composition is that of
metric simultaneity. My music being based
on movements of unrelated sound masses I
have long felt the need, and anticipated the
effect, of having them move simultaneously
at different speeds.”
Edgard Varese fundamentals (10/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

12. “There will no longer be the old concept of
melody or interplay of melodies. The entire
work will be a melodic totality.”
Edgard Varese fundamentals (11/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

13. • Music is a spatial phenomenon and therefore fuctions in four
dimensions.
• Rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic material undergo constant
variation. This material is linked to form "sound masses" with
connecting strands of melodic material.
• Rhythm is “the generator of form”, that which holds the work
together.
• Vertical and horizontal material are interchangeable.
• Timbre is as important as pitch and will distinguish one sound
mass from another.
• Sound possesses inherent intelligence.
Edgard Varese fundamentals (12/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

14. “When new instruments will allow me to write music as
I conceive it, the movement of sound masses, of
shifting planes, will be clearly perceived, taking the
place of linear counterpoint. When these sound
masses collide the phenomena of penetration or
repulsion will seem to occur. Certain transmutations
taking place on certain planes will seem to be
projected onto other planes, moving at different
speeds and at different angles… In the moving
masses you would be conscious of their
transmutations when they pass over different layers,
when they penetrate certain opacities, or are dilated in
certain rarefactions.”
Edgard Varese fundamentals (13/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

15. Sound-mass Refers to a body of sound with certain specific
attributes in interval content, register, contour,
timbre, intensity, attack, and decay.
Idea A motivic fragment in either the winds or
percussion.
Expansion of an idea Sound masses seem to emerge out of the
expansion of an "idea" based on an internal
structure and may continue into sonic space.
Projection of sound
masses
The sense of projection of sound-masses
depends on the source location as well as the
independent movement of each sound-mass as
opposed to the others.
Edgard Varese fundamentals (14/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

16. Penetration When "sound masses" collide, the interaction tends to bring
about "penetration", during which certain attributes of one
"sound-mass" are transformed to another.
Transmutation When the attributes of a sound or sound-mass are
transferred (penetration) to another, changing the attributes
of each sound or sound-mass. With a single pitch it describes
the change of color by degrees over a wide range (which
electronic machinery made possible in a very perfected
manner).
Rhythm The simultaneous interplay of unrelated elements that
intervene at calculted, but not regular, time lapses.
Form The consequence of the interaction of attractive and
repulsive forces evolved out of an “idea”. (form is the result of
process)
Edgard Varese fundamentals (15/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

17.  Sound as living matter.
 Sound as an object.
 Projection of sound-masses
moving into sonic space.
 Form as consequence of a
process.
Edgard Varese fundamentals (16/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

18. “I was not influenced by composers as
much as by natural objects and physical
phenomena.”
Edgard Varese fundamentals (17/17)
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

19. Thank you for your kind attention
Antonino Chiaramonte’s contacts
E-mail: antonin.chiaramonte@gmail.com
Web: www.antoninochiaramonte.eu
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte

20. Varese, Edgard. "The Liberation of Sound - 1936 Lecture." In Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music. ed. Elliott
Schartz and Barny Childs, 196-198. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.
"Rhythm, Form and Content - 1959 Lecture." In Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music. ed. Elliott Schartz and
Barny Childs, 202-204. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.
"Music as Art and Science - 1939 Lecture," Varese, Edgard. In Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music. ed.
Elliott Schartz and Barny Childs, 198-201. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.
"Spatial Music - 1959 Lecture." In Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music. ed. Elliott Schartz and Barny Childs,
204-207. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.
"The Electronic Medium - 1962 Lecture." In Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music. ed. Elliott Schartz and
Barny Childs, 207-208. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967. Varese, Louise. Varese: A Looking Glass Diary. New
York: Norton, 1972.
Edgard Varèse, "Il suono organizzato", scritti sulla Musica, Milano, Ricordi-Unicopli, 1985.
Grimo, Steven. “The Music of Edgard Varese”, published on the personal web site of the author, 2008.
School of Electronic Music - Frosinone Conservatorie - History of Electroacoustic Music module Prof. A. Chiaramonte