The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse Volume 1

Edgard Varèse - The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse Volume 1

Edgard Varèse belongs to the generation of Bela Bartok, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern. Each of these composers produced a music of extreme individuality, like nothing of his contemporaries, and a radical break with that of the previous century. They may be said to have carried music to the limits of atomization, where one or another of its different elements seem to predominate. It is the irony of Varèse's career that no composer has been more highly esteemed by his fellow composers as music thinker, craftsman and teacher, and yet his public performances have been few. The reason is not that his works present any great difficulty to the ear, but rather that they demand so sharp a break with concert-hall traditions of instrumental sound and method of performance.

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Varèse has helped make musical history in other ways than in his own music. In France and in Germany he was in the forefront of musical experiment. Living in the United States since 1916, he took a leading part in the first presentation of concerts of twentieth century music, organizing the International Composers Guild in July 1921 and declaring in a manifesto, "the present-day composer refuses to die!" He does not ascribe any esoteric meaning to the naming of his works, saying, "It serves as a convenient means of cataloging the work. Usually the title is found after the music is finished." The titles do suggest however, his deep interest in the relationships of music and science.

DENSITY 21.5, for solo flute, was written in 1936 for the inauguration of the platinum flute of Georges Barrere. 21.5 is the density of platinum. It is Varèse's melodic writing at its purest and a clue to the melodic line in all of his works. It opens simply, revolving about a single note as a tonal center, with a second note, a fifth above, appearing as a dominant. Then the range covered by the flute expands, suggesting the presence of many widely separated antiphonal voices, and moving from one tonal plane to another in a way that creates a remarkable sense of harmonic satisfaction. The high register, used fortissimo, also helps the illusion of the presence of more than one instrument.

IONIZATION (1924) displays the other extreme of Varèse's work, being written for thirteen performers who use thirty-five different percussion instruments. It is built on a most sensitive handling and contrast of different kinds of percussive sounds. There are those indefinite in pitch, like the bass drum, snare drum, wood blocks and cymbals; those of relatively definite musical pitch, such as the piano and chimes; those of continuously moving pitch, like the sirens and "lions roar." It is an example of "spatial construction, building up to a great complexity of interlocking "planes" of rhythm and timbre, and then relaxing the tension with the slowing of rhythm, the entrance of the chimes, and the enlargement of the "silences" between sounds. There are suggestions of the characteristic sounds of modern city life. Varèse says, although not in reference to this particular work, "whole symphonies of new sounds have come into the industrial world and have been all our lives..."

OCTANDRE (1924) is a chamber work written for flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, French horn, trumpet, trombone and contrabass. Here the kind of melodic writing heard in DENSITY 21.5 reaches heights of polyphonic interweaving, with a most sensitive exploration of the characteristics of each instrument, heard for example in the oboe line opening the first movement, the flutes opening the second, and the bassoon opening the third. Each of the three movements is, as in Asiatic music, a different "song" with its own slow and fast passages.

INTEGRALES (1926) combines the melodic textures of OCTANDRE with the percussive sounds of IONIZATION. Two flutes, two clarinets, two trumpets, three trombones, all of different register, along with oboe and French horn, are heard above a large percussion battery handled by four performers. Distinct themes are presented and developed both polyphonically and according to the characteristics of the different instruments which take them up. The work may be described as having an exposition, a "spatial" polyphonic development, a recapitulation, and an impressive, climatic coda. (Sidney Finkelstein)

Recorded during May and June 1950.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Integrales {10:27}

Performed by New York Wind Ensemble and Juilliard Percussion Orchestra

2. Density 21.5 {4:09}

Performed by Rene Le Roy - flute solo

Side 2

1. Ionisation {5:23}

Performed by Juilliard Percussion Orchestra

2. Octandre {7:29}

Performed by New York Wind Ensemble

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