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

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

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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

• 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

“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

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

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

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

“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

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

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