Edgard Varèse - BBC Total Immersion Day 6th May 2017

[Richard Barrett]

think about how fascinating and stimulating the three electronic interpolations from Déserts are, compared to the orchestral episodes (and how different) and this might point to more a radical approach that could have been taken with the technology of the 1970s onwards.

Indeed so. Although, returning to Stockhausen, it could be said that his use of 1950s technology was more progressive than his use of off-the-shelf keyboard synthesizers from the 1980s onwards. And Varèse was 45 years older than Stockhausen - in many ways he was the most revolutionary composer of that generation.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

When he made Poème electronique he did have (at the Philips research laboratories) at least as sophisticated technology as Stockhausen had already used in Gesang der Jünglinge but his musical thinking seems to have been stuck within the paradigm of instrumental composition, whereas Stockhausen was able to grasp the new possibilities for compositional procedures and structure implied by the new technology. Varèse uses electronic instruments in Ecuatorial as an extension of the orchestral apparatus familiar to him, rather than as something qualitatively new. While he was undoubtedly a highly progressive musical thinker, I don't think his results in practice often measure up to his theoretical ambitions.

Yes - but Varese was in his sixties when the technology became available to him. If only it had been there twenty years before, when he had chance to get familiar with what it could do for his Music - how might his Theoretical ambitions have better been served then!

(Idle speculation, I know - but it's nearly the weekend and I'm feeling lazy.)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Excellent!

Can we hope for a teeny-weeny bit of Varese before 9.00 a.m?

[Richard Barrett]

Yes - but Varese was in his sixties when the technology became available to him. If only it had been there twenty years before, when he had chance to get familiar with what it could do for his Music - how might his Theoretical ambitions have better been served then!

Right. Although he doesn't seem to have spent that much time at his writing desk anyway! As I said before, what I find most frustrating about his work is that there's so little of it.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Right. Although he doesn't seem to have spent that much time at his writing desk anyway! As I said before, what I find most frustrating about his work is that there's so little of it.

I agree - but mebbe if the technology had been around in the '30s, he might have written more - and written more idiomatically for the technology. Anyroadup, just two CDs of stuff is frustrating.

[Serial_Apologist]

Right. Although he doesn't seem to have spent that much time at his writing desk anyway! As I said before, what I find most frustrating about his work is that there's so little of it.

I heard once that there was a symphonic poem composed somewhere around 1912, which would have been fascinating to have heard. How much might Varèse's fantastic imagination for new orchestral combinations and timbres have evolved by that point is an unanswerable question. By 1912, Debussy, Ravel, Koechlin, and the Second Viennese composers into their "free atonal" period, had already expanded the orchestral pallette beyond the points respectively reached by Berlioz, Wagner, Strauss and Rimsky-Korsakov. We only have the 3-minute song with piano accompaniment "Un grand sommeil noir" from 1906 to go on as regards Varèse's early aesthetic alignments, and this has been described as Debussyian, though to my ears the harmony is much closer to his teacher, Roussel's. Be that as it may, in "Amériques" the stylistic influences from Debussy ("Le Martyr"), Stravinsky ("Le sacre") and Schoenberg (Orchestral Pieces Op 16) are clear, right down to direct quotations which almost sound as if they might have been hommages. Perhaps they were there in the composer's foreknowledge that he would destroy everything he could lay his hands on of his earlier works: I don't know of any quotations in the works composed subsequent to "Amériques".

Again, I've heard and read that Varèse "gave up composing" because the sounds he now heard in his head were unreproducible on conventional instruments. Am I right in thinking that "Ecuatorial" was his last work before "Déserts"? In it the two theremins function almost in the manner of the sirens used in previous works; as expressive devices, sui generis, their use surely influenced the later use of ondes martenot by, for examples, Koechlin, Jolivet and Messiaen, albeit in harmonically less adventurous contexts than those of Varèse.

[Beef Oven!]

I heard once that there was a symphonic poem composed somewhere around 1912, which would have been fascinating to have heard. How much might Varèse's fantastic imagination for new orchestral combinations and timbres have evolved by that point is an unanswerable question. By 1912, Debussy, Ravel, Koechlin, and the Second Viennese composers into their "free atonal" period, had already expanded the orchestral pallette beyond the points respectively reached by Berlioz, Wagner, Strauss and Rimsky-Korsakov. We only have the 3-minute song with piano accompaniment "Un grand sommeil noir" from 1906 to go on as regards Varèse's early aesthetic alignments, and this has been described as Debussyian, though to my ears the harmony is much closer to his teacher, Roussel's. Be that as it may, in "Amériques" the stylistic influences from Debussy ("Le Martyr"), Stravinsky ("Le sacre") and Schoenberg (Orchestral Pieces Op 16) are clear, right down to direct quotations which almost sound as if they might have been hommages. Perhaps they were there in the composer's foreknowledge that he would destroy everything he could lay his hands on of his earlier works: I don't know of any quotations in the works composed subsequent to "Amériques".

Again, I've heard and read that Varèse "gave up composing" because the sounds he now heard in his head were unreproducible on conventional instruments. Am I right in thinking that "Ecuatorial" was his last work before "Déserts"? In it the two theremins function almost in the manner of the sirens used in previous works; as expressive devices, sui generis, their use surely influenced the later use of ondes martenot by, for examples, Koechlin, Jolivet and Messiaen, albeit in harmonically less adventurous contexts than those of Varèse.

Density 21.5, Tuning up and Dance for Burgess came after Ecuatorial and before Dèserts. But Tuning Up & Dance for Burgess are 'recent discoveries', so given that Density 21.5 is for solo flute, Ecuatorial is kinda the last orchestral work before Dèserts.

[Richard Barrett]

I heard once that there was a symphonic poem composed somewhere around 1912, which would have been fascinating to have heard.

Most of his early scores were destroyed in a warehouse fire in 1918. The piece you're referring to might be the symphonic poem Bourgogne which Varèse hadn't left in storage, but he later destroyed that one himself. Malcolm McDonald's monograph on Varèse describes numerous unfinished projects, some on a massive scale, prior to Déserts.

The Ondes Martenot was actually very popular with French composers between the 1930s and 1950s, especially composers of light music. It has a repertoire of hundreds of short pieces with piano accompaniment which are hardly ever performed, apart from appearing on records by Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel among others. Koechlin's use of it in his Seven Stars Symphony predates Ecuatorial.

[Serial_Apologist]

Density 21.5, Tuning up and Dance for Burgess came after Ecuatorial and before Dèserts. But Tuning Up & Dance for Burgess are 'recent discoveries', so given that Density 21.5 is for solo flute, Ecuatorial is kinda the last orchestral work before Dèserts.

[Serial_Apologist]

Most of his early scores were destroyed in a warehouse fire in 1918. The piece you're referring to might be the symphonic poem Bourgogne which Varèse hadn't left in storage, but he later destroyed that one himself. Malcolm McDonald's monograph on Varèse describes numerous unfinished projects, some on a massive scale, prior to Déserts.

Thanks Richard, that clears up that misunderstanding on my part.

[Beef Oven!]

Here is the Telegraph’s round-up of recent concerts, and below is the Edgard Varèse extract.

The evening BBC SO concert, will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Monday May 8 and 30 days thereafter on bbc.co.uk/radio3

"BBC Symphony Orchestra/Edgard Varèse, Barbican ★★★★★

As contemporary classical music keeps changing with bewildering speed, so our grasp of the whole picture of modern music starts to become shaky. That’s why the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Total Immersion series is so valuable. The day-long immersion in the music of a single composer helps us to keep our cultural bearings.

That’s particularly true when – as was the case on Saturday – the composer is Edgard Varèse, one of the giant figures of early musical modernism. Varèse is especially in need of a helping hand. He was fired up by the modern world of skyscrapers and science and machines, and dreamed of a “music of the future”, using new undreamed-off instruments.

What actually survives from these visions is a mere 15 or so pieces, some for small forces, some for huge orchestra, some including electronics and voices. Most of them are rarely played, some never. On Saturday we heard all of them.

What the day taught us is that there’s a lot more to Varèse than pitilessly dissonant evocations of the modern world in earsplitting brass and percussion. There was plenty of that, to be sure, and by the end of the day my ears were starting to ring. But there is also a sultry, nocturnal side to Varèse, which emerged in the afternoon concert from the Guildhall New Music Ensemble.

Soprano Harriet Burns struck just the right tone of tremulous excitement in Offrandes, a setting of erotically surrealist poetry, the ensemble and conductor Geoffrey Paterson touching in a nocturnal soundscape behind her.

In the evening concert from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, we caught the mystical side of Varèse, in his last work Nocturnal of 1961. The basses of the BBC Singers growled a prayer in some unknown language, while soprano Allison Bell seemed to be in a trance, invoking a crucified deity.

Throughout the concert one could sense conductor Sakari Oramo seeking out the music’s emotional variety. The unexpected dance in Arcana seemed unusually chirpy, the humorous moments in Tuning Up and in the giant orchestral piece Amériques stood out loud and clear. When later in the same piece a long horn melody appeared, floating between giant string chords, one felt the glamour and mystery of a nocturnal cityscape.

The output of Varèse may be tiny, but it was the expression of a great soul, to which this Total Immersion day paid the most eloquent and heart-felt tribute. IH

Hear the BBC SO concert on BBC Radio 3 on Monday May 8 and 30 days thereafter on bbc.co.uk/radio3"

[Caussade]

Excellent! That's almost everything - only Ecuatorial is missing as far as I can see. I wonder why they didn't just throw that in as well...

Ecuatorial was played (by the Fulham Symphony Orchestra) in a pre-concert foyer event, and there was also a studio recording by the same ensemble of the piece last week which I imagine is going to be inserted into the broadcast of the main event

[Beef Oven!]

Ecuatorial was played (by the Fulham Symphony Orchestra) in a pre-concert foyer event, and there was also a studio recording by the same ensemble of the piece last week which I imagine is going to be inserted into the broadcast of the main event

Yes, and they also rehearsed it in the foyer, so we got it twice! Were you there?

[Caussade]

Yes, and they also rehearsed it in the foyer, so we got it twice! Were you there?

Certainly was!

[Beef Oven!]

Certainly was!