Misplaced Pages

#248751

105-515: Although his complete surviving works only last about three hours, he has been recognised as an influence by several major composers of the late 20th century. Varèse saw potential in using electronic media for sound production, and his use of new instruments and electronic resources led to his being known as the "Father of Electronic Music" whilst Henry Miller described him as "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound". Varèse actively promoted performances of works by other 20th-century composers and founded

210-405: A PA system , several turntables, and mixers. The performance did not go well, as creating live montages with turntables had never been done before." Later that same year, Pierre Henry collaborated with Schaeffer on Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950) the first major work of musique concrete. In Paris in 1951, in what was to become an important worldwide trend, RTF established the first studio for

315-466: A slide show synchronized with a recorded soundtrack. Composers outside of the Jikken Kōbō, such as Yasushi Akutagawa , Saburo Tominaga, and Shirō Fukai , were also experimenting with radiophonic tape music between 1952 and 1953. Musique concrète was introduced to Japan by Toshiro Mayuzumi , who was influenced by a Pierre Schaeffer concert. From 1952, he composed tape music pieces for a comedy film,

420-416: A button to release music exactly as the composer wrote it—exactly like opening up a book." Varèse would not realize these predictions until his tape experiments in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of Edgard Varèse's works, particularly Arcana make use of the idée fixe , a fixed theme, repeated certain times in a work. The idée fixe was most famously used by Hector Berlioz in his Symphonie fantastique ; it

525-603: A celebrated translator of French poetry whose versions of the work of Arthur Rimbaud for James Laughlin 's New Directions imprint were particularly influential. Varèse composed many of his pieces for orchestral instruments and voices for performance under the auspices of the ICG during its six-year existence. Specifically, during the first half of the 1920s, he composed Offrandes , Hyperprism , Octandre , and Intégrales . He took American citizenship in October 1927. After arriving in

630-465: A common household item, and by the 1920s composers were using them to play short recordings in performances. The introduction of electrical recording in 1925 was followed by increased experimentation with record players. Paul Hindemith and Ernst Toch composed several pieces in 1930 by layering recordings of instruments and vocals at adjusted speeds. Influenced by these techniques, John Cage composed Imaginary Landscape No. 1 in 1939 by adjusting

735-551: A futuristic drama of world catastrophe and instantaneous communication with the star Sirius . This second form, on which Varèse worked in Paris in 1928–1932, had a libretto by Alejo Carpentier , Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes and Robert Desnos . According to Carpentier, a substantial amount of this work was written but Varèse abandoned it in favour of a new treatment in which he hoped to collaborate with Antonin Artaud . Artaud's libretto Il n'y

840-615: A generation of young musicians starting in the 1960s and 1970s. This group includes Robert Lamm and Terry Kath from the band Chicago, as well as composer John Zorn . One of Varèse's most devoted fans was the American guitarist and composer Frank Zappa , who, upon hearing a copy of The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Vol. 1 (EMS Recordings, 1950) became obsessed with the composer's music. Zappa wrote an article titled Edgard Varèse: The Idol of My Youth , for Stereo Review magazine in June 1971. At

945-534: A global radiophonic event. Varèse sought input on the text from Henry Miller , who suggests in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare that this grandiose conception—also ultimately unrealized—eventually metamorphosed into Déserts . With both these huge projects Varèse felt ultimately frustrated by the lack of electronic instruments to realize his aural visions. Nevertheless, he used some of the material from Espace in his short Étude pour espace , virtually

1050-990: A number of musicians, ranging from Neil Rolnick , Charles Amirkhanian and Alice Shields to rock musicians Frank Zappa and The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band . Following the emergence of differences within the GRMC (Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète) Pierre Henry, Philippe Arthuys, and several of their colleagues, resigned in April 1958. Schaeffer created a new collective, called Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) and set about recruiting new members including Luc Ferrari , Beatriz Ferreyra , François-Bernard Mâche , Iannis Xenakis , Bernard Parmegiani , and Mireille Chamass-Kyrou . Later arrivals included Ivo Malec , Philippe Carson, Romuald Vandelle, Edgardo Canton and François Bayle . These were fertile years for electronic music—not just for academia, but for independent artists as synthesizer technology became more accessible. By this time,

1155-463: A performance of Beethoven 's Seventh Symphony at the Salle Pleyel . As the story goes, during the scherzo movement, perhaps due to the resonance of the hall, Varèse had the experience of the music breaking up and projecting in space. It was an idea that stayed with him for the rest of his life, that he would later describe as consisting of "sound objects, floating in space." From the late 1920s to

SECTION 10

#1732852483249

1260-492: A plus de firmament was written for Varèse's project and sent to him after he had returned to the U.S., but by this time Varèse had turned to a second huge project. This second project was to be a choral symphony entitled Espace . In its original conception, the text for the chorus was to be written by André Malraux . Later, Varèse settled on a multi-lingual text of hieratic phrases to be sung by choirs situated in Paris, Moscow, Beijing and New York City, synchronized to create

1365-688: A public concert in New York together with other compositions I had written for conventional instruments." Otto Luening, who had attended this concert, remarked: "The equipment at his disposal consisted of an Ampex tape recorder . . . and a simple box-like device designed by the brilliant young engineer, Peter Mauzey, to create feedback, a form of mechanical reverberation. Other equipment was borrowed or purchased with personal funds." Just three months later, in August 1952, Ussachevsky traveled to Bennington, Vermont, at Luening's invitation to present his experiments. There,

1470-465: A radio broadcast, and a radio drama. However, Schaeffer's concept of sound object was not influential among Japanese composers, who were mainly interested in overcoming the restrictions of human performance. This led to several Japanese electroacoustic musicians making use of serialism and twelve-tone techniques , evident in Yoshirō Irino 's 1951 dodecaphonic piece "Concerto da Camera", in

1575-777: A score. In 1955, more experimental and electronic studios began to appear. Notable were the creation of the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano , a studio at the NHK in Tokyo founded by Toshiro Mayuzumi , and the Philips studio at Eindhoven , the Netherlands, which moved to the University of Utrecht as the Institute of Sonology in 1960. "With Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel in residence, [Cologne] became

1680-454: A significant influence on popular music , with the adoption of polyphonic synthesizers , electronic drums , drum machines, and turntables , through the emergence of genres such as disco , krautrock , new wave , synth-pop , hip hop , and EDM . In the early 1980s mass-produced digital synthesizers , such as the Yamaha DX7 , became popular, and MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface)

1785-509: A similar German organisation with Busoni . Varèse contributed a poem to the Dadaist magazine 391 after an evening of drinking with Francis Picabia on the Brooklyn Bridge. The same magazine claimed that he was orchestrating a "Cold Faucet Dance". Later that year, he met Louise Norton, who edited another Dadaist magazine, Rogue , with her then-husband. She was to become Louise Varèse and

1890-567: A strong community of composers and musicians working with new sounds and instruments was established and growing. 1960 witnessed the composition of Luening's Gargoyles for violin and tape as well as the premiere of Stockhausen's Kontakte for electronic sounds, piano, and percussion. This piece existed in two versions—one for 4-channel tape, and the other for tape with human performers. "In Kontakte , Stockhausen abandoned traditional musical form based on linear development and dramatic climax. This new approach, which he termed 'moment form', resembles

1995-494: A very large, romantic orchestra with additional percussion (for eleven performers) including sirens . Written between 1918 and 1921 and revised in 1927, it was the first work Varèse composed after he moved to the United States . Although it was not his first work, he destroyed many of his earlier pieces, effectively making Amériques his opus one (although he never used that designation). The original version of Amériques

2100-450: A year-round hive of charismatic avant-gardism." on two occasions combining electronically generated sounds with relatively conventional orchestras—in Mixtur (1964) and Hymnen, dritte Region mit Orchester (1967). Stockhausen stated that his listeners had told him his electronic music gave them an experience of "outer space", sensations of flying, or being in a "fantastic dream world". In

2205-479: Is alone, a world of mystery and essential loneliness." In Cologne, what would become the most famous electronic music studio in the world, was officially opened at the radio studios of the NWDR in 1953, though it had been in the planning stages as early as 1950 and early compositions were made and broadcast in 1951. The brainchild of Werner Meyer-Eppler , Robert Beyer, and Herbert Eimert (who became its first director),

SECTION 20

#1732852483249

2310-849: Is generally not transposed , differentiating it from the leitmotiv , used by Richard Wagner . Electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments , circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers ) in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroacoustic music ). Pure electronic instruments depended entirely on circuitry-based sound generation, for instance using devices such as an electronic oscillator , theremin , or synthesizer . Electromechanical instruments can have mechanical parts such as strings, hammers, and electric elements including magnetic pickups , power amplifiers and loudspeakers . Such electromechanical devices include

2415-641: Is in one movement which lasts around 23 minutes, with full orchestral involvement almost throughout. Although it opens quietly, with " Debussy -like musing", it quickly builds in dynamic power and is punctuated by massive crescendos which are similar in style to those found in Stravinsky 's The Rite of Spring but on a much larger scale. The work is marked by its fiercely dissonant chords and rhythmically complex polyphonies for percussion and winds. It develops in continuous evolution with recurring short motifs , which are juxtaposed without development. Structurally,

2520-468: Is most recognizable in its 4/4 form and more connected with the mainstream than preceding forms which were popular in niche markets. At the turn of the 20th century, experimentation with emerging electronics led to the first electronic musical instruments . These initial inventions were not sold, but were instead used in demonstrations and public performances. The audiences were presented with reproductions of existing music instead of new compositions for

2625-701: Is to be realized as a magnetic tape. According to Otto Luening, Cage also performed Williams Mix at Donaueschingen in 1954, using eight loudspeakers, three years after his alleged collaboration. Williams Mix was a success at the Donaueschingen Festival , where it made a "strong impression". The Music for Magnetic Tape Project was formed by members of the New York School ( John Cage , Earle Brown , Christian Wolff , David Tudor , and Morton Feldman ), and lasted three years until 1954. Cage wrote of this collaboration: "In this social darkness, therefore,

2730-586: The Grande messe des morts by Berlioz. He spent the first few years in the United States, where he was a Romany Marie 's café regular in Greenwich Village , meeting important contributors to American music, promoting his vision of new electronic art music instruments, conducting orchestras, and founding the short-lived New Symphony Orchestra. In New York, he met Leon Theremin and other composers exploring

2835-482: The Columbia Symphony Orchestra for Columbia Records (Columbia LP catalog Nos.MS6146 and MS6362). These recordings brought Varèse wide attention among musicians and musical aficionados beyond his immediate sphere. Much of the percussion music of George Crumb in particular owes a debt to works such as Ionisation and Intégrales . Varèse's emphasis on timbre , rhythm , and new technologies inspired

2940-752: The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in the late 1950s. Following his work with Studio d'Essai at Radiodiffusion Française (RDF), during the early 1940s, Pierre Schaeffer is credited with originating the theory and practice of musique concrète. In the late 1940s, experiments in sound-based composition using shellac record players were first conducted by Schaeffer. In 1950, the techniques of musique concrete were expanded when magnetic tape machines were used to explore sound manipulation practices such as speed variation ( pitch shift ) and tape splicing . On 5 October 1948, RDF broadcast Schaeffer's Etude aux chemins de fer . This

3045-498: The Ensemble of electro-musical instruments  [ ru ] , which used theremins, electric harps, electric organs, the first synthesizer in the USSR "Ekvodin", and also created the first Soviet reverb machine. The style in which Meshcherin's ensemble played is known as " Space age pop ". In 1957, engineer Igor Simonov assembled a working model of a noise recorder (electroeoliphone), with

3150-710: The Guggenheim Foundation and Bell Laboratories in an attempt to receive a grant to develop an electronic music studio. His next composition, Ecuatorial , was completed in 1934, and contained parts for two fingerboard Theremin cellos, along with winds , percussion, and a bass singer. Anticipating the successful receipt of one of his grants, Varèse eagerly returned to the United States to realize his electronic music. Slonimsky conducted its premiere in New York on April 15, 1934. Varèse soon left New York City for Santa Fe, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 1936, he wrote his solo flute piece, Density 21.5 . He also promoted

3255-616: The International Composers' Guild in 1921 and the Pan-American Association of Composers in 1926. Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse was born in Paris; when he was a few weeks old, he was sent to be raised by his maternal great-uncle and other relations in the village of Le Villars in the Burgundy region of France. There he developed a very strong attachment to his maternal grandfather, Claude Cortot (also grandfather to

Edgard Varèse - Misplaced Pages Continue

3360-476: The International Composers' Guild , dedicated to the performances of new compositions of both American and European composers. The ICG's manifesto in July 1921 included the statement, "[t]he present day composers refuse to die. They have realised the necessity of banding together and fighting for the right of each individual to secure a fair and free presentation of his work." In 1922, Varèse visited Berlin where he founded

3465-841: The Royal Swedish Academy of Music , and in 1963 he received the premier Koussevitzky International Recording Award. In 1965, Edgard Varese was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal by the MacDowell Colony. In his formative years, Varèse was greatly impressed by Medieval and Renaissance music – in his career, he founded and conducted several choirs devoted to this repertoire – as well as the music of Alexander Scriabin , Erik Satie , Claude Debussy , Hector Berlioz and Richard Strauss . There are also clear influences or reminiscences of Stravinsky 's early works, specifically Petrushka and The Rite of Spring , on Arcana . He

3570-432: The telharmonium , Hammond organ , electric piano and electric guitar . The first electronic musical devices were developed at the end of the 19th century. During the 1920s and 1930s, some electronic instruments were introduced and the first compositions featuring them were written. By the 1940s, magnetic audio tape allowed musicians to tape sounds and then modify them by changing the tape speed or direction, leading to

3675-478: The 'cinematic splice' techniques in early twentieth-century film." The theremin had been in use since the 1920s but it attained a degree of popular recognition through its use in science-fiction film soundtrack music in the 1950s (e.g., Bernard Herrmann 's classic score for The Day the Earth Stood Still ). Am%C3%A9riques Amériques is an orchestral composition by Edgard Varèse , scored for

3780-445: The 1950s and algorithmic composition with computers was first demonstrated in the same decade. During the 1960s, digital computer music was pioneered, innovation in live electronics took place, and Japanese electronic musical instruments began to influence the music industry . In the early 1970s, Moog synthesizers and drum machines helped popularize synthesized electronic music. The 1970s also saw electronic music begin to have

3885-659: The Louisville Symphony and A Poem in Cycles and Bells , both for orchestra and tape. Because he had been working at Schaeffer's studio, the tape part for Varèse's work contains much more concrete sounds than electronic. "A group made up of wind instruments, percussion and piano alternate with the mutated sounds of factory noises and ship sirens and motors, coming from two loudspeakers." At the German premiere of Déserts in Hamburg, which

3990-467: The Philips studio in the Netherlands. The public remained interested in the new sounds being created around the world, as can be deduced by the inclusion of Varèse's Poème électronique , which was played over four hundred loudspeakers at the Philips Pavilion of the 1958 Brussels World Fair . That same year, Mauricio Kagel , an Argentine composer, composed Transición II . The work was realized at

4095-446: The Poet , a 1959 series of electronic compositions that stood out for its immersion and seamless fusion of electronic and folk music , in contrast to the more mathematical approach used by serial composers of the time such as Babbitt. El-Dabh's Leiyla and the Poet , released as part of the album Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1961, would be cited as a strong influence by

4200-546: The USA Varèse commonly used the form 'Edgar' for his first name but reverted to 'Edgard', not entirely consistently, from the 1940s. In 1928, Varèse returned to Paris to alter one of the parts in Amériques to include the recently constructed ondes Martenot . Around 1930, he composed Ionisation , the first Classical work to feature solely percussion instruments . Although it was composed with pre-existing instruments, Ionisation

4305-533: The United States following the end of World War II. These were the basis for the first commercially produced tape recorder in 1948. In 1944, before the use of magnetic tape for compositional purposes, Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh , while still a student in Cairo , used a cumbersome wire recorder to record sounds of an ancient zaar ceremony. Using facilities at the Middle East Radio studios El-Dabh processed

Edgard Varèse - Misplaced Pages Continue

4410-454: The United States, electronic music was being created as early as 1939, when John Cage published Imaginary Landscape, No. 1 , using two variable-speed turntables, frequency recordings, muted piano, and cymbal, but no electronic means of production. Cage composed five more "Imaginary Landscapes" between 1942 and 1952 (one withdrawn), mostly for percussion ensemble, though No. 4 is for twelve radios and No. 5, written in 1952, uses 42 recordings and

4515-577: The WDR studio in Cologne. Two musicians performed on the piano, one in the traditional manner, the other playing on the strings, frame, and case. Two other performers used tape to unite the presentation of live sounds with the future of prerecorded materials from later on and its past of recordings made earlier in the performance. In 1958, Columbia-Princeton developed the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer ,

4620-558: The age of 15 Zappa talked to Varèse by phone and received a personal letter, but the two were not able to meet in person. Zappa framed this letter and kept it in his studio for the rest of his life. Zappa's final project was The Rage and the Fury , a recording of the works of Varèse. This album has remained in the Zappa private collection. Henry Threadgill details Varèse's influence in his 2023 autobiography. On several occasions, Varèse speculated on

4725-733: The ancestor of the ORTF . Karlheinz Stockhausen worked briefly in Schaeffer's studio in 1952, and afterward for many years at the WDR Cologne's Studio for Electronic Music . 1954 saw the advent of what would now be considered authentic electric plus acoustic compositions—acoustic instrumentation augmented/accompanied by recordings of manipulated or electronically generated sound. Three major works were premiered that year: Varèse's Déserts , for chamber ensemble and tape sounds, and two works by Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky : Rhapsodic Variations for

4830-637: The borrowed equipment in the back of Ussachevsky's car, we left Bennington for Woodstock and stayed two weeks. . . . In late September 1952, the travelling laboratory reached Ussachevsky's living room in New York, where we eventually completed the compositions." Two months later, on 28 October, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening presented the first Tape Music concert in the United States. The concert included Luening's Fantasy in Space (1952)—"an impressionistic virtuoso piece" using manipulated recordings of flute—and Low Speed (1952), an "exotic composition that took

4935-473: The boundaries of electronic music. It was also about this time that Varèse began work on his first composition in the United States, Amériques , which was finished in 1921 but would remain unperformed until 1926, when it was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski (who had already performed Hyperprism in 1924 and would premiere Arcana in 1927). Virtually all

5040-404: The combined orchestral and tape sound composition came as part of an ORTF broadcast concert, between pieces by Mozart and Tchaikovsky and received a hostile reaction. Le Corbusier was commissioned by Philips to present a pavilion at the 1958 World Fair and insisted (against the sponsors' resistance) on working with Varèse, who developed his Poème électronique for the venue, where it

5145-412: The composition of microtonal music allowed for by electronic instruments. He predicted the use of machines in future music, writing the influential Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music (1907). Futurists such as Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo began composing music with acoustic noise to evoke the sound of machinery . They predicted expansions in timbre allowed for by electronics in

5250-587: The death of his mother in 1900, until 1903 when Varèse left home for Paris. In 1904, he commenced his studies at the Schola Cantorum (founded by pupils of César Franck ), where his teachers included Albert Roussel . Afterwards, he went to study composition with Charles-Marie Widor at the Paris Conservatoire . In this period, he composed a number of ambitious orchestral works, but these were only performed by Varèse in piano transcriptions . One such work

5355-552: The development of electroacoustic tape music in the 1940s, in Egypt and France. Musique concrète , created in Paris in 1948, was based on editing together recorded fragments of natural and industrial sounds. Music produced solely from electronic generators was first produced in Germany in 1953 by Karlheinz Stockhausen . Electronic music was also created in Japan and the United States beginning in

SECTION 50

#1732852483249

5460-597: The development of music technology several decades later. Following the foundation of electronics company Sony in 1946, composers Toru Takemitsu and Minao Shibata independently explored possible uses for electronic technology to produce music. Takemitsu had ideas similar to musique concrète , which he was unaware of, while Shibata foresaw the development of synthesizers and predicted a drastic change in music. Sony began producing popular magnetic tape recorders for government and public use. The avant-garde collective Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop), founded in 1950,

5565-402: The direction of electronic music. Another associate of Schaeffer, Edgard Varèse , began work on Déserts , a work for chamber orchestra and tape. The tape parts were created at Pierre Schaeffer's studio and were later revised at Columbia University . In 1950, Schaeffer gave the first public (non-broadcast) concert of musique concrète at the École Normale de Musique de Paris . "Schaeffer used

5670-461: The end of the 1930s, Varèse's principal creative energies went into two ambitious projects which were never realized, and much of whose material was destroyed, though some elements from them seem to have gone into smaller works. One was a large-scale stage work called by different names at different times, but principally The One-All-Alone or Astronomer ( L'Astronome ). This was originally to be based on North American Indian legends; later it became

5775-721: The end of the 1960s, musical groups playing light electronic music appeared in the USSR. At the state level, this music began to be used to attract foreign tourists to the country and for broadcasting to foreign countries. In the mid-1970s, composer Alexander Zatsepin designed an "orchestrolla" – a modification of the mellotron. The Baltic Soviet Republics also had their own pioneers: in Estonian SSR — Sven Grunberg , in Lithuanian SSR — Gedrus Kupriavicius, in Latvian SSR — Opus and Zodiac . The world's first computer to play music

5880-438: The first complete work of computer-assisted composition using algorithmic composition. "... Hiller postulated that a computer could be taught the rules of a particular style and then called on to compose accordingly." Later developments included the work of Max Mathews at Bell Laboratories , who developed the influential MUSIC I program in 1957, one of the first computer programs to play electronic music. Vocoder technology

5985-539: The first programmable synthesizer. Prominent composers such as Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, Milton Babbitt , Charles Wuorinen , Halim El-Dabh, Bülent Arel and Mario Davidovsky used the RCA Synthesizer extensively in various compositions. One of the most influential composers associated with the early years of the studio was Egypt's Halim El-Dabh who, after having developed the earliest known electronic tape music in 1944, became more famous for Leiyla and

6090-516: The flute far below its natural range." Both pieces were created at the home of Henry Cowell in Woodstock, New York. After several concerts caused a sensation in New York City, Ussachevsky and Luening were invited onto a live broadcast of NBC's Today Show to do an interview demonstration—the first televised electroacoustic performance. Luening described the event: "I improvised some [flute] sequences for

6195-567: The future)." Word quickly reached New York City. Oliver Daniel telephoned and invited the pair to "produce a group of short compositions for the October concert sponsored by the American Composers Alliance and Broadcast Music, Inc., under the direction of Leopold Stokowski at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After some hesitation, we agreed. . . . Henry Cowell placed his home and studio in Woodstock, New York, at our disposal. With

6300-575: The help of which it was possible to extract various timbres and consonances of a noise nature. In 1958, Evgeny Murzin designed ANS synthesizer , one of the world's first polyphonic musical synthesizers. Founded by Murzin in 1966, the Moscow Experimental Electronic Music Studio became the base for a new generation of experimenters – Eduard Artemyev , Alexander Nemtin  [ ru ] , Sándor Kallós , Sofia Gubaidulina , Alfred Schnittke , and Vladimir Martynov . By

6405-547: The influential manifesto The Art of Noises (1913). Developments of the vacuum tube led to electronic instruments that were smaller, amplified , and more practical for performance. In particular, the theremin , ondes Martenot and trautonium were commercially produced by the early 1930s. From the late 1920s, the increased practicality of electronic instruments influenced composers such as Joseph Schillinger and Maria Schuppel to adopt them. They were typically used within orchestras, and most composers wrote parts for

SECTION 60

#1732852483249

6510-467: The instruments. While some were considered novelties and produced simple tones, the Telharmonium synthesized the sound of several orchestral instruments with reasonable precision. It achieved viable public interest and made commercial progress into streaming music through telephone networks . Critics of musical conventions at the time saw promise in these developments. Ferruccio Busoni encouraged

6615-401: The intelligence that is in sounds.' It was a new and exciting conception and to me the first that started me thinking of music as spatial—as moving bodies of sound in space, a conception I gradually made my own." Varèse began his music studies with Vincent d'Indy (conducting) at the Schola Cantorum de Paris from 1903 to 1905. While he was in Paris, Varèse had another pivotal experience during

6720-617: The long-time director of the Turin Conservatory , Giovanni Bolzoni . In 1895, he composed his first opera , Martin Pas , which has since been lost. Now a teenager, Varèse, influenced by his father, an engineer, enrolled at the Polytechnic of Turin and started studying engineering, as his father disapproved of his interest in music and demanded an absolute dedication to engineering studies. This conflict grew greater and greater, especially after

6825-506: The only work that had appeared from his pen for over ten years when it was premiered in 1947. According to Chou Wen-chung , Varèse made various contradictory revisions to Étude pour espace which made it impossible to perform again, but the 2009 Holland Festival , which offered a 'complete works' of Varèse over the weekend of 12–14 June 2009, persuaded Chou to make a new performing version (using similar brass and woodwind forces to Déserts and making use of spatialized sound projection). This

6930-799: The organization of electronic sounds in Mayuzumi's "X, Y, Z for Musique Concrète", and later in Shibata's electronic music by 1956. Modelling the NWDR studio in Cologne, established an NHK electronic music studio in Tokyo in 1954, which became one of the world's leading electronic music facilities. The NHK electronic music studio was equipped with technologies such as tone-generating and audio processing equipment, recording and radiophonic equipment, ondes Martenot, Monochord and Melochord , sine-wave oscillators , tape recorders, ring modulators , band-pass filters , and four- and eight-channel mixers . Musicians associated with

7035-690: The part for ondes Martenot . This new version was premiered in 1961. ( Ecuatorial has been performed again with fingerboard theremins in Buffalo, New York, in 2002 and at the Holland Festival, Amsterdam, in 2009.) While living with his father, an engineer, Varèse was pushed to further his scientific understanding at the Institute Technique, a high school in Italy that specialized in teaching mathematics and science. Here, Varèse became particularly interested in

7140-419: The pianist Alfred Cortot , a first cousin of Varèse). His affection for his grandfather outshone anything he felt for his own parents. After being reclaimed by his parents in the late 1880s, in 1893 young Edgard was forced to relocate with them to Turin , Italy, in part, to live amongst his paternal relatives, since his father was of Italian descent. It was there that he had his first real musical lessons, with

7245-550: The popular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the United States. Experiments with graphical sound were continued by Norman McLaren from the late 1930s. The first practical audio tape recorder was unveiled in 1935. Improvements to the technology were made using the AC biasing technique, which significantly improved recording fidelity. As early as 1942, test recordings were being made in stereo. Although these developments were initially confined to Germany, recorders and tapes were brought to

7350-482: The principle of the theremin . In the 1930s, Nikolai Ananyev invented "sonar", and engineer Alexander Gurov — neoviolena, I. Ilsarov — ilston., A. Rimsky-Korsakov  [ ru ] and A. Ivanov — emiriton  [ ru ] . Composer and inventor Arseny Avraamov was engaged in scientific work on sound synthesis and conducted a number of experiments that would later form the basis of Soviet electro-musical instruments. In 1956 Vyacheslav Mescherin created

7455-413: The production of electronic music. Also in 1951, Schaeffer and Henry produced an opera, Orpheus , for concrete sounds and voices. By 1951 the work of Schaeffer, composer-percussionist Pierre Henry, and sound engineer Jacques Poullin had received official recognition and The Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète , Club d 'Essai de la Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française was established at RTF in Paris,

7560-493: The recorded material using reverberation, echo, voltage controls and re-recording. What resulted is believed to be the earliest tape music composition. The resulting work was entitled The Expression of Zaar and it was presented in 1944 at an art gallery event in Cairo. While his initial experiments in tape-based composition were not widely known outside of Egypt at the time, El-Dabh is also known for his later work in electronic music at

7665-405: The sirens for structural importance, as representations of a continuum pitch beyond twelve-tone equal temperament . Varèse intended the title Amériques to symbolize "discoveries – new worlds on earth, in the sky, or in the minds of men." The original version of Amériques is scored for the following very large orchestra with additional percussion: The revised version of 1927 reduced

7770-469: The specific ways in which technology would change music in the future. In 1936, he predicted musical machines that would be able to perform music as soon as a composer inputs his score. These machines would be able to play "any number of frequencies," and therefore the score of the future would need to be "seismographic" in order to illustrate their full potential. In 1939, he expanded on this concept, declaring that with this machine "anyone will be able to press

7875-482: The speeds of recorded tones. Composers began to experiment with newly developed sound-on-film technology. Recordings could be spliced together to create sound collages , such as those by Tristan Tzara , Kurt Schwitters , Filippo Tommaso Marinetti , Walter Ruttmann and Dziga Vertov . Further, the technology allowed sound to be graphically created and modified . These techniques were used to compose soundtracks for several films in Germany and Russia, in addition to

7980-666: The studio included Toshiro Mayuzumi, Minao Shibata, Joji Yuasa, Toshi Ichiyanagi , and Toru Takemitsu. The studio's first electronic compositions were completed in 1955, including Mayuzumi's five-minute pieces "Studie I: Music for Sine Wave by Proportion of Prime Number", "Music for Modulated Wave by Proportion of Prime Number" and "Invention for Square Wave and Sawtooth Wave" produced using the studio's various tone-generating capabilities, and Shibata's 20-minute stereo piece "Musique Concrète for Stereophonic Broadcast". The impact of computers continued in 1956. Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson composed Illiac Suite for string quartet ,

8085-546: The studio of Bebe and Louis Barron . In the same year Columbia University purchased its first tape recorder—a professional Ampex machine—to record concerts. Vladimir Ussachevsky, who was on the music faculty of Columbia University, was placed in charge of the device, and almost immediately began experimenting with it. Herbert Russcol writes: "Soon he was intrigued with the new sonorities he could achieve by recording musical instruments and then superimposing them on one another." Ussachevsky said later: "I suddenly realized that

8190-571: The studio was soon joined by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig . In his 1949 thesis Elektronische Klangerzeugung: Elektronische Musik und Synthetische Sprache , Meyer-Eppler conceived the idea to synthesize music entirely from electronically produced signals; in this way, elektronische Musik was sharply differentiated from French musique concrète , which used sounds recorded from acoustical sources. In 1953, Stockhausen composed his Studie I , followed in 1954 by Elektronische Studie II —the first electronic piece to be published as

8295-488: The tape recorder could be treated as an instrument of sound transformation." On Thursday, 8 May 1952, Ussachevsky presented several demonstrations of tape music/effects that he created at his Composers Forum, in the McMillin Theatre at Columbia University. These included Transposition, Reverberation, Experiment, Composition , and Underwater Valse . In an interview, he stated: "I presented a few examples of my discovery in

8400-399: The tape recorder. Ussachevsky then and there put them through electronic transformations." The score for Forbidden Planet , by Louis and Bebe Barron , was entirely composed using custom-built electronic circuits and tape recorders in 1956 (but no synthesizers in the modern sense of the word). In 1929, Nikolai Obukhov invented the " sounding cross " (la croix sonore ), comparable to

8505-466: The theremin in his Western travels, and demonstrated one at a lecture at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque on November 12, 1936. (The university has an RCA theremin in its archives which may be the same instrument.) By the time Varèse returned to New York in late 1938, Theremin had returned to Russia. This devastated Varèse, who had hoped to work with him on a refinement of his instrument. He

8610-412: The theremin that could otherwise be performed with string instruments . Avant-garde composers criticized the predominant use of electronic instruments for conventional purposes. The instruments offered expansions in pitch resources that were exploited by advocates of microtonal music such as Charles Ives , Dimitrios Levidis , Olivier Messiaen and Edgard Varèse . Further, Percy Grainger used

8715-403: The theremin to abandon fixed tonation entirely, while Russian composers such as Gavriil Popov treated it as a source of noise in otherwise-acoustic noise music . Developments in early recording technology paralleled that of electronic instruments. The first means of recording and reproducing audio was invented in the late 19th century with the mechanical phonograph . Record players became

8820-708: The time. He also gained the friendship and support of Romain Rolland and Hugo von Hofmannsthal , whose Œdipus und die Sphinx he began setting as an opera that was never completed. On 5 January 1911, the first performance of his symphonic poem Bourgogne was held in Berlin. After being invalided out of the French Army during World War I , he moved to the United States in December 1915. In 1918, Varèse made his debut in America conducting

8925-400: The two collaborated on various pieces. Luening described the event: "Equipped with earphones and a flute, I began developing my first tape-recorder composition. Both of us were fluent improvisors and the medium fired our imaginations." They played some early pieces informally at a party, where "a number of composers almost solemnly congratulated us saying, 'This is it' ('it' meaning the music of

9030-482: The work is assembled by placing a number of self-contained 'blocks' of music against one another in the manner of Stravinsky. The blocks are marked primarily by texture and timbre with melody and rhythm being much more malleable. This remained common practice for Varèse throughout his career. Commentary on Amériques has focused on its elemental power, and its vivid representation of New York City , not failing to incorporate its howling police car sirens. Varèse used

9135-461: The work of Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff continues to present a brilliant light, for the reason that at the several points of notation, performance, and audition, action is provocative." Cage completed Williams Mix in 1953 while working with the Music for Magnetic Tape Project. The group had no permanent facility, and had to rely on borrowed time in commercial sound studios, including

9240-495: The works he had written in Europe were either lost or destroyed in a Berlin warehouse fire, so in the U.S. he was starting again from scratch. The only surviving work from his early period appears to be the song Un grand sommeil noir , a setting of Paul Verlaine . (He still retained Bourgogne , but destroyed the score in a fit of depression many years later.) At the completion of this work, Varèse, along with Carlos Salzedo , founded

9345-499: The works of Leonardo da Vinci . It was through Varèse's love of science that he began to study sound, as he later recalled: When I was about twenty, I came across a definition of music that seemed suddenly to throw light on my gropings toward music I sensed could exist. Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński , the Polish physicist, chemist, musicologist and philosopher of the first half of the nineteenth century, defined music as 'the corporealization of

9450-543: Was CSIRAC , which was designed and built by Trevor Pearcey and Maston Beard. Mathematician Geoff Hill programmed the CSIRAC to play popular musical melodies from the very early 1950s. In 1951 it publicly played the Colonel Bogey March , of which no known recordings exist, only the accurate reconstruction. However, CSIRAC played standard repertoire and was not used to extend musical thinking or composition practice. CSIRAC

9555-570: Was also a major development in this early era. In 1956, Stockhausen composed Gesang der Jünglinge , the first major work of the Cologne studio, based on a text from the Book of Daniel . An important technological development of that year was the invention of the Clavivox synthesizer by Raymond Scott with subassembly by Robert Moog . In 1957, Kid Baltan ( Dick Raaymakers ) and Tom Dissevelt released their debut album, Song Of The Second Moon , recorded at

9660-1029: Was also impressed by the ideas of Busoni, who christened him L'illustro futuro in a signed copy of his orchestra work Berceuse élégiaque . Varèse taught many prominent composers including Chou Wen-chung , Lucia Dlugoszewski , André Jolivet , Colin McPhee , James Tenney , and William Grant Still . See: List of music students by teacher: T to Z#Edgard Varèse . Composers who have claimed, or can be demonstrated, to have been influenced by Varèse include Milton Babbitt , Harrison Birtwistle , Pierre Boulez , John Cage , Morton Feldman , Brian Ferneyhough , Roberto Gerhard , Olivier Messiaen , Luigi Nono , John Palmer , Krzysztof Penderecki , Silvestre Revueltas , Wolfgang Rihm , Leon Schidlowsky , Alfred Schnittke , William Grant Still , Karlheinz Stockhausen , Iannis Xenakis , and Frank Zappa . The modern music conductor Robert Craft recorded two LP's of Varèse music in 1958 and 1960 with percussion, brass, and wind sections from

9765-504: Was an exploration of new sounds and methods to create them. In 1928, when he was asked about jazz, he said it was not representative of America but instead was, "a negro product, exploited by the Jews. All of its composers here are Jews," meaning Gruenberg and Boulanger students including Copland and Blitzstein . In 1931, he was the best man at the wedding of his friend Nicolas Slonimsky in Paris. In 1933, while still in Paris, he wrote to

9870-680: Was approached by music producer Jack Skurnick resulting in EMS Recordings #401. The record was the first release on LP of Integrales , Density 21.5 , Ionisation and Octandre and featured René Le Roy , flute, the Juilliard Percussion Orchestra and the New York Wind Ensemble conducted by Frederic Waldman . Ionisation had also been the first work by Varèse to be recorded in the 1930s, conducted by Nicolas Slonimsky and issued on 78rpm Columbia 4095M. Likewise, Octandre

9975-415: Was built in 1935. however, after World War II, Japanese composers such as Minao Shibata knew of the development of electronic musical instruments. By the late 1940s, Japanese composers began experimenting with electronic music and institutional sponsorship enabled them to experiment with advanced equipment. Their infusion of Asian music into the emerging genre would eventually support Japan's popularity in

10080-419: Was conducted by Bruno Maderna , the tape controls were operated by Karlheinz Stockhausen . The title Déserts suggested to Varèse not only "all physical deserts (of sand, sea, snow, of outer space, of empty streets), but also the deserts in the mind of man; not only those stripped aspects of nature that suggest bareness, aloofness, timelessness, but also that remote inner space no telescope can reach, where man

10185-726: Was developed. In the same decade, with a greater reliance on synthesizers and the adoption of programmable drum machines, electronic popular music came to the fore. During the 1990s, with the proliferation of increasingly affordable music technology, electronic music production became an established part of popular culture. In Berlin starting in 1989, the Love Parade became the largest street party with over 1 million visitors, inspiring other such popular celebrations of electronic music. Contemporary electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from experimental art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music . Pop electronic music

10290-406: Was heard by an estimated two million people. Using 400 speakers separated throughout the interior, Varèse created a sound and space installation geared towards experiencing sound as it moves through space. Received with mixed reviews, this piece challenged audience expectations and traditional means of composing, breathing life into electronic synthesis and presentation. In 1962, he was asked to join

10395-613: Was his Rhapsodie romane , from about 1905, which was inspired by the Romanesque architecture of the Church of St. Philibert in Tournus . In 1907, he moved to Berlin, and in the same year, he married the actress Suzanne Bing , with whom he had a daughter. They divorced in 1913. During these years, Varèse became acquainted with Erik Satie and Richard Strauss , as well as with Claude Debussy and Ferruccio Busoni , who particularly influenced him at

10500-527: Was never recorded, but the music played was accurately reconstructed. The oldest known recordings of computer-generated music were played by the Ferranti Mark 1 computer, a commercial version of the Baby Machine from the University of Manchester in the autumn of 1951. The music program was written by Christopher Strachey . The earliest group of electronic musical instruments in Japan, Yamaha Magna Organ

10605-482: Was offered access to emerging audio technology by Sony. The company hired Toru Takemitsu to demonstrate their tape recorders with compositions and performances of electronic tape music. The first electronic tape pieces by the group were "Toraware no Onna" ("Imprisoned Woman") and "Piece B", composed in 1951 by Kuniharu Akiyama. Many of the electroacoustic tape pieces they produced were used as incidental music for radio, film, and theatre. They also held concerts employing

10710-510: Was premiered at the Gashouder concert hall, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam by Asko/Schönberg Ensemble and Cappella Amsterdam on Sunday 14 June, conducted by Péter Eötvös . By the early 1950s, Varèse was in dialogue with a new generation of composers, such as Pierre Boulez and Luigi Dallapiccola . When he returned to France to finalize the tape sections of Déserts , Pierre Schaeffer helped arrange for suitable facilities. The first performance of

10815-771: Was premiered on 9 April 1926 by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski . The revised version was premiered on 30 May 1929 by the Orchestre des Concerts Poulet under Gaston Poulet at the Maison Gaveau. It was first recorded in 1966 by the Utah Symphony Orchestra and Maurice Abravanel . In recent years, it has emerged as a popular modernist showpiece in the orchestral repertoire, with recordings by Pierre Boulez , Christoph von Dohnanyi , Riccardo Chailly and Mariss Jansons , among others. The work

10920-549: Was recorded and issued on 78rpm discs in the later 1930s, complete (New Music Quarterly Recordings 1411) and as an excerpt (3rd movement, Columbia DB1791 in Volume V of their History of Music). Le Roy was the soloist also on a 1948 (78rpm) recording of Density 21.5 (New Music Recordings 1000). When, in the late 1950s, Varèse was approached by a publisher about making Ecuatorial available, there were very few theremins—let alone fingerboard theremins—to be found, so he rewrote/relabelled

11025-416: Was the first " movement " of Cinq études de bruits , and marked the beginning of studio realizations and musique concrète (or acousmatic art). Schaeffer employed a disc cutting lathe , four turntables, a four-channel mixer, filters, an echo chamber, and a mobile recording unit. Not long after this, Pierre Henry began collaborating with Schaeffer, a partnership that would have profound and lasting effects on

#248751