About Me
Edgard Varèse was born in 1883 in Paris, France. He spent the first ten years of his life in Paris and Burgundy. In 1893, his father moved with him to Turin in order to make Varèse study mathematics and engineering, but against the wishes of his father, Varèse began music study in 1900. He entered the Schola Cantorum three years later in Paris, but could not tolerate the philosopy of instruction held by the director, Vincent d'Indy. He quit his studies at the Schola in 1905 to enter the Paris Conservatoire to study with Widor.In 1907, Varèse left Paris for Berlin and developed a close friendship with Feruccio Busoni, whose book Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music had impressed Varèse. It was during the next several years that Varèse, while composing in Berlin met such composers as Strauss, Debussy, and Satie, as well as writers Apollonaire and Cocteau, who were all impressed by his compositions and new musical ideas. Not only was he concerned with music itself which he felt should imitate scientific principles, but Varèse was interested in new instruments themselves, particularly electronic instruments. Varèse returned to Paris in 1913, leaving his compositions in Berlin where they were destroyed in a fire. After brief stints as a conductor with various orchestras, Varèse found himself out of work and decided in 1915 to move to America.Varèse spent the first few years in the United States meeting important contributors to American music, promoting his vision of new electronic music instruments, conducting orchestras, and founding the New Symphony Orchestra. It was also around this time that Varèse began work on his first composition in the United States, Amériques, which was finished in 1921. It was at the completion of this work that Varèse founded the International Composers' Guild, dedicated to the performances of new compositions of both American and European composers, for which he composed many of his pieces for orchestral instruments and voices, specifically Offrandes in 1922, Hyperprism in 1923, Octandre in 1924, and Intégrales in 1925.In 1928, Varèse returned to Paris to alter one of the parts in Amériques to include the recently constructed ondes martenot. Varèse followed Ameriques by composing his most famous non-electronic piece in 1930 entitled Ionisation, the first piece to feature solely percussion instruments. Although it was composed with pre-existing instruments, Ionisation was composed as an exploration of new sounds and methods to create them. In 1933, while Varèse was still in Paris, he wrote to the Guggenheim Foundation and Bell Labratories in an attempt to recieve a grant to develop an electronic music studio. His next composition, Ecuatorial, completed in 1934, contained parts for theremins, and Varèse, anticipating the successful receipt of one of his grants, eagerly returned to the United States to finally realize his electronic music.He returned to the United States in 1934 only to learn that his proposal had been rejected. Varèse composed a flute piece in 1936, and taught occasionally and sporadically for the next ten years, but wanted desperately to work with new instruments, and suffered from a depression caused by his inability to create. It was not until over fifteen years later, in 1953, when Varèse was given an Ampex tape recorder by an anonymous donor that he was finally able to begin the work he had planned all of his life.Varèse began compiling sounds for his piece Déserts, whose acoustic instrument parts had been in progress for nearly three years. It was designed by Varèse to have alternating sections of acoustic instrumental music and movements of electronic music. Pierre Schaeffer invited Varèse to his studio to complete the piece and in 1955, Déserts became the first piece transmitted in stereo on French radio. Varèse returned to New York and stayed there for the next two years until he was asked to compose a piece for the world's fair in Brussels. The result was Poeme Electronique, completed in 1958.Poem Electronique made a tremendous impact upon the artistic community and Varèse began to receive recognition for his progressive and innovative work. His pieces began to be released on record. Some of his music began to appear in scores. In 1962, he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Royal Swedish Academy, and received the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award. A year later, he received the first Koussevitsky International Recording Award. He spent his last few years revising his earlier works. He worked on a piece, Nocturnal , but it was left unfinished at the time of his death, November 6, 1965.
