Reynolds Varese

The Last Word Is: Imagination: A Study of the Spatial Aspects of Varèse's Work (Part I:
Written Evidence)
Author(s): Roger Reynolds
Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Winter 2013), pp. 196-255
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
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THE LAST WORD IS: IMAGINATION
A STUDY OF THE SPATIAL ASPECTS
OF VARÈSE’S WORK*

PART I: WRITTEN EVIDENCE
ROGER REYNOLDS
T HERE FOLLOWS A COMPENDIUM of statements that Varèse wrote or

1
that were attributed to him in English, all referring to space, both
metaphorically and explicitly. It includes not only direct references, but
materials from which valuable inferences can be made. My aim is to lay
*Disclaimer: As a practicing composer for five decades, I am confident of my

instincts and craft. This experience has not optimally prepared me for scholarly
activity. The present study is a special case. As a result of a long friendship with
Chou Wen-chung, I have been keenly aware of the dedication that Varèse can
inspire: as a man, as an artist. During 2009–10, I became involved with Varèse’s
The Last Word Is: Imagination (Part 1) 197
a foundation on the basis of which it would be possible to understand,

manifest, even extend his spatial concerns now, given the flexibility and
power of contemporary computer resources. I embarked upon this
project expecting that the fragmented and often inconsistent evidence
might prove intractable. To the contrary, if one reads carefully,
considers what was known earlier and what is now, if one gauges the
potential meaning of the words and phrases Varèse uses in relation to
the musical experiences one has in the presence of his work, a
remarkably clear, detailed, and useful picture emerges. He was certainly
a visionary, but a rather well-informed advocate as well.
There are two significantly different bodies of sonic evidence:
recordings of the instrumental and vocal music (both recent and
historical) in which the interpreter’s and recording engineer’s
perspectives act as an intermediary filter of variable nature. This
filtration can produce dramatically varied results, complicating
judgements. There are also three electroacoustical projects Varèse
completed: the three interpolations for Déserts (1954 and 1961
versions), La procession de verges (1955, composed for a movie by
Thomas Bouchard called Around and About Joan Mirò), and Poème
électronique (1958). None of these can be considered ideal
representations of Varèse’s intentions either, for all were variably
impacted by available equipment, studio philosophy, and the nature of
the assistance the composer had. The dramatic differences between the
1954 and 1961 versions of the interpolations offer particularly valuable
ground for comparison.
legacy, in particular as it applies to his thinking and practice in matters spatial.
My efforts have made me keenly aware of the difficulties encountered in Varèse
scholarship: the variable availability and reliability of even “original” sources,
chronology, his predilection for a collaging way of working (whereby the
seeming authority of an item and the potential relevance of its surroundings can
mislead). Eventually unraveling this all will be an arduous, perhaps even an
impossible task. In any case, I am not in a position, by circumstance or training,
to make such a labyrinthine journey. I bring another perspective, though I have,
of course, made my best effort to check the accuracy of quotes and attributions.
My organization is not on the basis of chronology, as I have come to feel that
this would be largely impossible to establish securely. I rely, wherever possible,
on texts and materials in the Sacher Varèse collection as well as Chou’s various
presentations of Varèse, as I believe there is reason to trust him above other
sources. I have uncovered numerous instances in which authors quoting Varèse
do not seem to have gotten it right, but the circumstances under which we all
are working still can hardly be considered optimal. What is presented here, then,
is a set of materials and a commentary. The commentary has as its authority my
own experience and knowledge. When I recognize and know a resource upon
which I have drawn, I specify it.
198 Perspectives of New Music
My interest does not disregard, but may be seen as preliminary to

and shaping of the experience that can be had from listening to the
music itself or from studying the scores with a sufficiently informed
perspective. I will attempt to determine what light the considerable, if
disjointed and repetitious, body of evidence can shed on his lifelong
interest in the space of sound. We have, now, the capacity to realize
much of what he seems to have desired. What should be done?
WRITTEN EVIDENCE
1. SOUND PROJECTION
Varèse often cited the influence of Józef Maria Hoëné-Wronsky (1776–

1853) on his own thinking:
When I was about 20, my own attitude toward music—at least

toward what I wanted my music to be—became suddenly
crystallized by Hoëné-Wronsky’s definition of music [“the
corporealization of intelligence in (or into) sounds”]. It was
probably what first started me thinking of music as spatial—as
bodies of intelligent sounds moving freely in space, a concept I
gradually developed and made my own.
Edgard Varèse: “Spatial Music,” in Contemporary

Composers on Contemporary Music, edited by Elliott
Schwarz and Barney Childs. Holt, Reinhart, Winston,
1970. From the chapter “The Liberation of Sound”
Anne Parks has observed that Varèse’s version differs slightly but
significantly from Wronsky’s actual quote given in brackets above.
Varèse uses “the corporealization of intelligence that is in sounds”
(Anne Parks, “Freedom, Form, and Process in Varèse: A Study of
Varèse’s Musical Ideas—Their Sources, Their Development, and Their
Use in His Works,” PhD Thesis, Cornell University, 1974). John
Anderson observes that Varèse’s “interpretation implies that sounds
possess a certain inherent intelligence, and perhaps a will, independent
of human transformation or perception.” (Also, see 16, below.)
In one typescript in the Sacher Stiftung, the often inaccurately referred-to

quote is accurately rendered:
“. . . defining it as ‘the corporalization of the intelligence in

sound’ . . .”
Edgard Varèse: “The Art-Science of Music Today”

(written in 1942 for Art in Australia), TS SS
Varese cited a formative experience he had had in the seminal Santa Fe

lecture in 1936:
I want to try to make it clear to you how I have come to conceive

of music as spatial and how I imagine rhythm in music as Order
and Proportion in Time and in Space.
Several years ago, listening to the trio in the Scherzo of the

Seventh Symphony of Beethoven at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, (rich
in acoustical surprises) I became conscious of an entirely new
effect produced by this familiar music. I seemed to feel the music
at this point detaching itself and projecting itself in space . . .
Edgard Varèse: “Music and the Times,” 1936, TS SS
. . . I became conscious of a third dimension in music. The

sensation may have been due to the over-resonant place in the hall
where I happened to be sitting. It was this phenomenon which led
me to conceive what I call sound-projection.
Assuming that Varèse means that the reverberation-time in the hall

was unusually long, his experience could be attributed to an acoustical
“smearing” such that events that have already occurred continue to
sound as new ones enter, and that the punctuating silences that are
normally a part of Beethoven’s rhetoric were, here, occupied by
reverberant tails. (Note especially the strong contrasts of dynamic
forcefulness and adjacent delicacy as well as wide temporal spacings
that characterize the last movement. Refer to the W. Furtwangler 1943
recording available on Deutsche Grammophon for an indication of the
performance practice that might have shaped Varèse’s experience.) It is
also the case that the Salle was built in 1927, but was badly damaged
by a fire in 1928, after which its seating capacity was reduced by one
fifth. Thus, it is not at all improbable that Varèse actually experienced
an “overresonant” acoustic.
By projection I mean the feeling given us by certain blocks of

sound. . . . I should call them beams of sound, as the feeling is
akin to that aroused by the beams of light sent forth by a powerful
searchlight.
There is a mixture of metaphors here: Varèse refers to the “blocks of

sound” as the elements that provoke the “projection” (presumably as a
result of the force with which they activated the seemingly unusual
reverberation). The “beams” of sound or of light would seem more
associated with the nature of the felt “projection”; in other words,
affect is contrasted with agency.
For the ear as for the eye it gives a sense of prolongation . . . a

journey into space.
This seems to settle the matter: the “sense of prolongation” could

certainly be traced to ample reverberation, while the “journey into
space” could be associated with the fading away of the reverberant tails
excited by forceful blocks of sound. Mention of “the eye” here is
perplexing. Perhaps an inner eye of imagination.
Much later, in 1965, Gunther Schuller quotes Varèse:
It seems to me that [Milton Babbitt] wants to exercise maximum

control over certain materials, as if he were above them. But I want
to be in the material, part of the acoustical vibration, so to
speak. . . . I think of musical space as open rather than bounded,
which is why I speak about projection in the sense that I want
simply to project a sound, a musical thought, to initiate it, and
then let it take its own course. I do not want an a priori control
over all its aspects.
Varèse, quoted in Gunther Schuller: “Conversation with

Varèse,” Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 3, No. 2,
Summer, 1965
One wonders what durational order of magnitude Varèse would

have attached to the process of a sound “taking its own course.”
Presumably he was not thinking of the development or evolution of
musical structures in and of themselves but rather the sense of an
uninterrupted dying away of their acoustical essence towards

inaudibility. Perhaps he was imagining a meta-reverberation—
acoustically plausible—and its associated spatial implications. The use
of “bounded” suggests undesired restriction, while to “be in the
material” implies that not only reverberation but surrounding
antiphonies would be required to place the listener in the grip of
“acoustical vibration.” Other references (cf. 6, 13) reinforce this.
Jean-Claude Risset describes trying, for a 1987 event celebrating Le
Corbusier, “to project the Poème in space, as Varèse had imagined his
music being long before he could achieve it: but the space trajectories
were of course less elaborate than what could be done in Brussels [in
the Philips Pavilion].”2
2. TRANSMUTATION AND LIBERATION
Varèse’s experience stimulates the desire for spatialized sounds:
I began listening to the sounds around me from all directions and

imagined how such sounds, and in just such complexity, could be
transmuted into music. It excited and stimulated me to think
about the possibility of such a metamorphosis and I began to
imagine the invention of new devices that would make spatial
music possible—in other words, I dreamed of . . . the liberation of
sound, making available to composers all the new sounds of our
time with their rich emotive potential. I even entertained the hope
. . . that some day . . . my impossible idea of unrelated metrical
simultaneity would be made possible.
Varèse quoted in Alcopley: “Edgard Varèse on Music

and Art,” Leonardo 1, 1968, pp. 187–195
. . . electronic instruments are the portentous first step toward the

liberation of sound. As for the future (it must be understood that
I am considering only instrumental music, not vocal or choral
where the word, possessing secret powers, is the sovereign agent)
the interpreter will disappear like the story teller in literature after
the invention of printing.

Varèse’s reference to “sounds around me from all directions”

reinforces the above assumption of the necessity of antiphonies (at the
least) to concretize the evocative influence of reverberant sources.

“Metamorphosis” establishes the appropriate link between sounds that
exist outside the traditions of music and their absorption into Varèse’s
expanding concept of music. One thinks, for example, of the
unprecedented number of percussion instruments he employed
(especially instruments lacking specific, well-tempered pitch, and those
that have a nascent vocal quality such as the lion’s roar and sirens). The
“new devices” that Varèse anticipates here, are, then, concerned more
specifically with spatializing sound of whatever sort his imagined music
would include rather than with creating novel sound material. It seems
particularly significant that the experience of spatialized musical sound
is connected to emotional impact.
In relation to the emotional aspect of sound, Varèse privileges vocal
music and “the word with secret powers,” calling the latter
“sovereign.” One can extrapolate here that he understood how
language can, in fact, predispose us towards particular sorts of
experience—shaping our receptivity so as to privilege one set of
reactions over another.
Quoting from the Alcopley interview, John Strawn observes: “The
extraordinary orchestration and carefully notated, complicated dynamic
markings in Intégrales would strongly suggest that Varèse thought of a
loud, brilliant, present sound (sound source) as creating a sound mass
(auditory image) located in the vicinity of the listener. A soft, dull
sound, on the other hand, is to be heard and understood as being ‘far
away.’ Diminuendi, crescendi, and other transformations would
represent intermediate steps between these extremes.”3
3. INTÉGRALES’ CONCEPTION
I conceived Intégrales for spatial projection—that is, for certain

acoustical media not yet available but which I knew could be built
and would be available sooner or later . . .
Louise Varèse: “Statements by Edgard Varèse”

assembled with comments by L. Varèse, Soundings No.
10, 1976
Varèse is specific here: the conception of the piece not only suggests
spatial relationships, but its elements are conceived as subject matter
that is spatially “projectable.” The concluding phrase can, I believe, be
taken as implied permission for the identification of appropriate
elements specified in the score of Intégrales and their deployment
spatially with the technologies that now exist. Varèse makes specific the
fact that his conception included the anticipation of “acoustical
media . . . [that] . . . would be available sooner or later.” This, in turn,
argues against the idea that his instrumentation and compositional
deployments had already achieved to his satisfaction the spatial
projection he envisioned.
While in our musical system we deal with quantities whose values

are fixed, in the realization that I conceived the values would be
continually changing in relation to a constant. In other words, this
would be like a series of variations, the changes resulting from
slight alterations of the form of a function or by the transposition
of one function into another.
Louise Varèse: “Statements by Edgard Varèse,”

10, 1976
What does Varèse mean here when he says that the traditional
musical system has “fixed” values? One could posit that these
“qualities” include the tempered tuning system, the unchanging
physical structure (and therefore acoustic character) of the instruments
themselves, traditions of performance ideals, the conventions of
orchestral groupings (e.g., which instruments are used singly, which in
multiples), and the expectation of one unifying tempo that controls
the placement and coordination of all acoustic events in the music.
In 1980–81, John Chowning was at IRCAM in Paris working on his
computer-synthesized composition, Phoné. His efforts to contrast one
evolving collection of frequency components with another, to invoke
vocal-formant-like distinctiveness, were not producing a sufficiently
differentiated result. He decided to add a distinctive “jitter” to each
collection and found that, as a result of this subtle element-against-
element differentiation, the differing sets of frequency components
suddenly sprang into perceptual relief. One could try such an approach
with the components of Intégrales as well.
In this regard, John Strawn cites a decisive quotation from Varèse:
I hope in the near future to have at my disposal, equipment which

will allow for spatial relief. I would be interested, if only for the
sake of proving my point, in realizing Intégrales as they were
originally conceived.
Varèse quoted by John Strawn in a preliminary version

of “The Intégrales of Edgard Varèse . . .” that appeared
in Melos/Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik, 1975, p. 448 under
the title “Raum und Klangmasse in Vareses ‘Integrales’”
1(6):446–456, Nov/Dec 1975. The attribution there is:
Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik, 3:65–71
Here, Varèse renders explicit the proposal inferable above, indicating

that such spatially transformed presentation of the elements in
Intégrales was explicitly desired.
Strawn also draws attention to two footnotes in the Intégrales score4
where Varèse specifies:
“Cltte., Cor., Trptte., Trbne.—très homogènes et équilibrés—

légèrement au 2me plan”
Intégrales, m. 203, Colfranc 1980
Showing that the composer explicitly identifies this composite

sound-mass as made up of a carefully balanced sonority in the high and
low registers, and that this composite is to be considered a plane.
Similarly:
“Clarinettes; = sonorité creuse (légèrement dominantes)”
and
“Cor., Trptte. en ut, 3me Trombone, très equilibrés;—Ptes. Fls.,

Hb., presque au 2me plan; Trptte. en ré, à l’arrière plan.”
Intégrales, m. 178, Colfranc 1980
And:
“En dehors—au meme plan que le Trombone jusqu’a 5”
Octandre II, m. 43, Ricordi 1956
Strawn draws the conclusion that in “footnotes from Intégrales and

Octandre, a single instrument is specifically labeled ‘mass’ or ‘plane.’
Finally, the desire to create a spatial impression has been spelled out
here in so many words: the mass of the trumpet is supposed to sound as
though it were further away from the listener than the other masses.”
So an important cautionary emerges: the terms “figure,” “mass,”

and “plane” are sometimes used by Varèse in what one would admit to
be a loose fashion. One must be prepared to consider any sound
element, whether an unaccompanied line, or a massed, multi-voiced
chord, to have a sonic palpability meriting the term “mass,” and that,
further, anything with mass can be considered a “plane” susceptible to
projected influence.
A visual illustration may make clear what I mean: Imagine the

projection of a geometrical figure on a plane with both figure and
plane moving in space, each with its own arbitrary and varying
speeds of translation and rotation. The immediate form of the
projection is determined by the relative orientation between the
figure and the plane. [By allowing both the figure and the plane]
to have motions of their own, a highly complex and seemingly
unpredictable image will result.

10, 1976 (inserted clarification on the basis of inference)
If the fixed values referred to earlier are taken as a given, a “series of

variations” could indeed follow from “slight alterations of the form of
a function.” Let us posit that a “function” would allow subtle variation
of the normally fixed nature of the qualities listed above (subtle
because Varèse specifies that the alterations are “slight”): It would be
possible to shift the tuning of some elements within the whole relative
to one another or to change timbral relationships by systematically and
categorically altering the spectral character of individual instruments or
instrumental composites over time. In the latter case, this could be
done expressive-unit by expressive-unit (phrase by phrase or motive by
motive). And, in order to bring into the picture “the transposition of
one function into another,” one could gradually alter the timbral
identity of individual elements in opposing directions as they interact
according to Varèse’s “rhythms” (cf. 8 below.) So, for the purpose of
an Eb-clarinet could morph into a muted trumpet, while the trio of

brightening or dulling the acoustic character of component sonorities,
trombones morphed from soloistic brass to sectional strings

(trombone, bass trombone, and contrabass trombone to violas, cellos,
and contrabasses).
Japanese artist Jiro Takamatsu (1936–1998) was noted for his
shadow paintings. His canvases showed only the vestiges of objects
implied by shadow shapes but not present in the paintings. Sometimes
an object would be represented by more than one shadow. This could

occur because its position relative to the plane of the canvas changed,
or that the light source casting the shadow altered its position. An
extension of this work, so closely allied to Varèse’s imaginings, would
entail the dynamic alteration of the shadow-generating object, while its
position relative to the canvas, or that of the required light-source
relative to object and canvas-plane, were simultaneously changing.
Further variations are possible by having the form of the

geometrical figure vary as well as the speeds.

10, 1976
A difficulty with Varèse’s illustration is encountered in establishing a

parallel between the three elements required in his visual case (light-
source, object, and plane of projection) and those that could be felt to
exist in an acoustic circumstance. Specifically: What operates in the role
of the visual light-source? If we think in literal terms, we are confined
to reverberation as the “plane of projection,” and this is unsatisfactory.
In Varèse’s illustration, we are clearly expected to have both (musical)
“figures” and also planes. It would be necessary to look beyond his
rudimentary visual analogy in order to build a comprehensive picture
of his intentions.
4. CHARACTERISTICS OF AN IMAGINED MUSIC
No matter how consummate a work of art may seem, it is only an

approximation of the original conception. And it is the artists
consciousness of this discrepancy between his conception and the
realization that assures progress.
Edgard Varèse: No. 5 of 7 aphorisms in “Puff Balls”

(Santa Fe Lecture), September 2, 1937, SS
The electronic medium is . . . adding an unbelievable variety of

new timbers to our musical store, but most important of all, it has
freed music from the tempered system, which prevented music
from keeping pace with the other arts and with science.
Composers are now able, as never before, to satisfy the dictates of
that inner ear of the imagination.
Edgard Varèse: “The Electronic Medium” (Lecture at

the Yale School of Music), February 8, 1962, TS SS
When new instruments will allow me to write music as I conceive

it, taking the place of the linear counterpoint, the movement of
sound-masses, of shifting planes, will be clearly perceived.
Edgard Varèse: “New Instruments and New Music,” in

“The Liberation of Sound,” edited by Chou Wen-
chung, Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1966
The reference to “new instruments” here must be taken to imply

technological rather than traditionally constructed musical
instruments. (Varèse’s certainty [“. . . will allow . . .”] is bracing.)
Further, I take “linear counterpoint” to imply a musical counterpoint
of lines embedded in a consistent harmonic framework. There is no
conceptual problem posed by the idea of moving sound masses, or
their interactions. The “shifting planes” are perplexing, however. How
is a mass to cast its metaphoric shadow upon a “plane” without an
energy source that relates the two as light relates an occluding object
to the plane on which its shadow is cast?
One might recast Varèse’s image slightly and bring into the
argument the phenomenon of auditory masking. Then, if one mass of
sound obscures another (or perturbs its apparent behavior), the
changing outcome would be experienced auditorily. The illustrative
image would then shift from visual shadows to a related phenomenon:
occlusion (one thing prevents us from perceiving another behind it).
This phenomenon occurs in Varèse’s graphic art in the second part of
“The last word is: Imagination.” Also note Varèse’s use of “. . . certain
opacities . . .” as this quote continues below.
When these sound-masses collide, the phenomena of penetration

or repulsion will seem to occur.

Generalizing from “projection” to penetration or repulsion should

not be problematic. Clearly, two distinctive sonic behaviors can exist
(and be perceived) as independent entities though in simultaneous
occurrence. Imagine two differently articulated sets of brief attacks—
registrally and temporally distinctive fields—one produced by string
pizzicati, the other by woodwind staccatos. The sensation of

penetrating co-existence could certainly occur.
Although Varèse has not explicitly included lines or beam-like
incantations in his argument here, he does elsewhere. They are, in any
case, allowed by implication as argued above. “Penetration” is now
more clearly implied, actually manifested in Intégrales—where thematic
sequences are affected by interjected masses—than it is by the
penetration of contrasting masses.
Repulsion is a far easier sonic behavior to manifest: one mass can be
dimensionally attenuated (less intensity, less density, less timbral
brightness, altered register) relative to another as a result of their
proximity, or both may be so modified so as to imply auditorily their
dynamically altering physical relationships.
Certain transmutations taking place on certain planes will seem to

be projected onto other planes, moving at different speeds and at
different angles. There will no longer be the old conception of
melody or interplay of melodies. The entire work will be a melodic
totality. The entire work will flow as a river flows.

“Transmutations” can be understood in relation to the discussion

under 2 above. But a concatenation of events on one plane being
projected onto yet another plane seems uncharacteristically intricate for
Varèse, whose merits lie so strongly in his capacity for concision and
pragmatism, even in music that carries his most fanciful imaginings.
Differing “speeds and angles,” however, fit easily within the evolving
perspective being argued here.
“The old conception of melody” here referenced can be assumed to
include not only the phenomenon of thematic, expressive lines, but
also (as indicated above) compounds in “linear counterpoint.” In a
traditional context, counterpoint requires adherence to a prevailing set
of allowed harmonic verticalities. Although the precise nature of such
vertical restriction varies with historical period, its presence allows a
complex of differentiated linear elements to coexist without undue
acoustical clotting, interference, or, in psychoacoustic terms,
“masking.” So, if “melody” itself is to be done away with—presumably
by replacing melodic lines with sound-masses and other like constructs
—then Varèse’s earlier specification that transformations should be
“slight” in the successions of variant behaviors means that we will have
a music of carefully balanced and subtly differentiated elements that

will interact (penetrate and repulse, etc.), but in such a way that basic
commonalities still insure both the sense of a “totality” that a river
imposes on the viewer by its content as well as the content’s behavior
in relation to the river’s course, and also something of the expressive
flux that traditional melodies are invested with.
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, a feeling akin to that aroused by beams of
light sent forth by a powerful searchlight—for the ear as for the
eye, that sense of projection, of a journey into space.

Psychologist Stephen McAdams has written of “musical

dimensions”: the physical characteristics of sound and the associated
psychoacoustic perceptions.5 Varèse is not as precise here as in many of
his other thoughtful pronouncements. One can understand his use of
the “horizontal,” the “vertical,” and of dynamic variability as
metaphoric dimensions affecting musical experience. But “sound
projection” appears to be in a different category than the others. It is a
“feeling” rather than an objectifiable, relational behavior.
The feeling that “sound is leaving us with no hope of being reflected
back” conflates a number of factors. A sound is felt to leave us when it
seems to be moving into the distance. This involves the coordinated
ways in which associated amplitude, spectral character, and
reverberation behave. Distance is a distinct and palpable perception.
What is remarkable here, is Varèse’s attached sense of irrevocable loss.
His statement links the diminutions of increasing auditory distance
vividly with aspiration, loss, even an implied fatalism. This, in turn,
suggests that distance cues are of particular importance for Varèse in
matters spatial, and perhaps not only because they were within his
grasp, firstly in relation to reverberation (discussed in 1) but also as
manifested several times in Poème Électonique as sets of an element
sounded, then repeated twice with diminishing intensity and increasing
reverberation.
It is admittedly not entirely clear what Varèse means by “space.”
Presumably there are two primary inferences to be made: the physical
(and associated psychoacoustical) context within which we experience
music (to the front, the rear, left, right, above . . .), and that described
by the “vertical” (registral location/pitch height) and “horizontal”
(behavior over time) aspects of musical sound. There may be a third:
an implied emotional space, its axes proximity/confidence/
assertiveness against distance/doubt/inertness.
Today with the technical means that exist and are easily adaptable,
the differentiation of the various masses and different planes as
well as these beams of sound, could be made discernible to the
listener by means of certain acoustical arrangements.

For example, by placing loudspeakers which reproduce faithfully

the different emissions in various parts of the hall, regulated by the
demands of the score and by the acoustics of the hall. I must,
however, admit that while the microphone makes it possible to
capture any sound whatsoever, the emission horn is still far from
being up to its task. But as the work of the perfectionment [sic]
continues this handicap can readily be overcome. You can see
again how necessary it is for the composer and scientist to
collaborate.
We can easily concur with Varèse’s assertion above, now, at the

beginning of the twenty-first century. But, in 1936, it was still in the
realm of an optimist’s imagination. There is a novel element in the
argument: beams of sound, and this musical component does find
immediate application in Varèse’s composed products (cf. especially
under 9). It is, not incidentally, easy to forgive his resort to vague
generalization here regarding “certain acoustical arrangements.”
Though the capacities he envisioned were not then realizable, his
intuition and certainty regarding their later emergence was correct.
Moreover, such an acoustical arrangement will permit of the

delimitation of what I call zones of intensities. These zones will be
differentiated by various timbres, obtainable by loading the
fundamentals with certain harmonics or by the filtrations of the
fundamentals. By such a physical process these zones will appear
of different colors and intensities.
It is not immediately clear what use the concept of “zones of

intensity” will have. Here, he is concerned with the kinds of
differentiation he rightly imagines as possible through additive
synthesis of partial components (see below). It is worth noting,
however, that Varèse’s concern with intensity is lifelong and central.
His argument also refers to zones as being “delimited” so one is
tempted to see this new metric as having spatial specificity, acting as a
metaphoric container that could hold several sound-masses/sound-
beams in mutual interaction. All of these are then simultaneously
affected in the realm of timbre and dynamic such that contrasting
zones (with their differing content differently altered) could jointly
enrich the musical experience.
“The filtrations of the fundamentals” is problematic. If one is using
—as Varese does here—the image of composite tones made up of
“harmonics,” then the fundamental is already a singular element and
could not be filtered into sub-components.
The role of color, or timbre, will be completely changed, from

being incidental it will become an integral part of form.
The role of color or timbre would be completely changed from

being incidental, anecdotal, sensual or picturesque; it would
become an agent of delineation like the different colors on a map
separating different areas, and an integral part of form.

The “completely changed” claim feels excessive. Surely, instrumental

and vocal color have been used as agents of delineation as well as in
accord with the terms in Varèse’s more derisive listing. Still, the idea
that emerges here is allied to the invocation of jitter above (cf. 3):
“color” (timbre) is a phenomenon that can cause categorical
distinctions without unduly obscuring or altering fundamental content
and character.
“Isolation,” below, may be a perceptually unrealistic term here, and,
as with “loss of hope,” also above, lends an emotional weighting to
Varèse’s assertion: “non-blending” (inability to meld perceptually . . .
or to commune easily with others?) signifies isolation with all its
inferences. (One cannot help thinking of the long-term operatic
project—with which Varèse was engaged at the time of this seminal

lecture—The One All Alone.)
It is assumed, here, that “non-blending” characterizes the
relationships between the contents of several co-existent zones.
It is interesting to consider why Varèse chose to use a negative
formulation for such an essential sensation. It emphasizes what will not
be allowed rather than what is sought, and thereby leaves the issue of
identifying and enumerating the characteristics of the potential
components unnecessary: whatever the nature of the several elements
in an acoustical situation, the desired effect is that they shall not seem
to blend.
These zones will be felt as isolated, and the hitherto unobtainable

non-blending will be made possible. In the moving masses you
will be conscious of their transmutations when they pass over
different layers, when they penetrate certain opacities, or are
dilated in certain rarefactions.
One should note, again, the importance, in Varèse’s strategic

arsenal, of achieving spatial distinctiveness. The passing over by masses
of “different layers” is at first unclear in its implications. (It is
somewhat less so in relation to Varèse’s graphic art.) The penetration
process, as elaborated above, certainly allows for introducing the visual
concept of “opacity.”
“Dilation” and “rarefaction” represent new factors in this
astonishing discourse. It can be assumed that the reference is to the
vertical spacings of harmonic entities: that is to say, alterations in the
octave positioning of a given set of pitch classes. Varèse was the
unrivaled master of strategic dilation. Its relevance at this point in the
evolving argument is that it directly relates to the phenomenon of
opacity: when given pitch collections are arrayed in pitch space
appropriately (by the precisely considered octave disposition of
individual pitches in relation to their timbral vehicles [i.e., the
sounding instruments]), it is possible for them to co-exist in
powerfully interactive ways without obscuring one another to a
beams of the Eb clarinet (or muted trumpet or oboe) penetrate the two
significant degree. Such behavior is heard in Intégrales when the sonic
and Bb clarinet against the lower one articulated by trombone, bass

part-harmonic mass (with an upper element made up of two piccolos
trombone, and contra-bass trombone).
Moreover, new musical apparatus [sic], able to emit sounds of any

number of frequencies, will extend the limits of the lowest and
highest registers, hence new organizations of the vertical
resultants: chords, their arrangements, their spacing, that is, their
oxygenation.
The envisioned “musical apparatus” again enlarges (and somewhat

deflects) Varèse’s argument. Here, it is probable (cf. 6) that he is
referring to the possibility of creating the precisely imagined and
controlled timbres and tuning relationships that are possible with
additive synthesis. This process employs the combination of pure sine
waves as “partial” components of the coordinated overtone complexes
(changing over time) that define the characteristic sonorities of each
instrument, if assessed from the perspective of Fourier analysis.
Though it is true that electronically synthesized sounds can reach
upper or lower limits of frequency not obtainable by normal acoustic
instruments, psychoacoustical limitations come into play. The healthy
human ear can respond to frequencies in roughly the range of 20–
20,000 cycles per second. As one approaches these limits, however, the
ability to pull the sensation received into a sensory percept diminishes
(or more precisely, alters). For example, note the difference between
the upward-striving soprano phase in Nocturnal (which reaches a high
C) as compared with the version of a similar gesture used in Poème
Électonique. The electronic version goes up to the G above the
(humanly feasible) C but its intensity seems to diminish as a result of
its registral extremity.
Varèse goes on to elaborate the variety of results that the abundance
of frequency components from his envisioned apparatus would make
available: from individual tones; to non-standard “spacings” within
both individual tones, and within their compounds; and as
components of chords and then also between chords. The term
“oxygenation” eloquently evokes the phenomenon of strategic
rarefaction which he practiced so masterfully with instruments.
Not only will the harmonic possibilities of the overtones be

revealed in all their splendor but the use of certain interferences
created by the partials will represent an appreciable contribution.
The never before thought of use of the inferior resultants and of
the differential and additional sounds may also be expected. An
entirely new magic of sound!
The passage above establishes that Varèse had internalized Helmoltz

and others (such as John Redfield, especially in Music, a Science and an
Art, Knopf, 1928) who explained the psycho-physics of auditory
perception. Everything in his comment is plausible. It seems as though
Varèse can scarcely contain himself here, and extends yet further the
strikingly specific and largely comprehensible argument that he has laid
out. He notes the (genuine) possibility that individual components of
tones (say, if the rising numerical value of successive partial
components are not strictly integral) could “interfere” with one
another and create artifacts as a result (amplitude modulations that can
be experience as buzzings or pulsating), and of similar interactions
between chords themselves (“penetrations” and local “repulsions”).
Presumably “inferior” (lower, not lesser), “differential,” and
“additional” sounds all relate to well-understood phenomena such as
difference or combination tones.
Risset discusses Varèse’s dissatisfaction with primitive synthesized
sounds: “He insisted that it was essential to find ways to inject life into
synthetic sounds. He was too often turned off by the fixity of
electronic or computer sounds. He hated embalmed sounds, sounds
prepared by morticians—
. . . one does not make music with corpses. . . .
“He was fully aware that the issue was not making ersatz of
instruments, but understanding the cues of the life, the richness and
the identity of brass tones: such understanding could be used for
inventing rather than imitating.”6
The emotional impulse that moves a composer to write his scores

contains the same element of poetry that incites the scientist to his
discoveries. There is a solidarity between scientific development
and the progress of music. Throwing new light on nature, science
permits music to progress—or rather to grow and change with
changing times—by revealing to our senses harmonies and
sensations before unfelt. On the threshold of beauty science and
art collaborate.

Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, edited
by Elliott Schwarz and Barney Childs. Holt, Reinhart,
Winston, 1970. From the chapter “The Liberation of
Sound”
Anderson makes a sweeping and persuasive argument for the degree

to which Varèse maintained an informed amateur’s awareness of the
evolving view that scientists were developing regarding the behavior of

the physical world. What is far less clear in his discussion is exactly
which musical elements or strategies in Varèse’s music reflected his
larger science orientation.
In particular, Anderson observes that “Rutherford and other writers
on atomic physics used the term transformation to describe the process
of radioactive decay. In 1930, however, Rutherford adopted the more
accurate term transmutation. . . . In 1936, Varèse used the term
transmutation for the first time to describe his own variation
procedures.”7 Of particular interest here is the potential connectivity
between the influence of alchemy present in Varèse’s intellectual circles
early in his life and the later, differently founded emergence of a similar
procedural implication, this time informed by physics.
5. INDEPENDENCE
Varèse proposed a film that would be fit to the pre-existent score of

Déserts.
Visual images and music or, as I prefer to say, organized sound

will not duplicate each other. Light and sound are of different
essence, eye and ear do not behave in the same way, their
limitations and reactions are not the same. For the most part, light
and sound will work in opposition in such a way as to give the
maximum emotional reaction; sometimes they will join for
dramatic effect and to create a feeling of unity. For example, well-
timed silences might at times be the only accompaniment of visual
turbulence or terror, instead of the usual procedure—the noisily
imitative crescendo. Or in some calm, contemplative scene, the
music might evoke quite a different event taking place far away
and unrelated in mood, but which will help create, through
contrast, a feeling of space and time and of universality. These
contrasts achieved through the synchronization of simultaneous,
unrelated elements would create a dissociation of ideas which
would excite the imagination and stimulate the emotions. At other
times both sound and image would join in a kind of visual and
sonorous counterpoint.
Edgard Varèse: Déserts, Film Project, July 1949–50, TS SS
It is fascinating to read how prescient Varèse was in relation to

intermedial aesthetics, how clearly he grasped the dangers of
illustrative description between media. One regrets the temporal

misalignment of his vision from the eventual maturation of
technologies that now allow complex and dimensional amalgams that
do, indeed, evoke feelings “of space and time and of universality.”
His film proposal is considered at length because it provides an
unusual occasion for insight into his process of consideration as a
creative project evolved and had to face pragmatic limits. Though it is
not technical in nature, it is unusually thorough in its arguments for
the balance between elements, as well as the significance of these
elements in the actual outcome.
Olivia Mattis quotes Varèse, in response to a question from Georges

Charbonnier:
It is imperative that the film be in complete opposition to the

score. Only through opposition can paraphrase be avoided. To
certain violences in the music must correspond images of opposite
character. Violent sounds shall coincide, for example, with images
bereft of all violence. . . . these images will never be descriptive.
The voice shall be avoided, thus any dialogue. There will be no
mixing of the human, vocal element with the organized sound and
the instrumental ensemble.
Varèse, quoted in Olivia Mattis: “Varèse’s Multimedia

Conception of Déserts,” Musical Quarterly Vol. 76, No.
4, Winter 1992
This passage recalibrates aspects of a larger argument or is, at the

least, to be taken as a caution. While at some stages of his life, Varèse
specifies the desirability of “slight” differences as appropriate to his
purposes. As time passed and experience accumulated, he seems to
have determined that differentiation, true independence, was more
difficult to achieve (to project) than he had earlier thought. The
intensity of distinctions became a more urgent matter, even to
“complete opposition.”
Varèse’s proposal was sent to Merle Armitage in the hope that Walt
Disney would read it.
The idea of this project is to produce a picture new in conception

in its relationship between images and sound. Not a travelogue or
anecdotical [sic], this picture will reveal certain aspects of the
U.S.A., its theme being the American deserts.
By deserts must be understood all deserts: deserts of earth (sand,

snow, mountain), deserts of sea, deserts of the sky (nebula,
galaxies, etc.), and deserts of the mind of man.
Edgard Varèse: “DESERTS,” unpublished TS

accompanying a letter from Varèse to Merle Armitage,
July 4, 1952. Quoted in Mattis, “Varèse’ Multimedia
Conception of Déserts,” p. 561–2
Characteristically, here, Varèse elaborates an objective picture with

an emotive or metaphoric extension. Space(s) and emotion are
inseparable for him.
For this multiple conception of deserts, visual image and sound

will be used each in its unique way to communicate the beauty
and the mystery of that solitude which finds such an intense,
though perhaps not consciously understood, response in every
human heart. . . .
For the realization of my project the score will be written first,

rehearsed and recorded on the sound track. Duration, 20 to 30
minutes, approximately. The score will be a complete unit in itself.
The dynamic, tensions, rhythms (or better RHYTHM, element of
stability) will naturally be calculated with the film as a whole in
mind.

The degree to which independence between music and film is to be

enforced is repeatedly emphasized. Also, as will be seen below in 8,
Varèse understood rhythm in an idiosyncratic way: it seems to have
signified for him the felt balances of weight between successive,
contrasted musical elements or passages: “. . . [the] simultaneous
interplay of unrelated elements that intervene at calculated, but not
regular, time lapses. . . .” His concept supports experiential stability
without the expected regularities that normally insure reliable co-
orienting.
The director of the photography will familiarize himself

thoroughly with the score and details be discussed before he starts
his shooting exhibition. From the film material he brings back, a
choice will be made, a continuity extracted, in which images,

sequences etc. will be used to obtain planes and volumes which
will be organized and so composed as to obtain a final montage to
be fitted to the already existing musical construction.
This description bears an inferential resemblance to the composer’s

own creative methods, surely echoing the process by which he sought
sound materials (industrial, instrumental, vocal) as he prepared to
engage with the Déserts electroacoustic interpolations. The frustrations
he often felt over material itself—the technical impossibility of
constructed sounds—was pragmatically addressed by the incorporation
of “found sounds,” extended percussion, and non-traditional devices
(sirens, Ondes Martenot, Theremin) that he came across. He is known
to have made forays into various sonically interesting environments
with tape recorder and microphone, and to have, in the case of Poème
électronique, composed extensive source materials that were recorded
and then also “mined” for components of electro-acoustical montages.
The phenomenon of collage was a natural part of his ways. Many of
the paper sheets upon which he inscribed sketches of various sorts are
themselves collages of envelopes, of “found surfaces” glued together.
Such “economies” were chosen, rather than imposed by economic
hardship. Louise noted that “Varèse always preferred making things to
buying things readymade. For his work paper he used to open up the
envelopes that came in his mail and paste them on pieces of yellow
copy paper, brown wrapping paper, anything at hand, making long
strips, often of two or three feet, on which he would draw his staffs
and write down his musical ideas, often with colored inks.”8
It is also notable that Varèse, again, quite casually extends to the
visual realm his concepts of “composed” “planes and volumes.”
The views of earth, sky, water will be filmed in parts of the

American deserts: California (Death Valley), New Mexico,
Arizona, Utah, Alaska: sand deserts, lonely stretches of water
anywhere, solitudes of snow, steep deserted gorges, abandoned
roads, ghost towns, etc. For star galaxies, nebulae, mountains of
the moon, existing photographs could be used. Cameras: 35
millimeter, black and white, infrared, (if desirable colour),
telescopic. The whole must give a sense of timelessness, legend,
Dantesque apocalyptic phantasmagoria.


Again, emotional linkages are paired with physical phenomena:

“lonely stretches,” “solitudes of snow,” “deserted gorges,” “abandoned
roads.” These pairings not only underscore the role of feeling in
elevating specifics but begin to suggest a kind of verbal timbre.
I have chosen deserts because I feel them and love them, and
because in the United States this subject offers unlimited
possibility of images which are the very essence of a poetry and
magic which few people realize are to be found in this country.
I think that the time is right for such an undertaking. People

realize more and more that quality not only counts but is
beginning to pay. It might also be interesting to stress later on
that this is the first time that a score has been written with a film
in mind before the photographs were taken.

One wonders what prompted this extension of ideals towards such

pragmatic confidence, particularly given the composer’s mental state
during this period. It is also interesting to note this rare and open
praise for the American context.
Anderson makes a significant observation in relation to Varèse’s
practice of creating unusually independent but simultaneous streams of
musical activity (as, for example, with the role of the larger percussion
contingents in Hyperprism and Intégrales, coexisting with a wind
ensemble): “The operative basis of Varèse’s concept of ‘metrical
simultaneity’ places different voices in different frames of reference
with respect to motion and time. Metrical simultaneity, as a concept,
not only mimicked the aesthetic of its scientific counterpart, but also
fulfilled the dictum of Hoëné-Wronski . . . that ‘the FIRST
PRINCIPLE of this art considered as science consists in the aesthetic
modifications of time, which, alone, constitute a priori a corporeal-
ization of spirit or intelligence forming the object of music.’ In
establishing multiple and simultaneous frames of time reference for the
listener, Varèse had certainly modified the commonly understood
perception of musical duration.”9
Anderson’s insight is undercut, even rendered abstract, by the fact

that it is rare that an individual stratum in Varèse’s music is “metrical”
in a perceived sense, so that the notion of simultaneous streams of
musical activity being felt as “metrical simultaneity” is very
improbable, indeed. What is rather indicated by this term is that
several strata of activity coexist but have individual temporal character.
6. A “SOUND-PRODUCING MACHINE”
As early as 1917, Varèse had written:
I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which, with

their contribution to a whole new world of unsuspected sounds,
will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.
Varèse, as translated from the French by Gilbert Chase:

America’s Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present,
McGraw-Hill, 1987
I am sure that the time will come when the composer, after he has
graphically realized his score, will see this score automatically put
on a machine which will faithfully transmit the musical content to
the listener. . . .
This instrument—producer and not reproducer of sound—will

give the composer possibilities of sound combination far beyond
the powers of the present human-power orchestra. Any number of
frequencies will be made possible; any intensity, any differentiation
of timbre and unsuspected range in the low and in the high
registers; new dynamics.
From this very early statement, it can be seen that Varèse’s vision
encompassed the idea (now an often problematic commonplace
through the availability of the MIDI medium) that an imagined and
then graphically specified music might be directly transferred into
sound without an “unfaithful” intermediary: the performer.
Varèse’s repeated Guggenhiem Fellowship applications (from 1932-36)

proposed:
To pursue work on an instrument for the producing of new

sounds. To inspect other new inventions in certain laboratories in
order to discover if any of them could serve my new sound
conceptions. To submit to the technicians of different
organizations my ideas in regard to the contribution which music
—mine at least—looks for from science, and to prove to them the
necessity of a closer collaboration between composer and scientist.
Chou, Wen-chung, “‘Open Rather Than Bounded,’”

Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1966
Although, from a 21st-century perspective, Varèse’s failure to receive

support for his designs seems astonishing, it is the case that he was
markedly out of phase with other currents of the early to mid 30s, and
that he was not in a position to make as specific a proposal as could
have better served his hopes. What he proposed—as indicated here—is
not to do the work required himself but to enter into a process of
exploration at the interface between art and science. This interface
remains problematic even now.
. . . the composers who have not only good physical ears, but who
are also endowed with the inner ear, the ear of the imagination,
have for years been hearing a new music made up of sounds which
the old instruments cannot give them. But it has not occurred to
them when they hear their imagination combinations [sic] of
sounds which neither strings, wind instruments nor percussion can
produce to demand those sounds from science.

I no longer wish to compose for the old instruments played by

men, and I am handicapped by a lack of adequate electrical
instruments for which I conceive my music.
Varèse, quoted in Virgil Thomson: American Music

Since 1910, New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1960
Very early musical ideas came to me which I realized would be

difficult or impossible to express with the means available, and my
thinking even then began turning around the idea of liberating
music from the tempered system, from the limitations of musical
instruments and from years of bad habits, erroneously called
tradition. I studied Helmholz, and was fascinated by his

experiments with sirens described in his Physiology of Sound. Later
I made some modest experiments of my own and found that I
could obtain beautiful parabolic and hyperbolic curves of sound,
which seemed to me equivalent to the parabolas and hyperbolas in
the visual domaine.
Edgard Varèse: “Autobiographical Remarks” (From a

talk given at the Princeton Seminar of Advanced Musical
Studies), September 4, 1959, TS SS
And in relation to the imagined music-making machine itself:
. . . here are the advantages I anticipate: . . . liberation from the

arbitrary, paralyzing, tempered system; the possibility of obtaining
any number of cycles or, if still desired, subdivisions of the octave,
and consequently the formation of any desired scale; unsuspected
range in low and high registers; new harmonic splendors
obtainable from the use of subharmonic combinations now
impossible.
Edgard Varèse: “Freedom for Music” (lecture given at

the University of Southern California), 1939, in The
American Composer Speaks: A Historical Anthology:
1770–1965, edited by Gilbert Chase, 1966, Louisiana
State University Press
The advantages enumerated here would have had variable utility in

Varèse’s music. Perhaps microtonal adjustments could have become
significant in refining mass identity and intrazone distinction, but he
learned how to use instrumental timbre and registral placement
compensatorily. Though several of the above passages cite microtonal
specificity as an anticipated advantage to be gained from technology,
there is very little evidence in his scores or sketches that tuning was a
central concern of his (although the overtone series, the relationship of
partial components to a fundamental was important). He seems also
not to have fully understood the degree to which synthetic sound
sources might add useful span to registral variety already afforded by
traditional instrumental developments, and it is the case that this was,
for psychoacoustical reasons (cf. 4), a more limited horizon than he
envisioned.
. . . the possibility of obtaining any differentiation of timbre, of

sound-combinations, new dynamics far beyond the present
human-powered orchestra; a sense of sound-projection in space by

means of the emission of sound in any part or in many parts of the
hall as may be required by the score; cross rhythms unrelated to
each other, treated simultaneously, or to use the old word,
“counterpuntally,” since the machine would be able to beat any
number of desired notes, any subdivision of them, omission or
fraction of them—all these in a given unit of measure or time
which is humanly impossible to attain.
Edgard Varèse, “Freedom for Music” (lecture given at

the University of Southern California), 1939, in The
American Composer Speaks: A Historical Anthology:
1770–1965, edited by Gilbert Chase, 1966, Louisiana
State University Press
Certainly—in view of the fact that synthesized sound strategies are

not subject to the inertial characteristics of actual physical systems—a
larger range and rapidity of variation in the realms of dynamics, timbre,
and spatial positioning or movement is attainable.
The reference to temporal control that would allow “cross rhythms
unrelated to each other” requires further consideration (cf. 8, below).
. . . But grateful as we must be for the new medium, we should

not expect miracles from machines. . . . The musical principles
remain the same whether a composer writes for orchestra or
tape. . . . Rhythm and Form are still his most important problems
and the two elements of music most generally misunderstood.

talk Given at the Princeton Seminar of Advanced
Musical Studies), September 4, 1959, TS SS
7. ORCHESTRATION
. . . to me orchestration is an essential part of the structure of a

work. Timbres and their combinations—or better, quality of tones
and tone-compounds of different pitch, instead of being incidental
become part of the form, coloring and making discernible the dif-
ferent planes and various sound-masses, and so creating the sensa-
tion of non-blending. Variations in the intensity of certain tones
of the compounds modify the structure of the masses and planes.
Contrasting dynamics are based on the play of simultaneously
opposing loudnesses—loudness as defined by Harvey Fletcher as

“the magnitude of sensation.”
John Cage: “Edgard Varèse and Alexi Haieff Questioned

by Eight Composers,” Possibilities 1, 1947, pp. 96–98
Today, with the technical means that are readily adaptable, the
differentiation of the various masses of the different planes, as well
as these beams of sound, can be made discernible to the listener
by artful placing of loud-speakers to reproduce faithfully the tones
in divers parts of the hall, accompanied by other acoustical
arrangements. . . . By such a physical process . . . zones of
intensities can be created, each of a different “color.” The “color”
will thus become not incidental, but an integral part of the form.
“Varèse Envisions ‘Space’ Symphonies,” New York

Times, December 6, 1936
These latter statements, made through the medium of a newspaper

interview, cannot be fully relied upon. Still, in this formulation,
“zones” are locations in physical space, and their capacity to become,
as McAdams would say, “form-bearing,” is further abetted by “color”
(presumably, timbre) conferred by “acoustical arrangements.”
Varèse summarizes here clearly and precisely what was laid out above
in 3. There is some elaboration, however. Assuming that
“compounds” can refer to individual tones (and their partial
components), to chords, or to sound-masses, he now draws attention
to the role not of frequency differences but of dynamic variation. This
suggests that his experience as a composer had allowed him at least a
modicum of access to the sorts of controls he dreamed of: in this
instance, the simultaneous but reversed dynamic assertiveness of sound
components (lines, chords, pyramiding harmonic structures) inevitably
produces timbral cross-relationships. So, opposing loudnesses allowed
him to experience in a directly satisfying way the sorts of phenomena
he sought.
One also notes his increased awareness of the significant distinctions
between physical phenomena and psychoacoustical perception: the
“magnitude of sensation” is dependent, for example, not only on force
applied but upon register, as is implied by the quote from Fletcher
(then Acoustical Research Director at Bell Telephone Labs, according
to Chou Wen-chung [cf. “The Liberation of Sound”]).
Of particular interest is the way in which, throughout his life, the
degree to which the interplay of physical and psychoaocustic factors
seem to him to bear on structure, both local and formal. His thinking
evolved significantly from the imagined towards the comprehended
and manifest.
When teaching (on evidence from his time at UCSD, just before his
death) Morton Feldman—an admirer of Varèse—spoke incessantly of
“orchestration” in an expanded sense distinct from Varèse’s here. The
two extensions share, however, a core of concern regarding the
precision with which the aggregate decision-making affecting “the
quality of tones” should be undertaken. It seems clear from their
respective musics how serious and potentially productive such
attentiveness could prove: instrument, dynamic, register, attack-
character. They all matter together.
8. RHYTHM
The more I work and am confronted with new problems, the

more I am convinced that three essential principles are at the base
of all creation:
1. Inertia which is the principle of conservation of every pre-

existing state.
2. Force, not as effect but as cause which means the principle of

modification of a preexisting state.
...
3. Rhythm. This third principle, rhythm is begotten of the other

two. . . .
A characteristically radical and therefore unexpected characterization

of the bases of rhythm: the modification of inertia. Thus, for Varèse,
the place of periodicity and its metrical parsing is substantively
marginalized. More than two decades later, the emphasis was, indeed,
clearly on the radical view espoused in Santa Fe.
Rhythm is so often confused with metrics that I think it is a good

thing to redefine it from time to time, and worth dwelling on for
a moment in connection with my music. Rhythm is the element in
music that not only gives life to a work but holds it together. It is
the element of stability. Cadence or the regular succession of beats
and accents has really little to do with the rhythm of composition.
In my own works for instance rhythm derives from the
simultaneous interplay of unrelated elements that intervene at
calculated, but not regular, time lapses.

Particular weight should be attached to the term “unrelated

elements.” In traditional contexts, it is always assumed that musical
components of a whole are strongly and inevitably integrated: in terms
of harmonic organization, temporally, timbrally, and by motivic or
thematic correspondences. Varèse specifically distanced himself from
this perspective. There are, of course, certain connectivities maintained
under his new umbrella terms—sound-masses, zones of intensity, etc.
—but the musical effects that he sought appear to have depended upon
significant perceptual differences that he carefully heightened by various
imposed exclusivities: from the distinctions (in Intégrales) between the
incantatory sound beams and the masses penetrated, or, indeed, in
several works (e.g., Intégrales, Hyperprism, Déserts, Nocturnal) be-
tween a seemingly autonomous percussion layer and the “coincidental”
activities of instrumental or vocal forces.
But a more traditional awareness of rhythm and its import seems to

coexist for Varèse:
Since the earliest time, man has felt the urge to express his
admiration for heroic deeds, for the beauty around him, to sing
his joys and his sorrows. So primitive poetry as one-voice song was
born. Later when the bard or poet drew others to sing with him in
unison, came collective singing of rhythmed monody, which is the
origin of all music.
I must insist upon the word rhythm because from the beginning
in all the arts rhythm has played the principle role. Indeed the
entire structure of every creation is based on rhythm, and in Greek
civilization the rhythmic arts were given great importance,
tragedy, dance, music.
Edgard Varèse: “Sound, the Raw Material of Music,”

1938–39?, TS SS
This sort of apparent conflict (between “simultaneous interplay” on

the one hand and the implied regularity of “collective singing” on the
other) occurs frequently in Varèse’s life. He was able to maintain an
outlook that allowed for both progressive ideals and pragmatic
behavior (occasionally, as here, even marked by admiration for
historical rootedness).
One is arrested by the possible implications of the word
“calculated.” There is very limited evidence suggesting that it is to be
taken in a mathematical sense, by which is meant the formal use of
mathematical relationships and specific numerical processes (Strawn
does, however, present evidence in relation to the Golden Section
principle). In the sketches, occasional references to numerical specifics
occur, but usually in relation to tuning considerations rather than to
proportion or other temporal specification. It is clear, however, that
Varèse was interested in durations (measured in seconds), not only in
note values within a given tempo. He uses the potentially loaded term
“calculated” in many contexts, virtually assuring that it indicates
“thoughtfulness” rather than numbers. (In part two of “The Last
Word is: Imagination,” the implied relationships between time
durations and numerical proportion will be examined in relation to one
of the “spiral diagrams” Varèse produced.) Normatively, he seems to
have intended the term to imply conscious, deliberate, and careful
consideration. And “time lapse” is to be understood as “interval of
time.”
In “Conversation with Varèse” (Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 3, No.

2, 1965), Gunther Schuller quotes him:
The earlier works were what I would call more architectonic. I was
working with blocks of sound, calculated and balanced against
each other. I was preoccupied with volume in an architectural
sense, and with projection.
This more casual and embedded use of the word “calculated” in

conversation here appears to confirm that it is not intended literally.
It is interesting that “stability” is seen to depend upon the effective
balancing of an irregular succession of alternative or opposing states.
The firm rejection—in regard to rhythm—of metrics, regularity, accent
(patterns?) . . . pulls attention away from the moment and draws it
towards the larger formal experience of a musical work. Varèse was
extraordinarily successful at creating forms that, while abjuring, or at
the least obscuring, the elements of traditionally comprehensible
forms, nevertheless produced works of stunning formal compactness

and satisfying emotional/expressive completeness. It is not surprising
that he would have come to understand by 1959 how important his
signature capacity for powerful juxtapositioning of music elements,
moods, and materials loomed in the larger picture of his achievement.
And this gift of his was (and still is) even more difficult to speak
about clearly than were spatial ideals. What it involves is the capacity to
know when “enough” has been reached and it is time to move on, to
change, to counter, to extend, to restate differently, to pause (a less
frequent move for Varèse than sudden replacement). It is a capacity
closely allied with the task of the film editor. The notable practitioner
of this art, Walter Murch, has written that edit points should come at
—in fact just before—the moment a scene culminates so that the
energies that are propelling events for the viewer deposit her
unceremoniously at a different, perhaps a completely unexpected,
“position.” Murch describes finding the exact moment to cut at the
frame level, which is to say at a resolution of 1/24th of a second. He
states that, if he cannot determine this point reliably in several tries, he
has not understood the scene. Varèse, more than any other composer
within the cinematic era—more than Stravinsky—had an uncanny gift
for knowing when to, as Morton Feldman might have said, “make a
move.”10
This [the simultaneous interplay of elements] corresponds more

nearly to the definition of rhythm in physics and philosophy as “a
succession of alternate and opposite or correlative states.”

Musical Studies) September 4, 1959, TS SS
Varèse’s opinions on rhythm matter because they strongly emphasize

the importance that he assigned to the distinctiveness of musical
components in his works (perhaps “zones” would be the appropriate
term to use). The import of spatial contrasts and specificity is the major
force that could still be asserted now without disrupting the musical
relationships contained in his scores.
Varèse was quoted in the New York Times much earlier:
Mr. Varese’ particular interest is in composing rhythms in space as

well as rhythms in time. No startling achievements toward this end
can be realized until means are developed for transmitting musical
sounds electrically from the instruments to different sections of

the auditorium. . . . Were this possible, the symphony could be
broken down into its component patterns and then reblended
through diversely situated amplifiers, thus relating rhythms of
space to the rhythms of time and pitch.
“Varese Envisions ‘Space’ Symphonies,” New York

Times, December 6, 1936
In regard to his “imagined music” and its enabling machine (c.f.

3), Varèse wrote: The composer will be able to speculate on the
wealth of polyrhythmic possibilities; cross rhythms unrelated to
each other treated contrapuntally, as the machine would be able
to beat any number of desired notes, any subdivision of them,
omission or fraction of them . . . all this in a given unit of measure
which is humanly impossible to obtain.
As frequencies and new rhythms will have to be indicated on the

score, our actual notation will be inadequate. The new notation
will be seismographic.
Within the temporal realm over which he had control—the rhythmic

character of conducted ensemble materials—Varèse clearly showed far
greater interest in differentiating strata (e.g., winds from percussion) or
imposing rhetorical unanimity than he did in the intricacies of
“subdivisions” of beats that were “humanly impossible.” So, it might
have been that his envisioned, “sound-producing machine” would
have led him in quite unexpected musical directions.
9. FORM
Impressionism is founded upon man’s experience of light.

Cubism is based on man’s experience of form.
Edgard Varèse: “Twentieth-Century Tendencies in

Music,” 1948, TS SS
It is imagination that gives form to dreams.
The 6th in a set of 7 aphoristic statements “Puff Balls”

(Santa Fe Lecture), September 2, 1937, TS SS
It is obvious to all of us who have eyes, that—as the dictionary

says—form is the shape or external appearance, configuration of a
body. . . . But when we want to describe the form of such things
as water . . . obviously the definition will be of a different kind.
Here we speak of essential form or substantial form, which is that
mode of existence that constitutes a thing what it is [sic], and
without which it would not exist. . . .
For me the form of a work its identity is always dictated by its own
substance, its inner content.
Edgard Varèse: “The Evolution of Musical Form”

(Lecture at Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY),
October 13, 1943—April 1944, Lecture 1, Form 13
October
As was the case with Rhythm (8, above), Varèse depicts a powerfully
fundamental picture of how form is to be understood: “essential form”
is dictated by what a thing is, by its “inner content.”
In conversation with Risset, Varèse extended his concept practically:
One could compose in terms of energy fluxes. There are interplays

and fights between different states of matters—like confrontations
between characters in a play. Form is the result of these
confrontations.
Jean-Claude Risset: “The Liberation of Sound, Art-

Science and the Digital Domain: Contacts With Edgard
Varèse,” Contemporary Music Review, Vol. 23, No. 2,
June 2004, pp. 27–54
In 1 above, Varèse is quoted as saying “I want to try to make clear

to you how I have come to conceive of music as spatial and how I
imagine rhythm in music as Order and Proportion in Time and Space.”
In discussions of Form, one expects Proportion to be of high
importance, but, however favorably we may view his handling of this
feature in the music, there is very little in the record (texts, sketches)
that seems concerned with proportion in an explicit way.
As for form—Busoni said: “Is it not singular to demand of a

composer originality in all things and to forbid it as regards form.
No wonder that if he becomes original he is accused of
formlessness.” The misunderstanding has come from thinking of
form as a point of departure, a pattern to be followed, a mold to

be filled. Form is the result of a process. Each of my works
discovers its own form. I have never tried to fit my conceptions
into any known container. If you take a rigid box of a definite
shape (call it a sonata box) and you want to fill it you must have
something that is the same shape and size or that is elastic or soft
enough to be made to fit. But if you try to force into it something
of a different shape and harder substance even if its volume and
size are the same, it will break the box.

Of course the work itself does not possess agency, but the
composer’s response to what s/he is writing down accumulates a
direction as work continues; preferred choice-making does acquire a
sort of directionality as the evidence accumulates.
Now Varèse buttresses his argument by analogy with crystallography:
Conceiving musical form as a resultant, the result of a process, I

saw a close analogy in the phenomenon of crystallization. It
seemed to me the clearest answer I could give people who asked
me how I composed, was to say, “by crystallization.” . . .
Musical form, considered as the result of a process, suggests an

analogy with the phenomenon of crystallization. . . . The internal
structure is based on a crystal unit, the smallest grouping of the
atoms having the order and composition of the substance. The
extension of the unit into space, forms the whole crystal. In spite
of the relatively limited variety of the internal structures, the
external forms of crystals are almost limitless.

Varèse consulted “the distinguished mineralogist, Nathaniel

Arbiter,” who explained that:
. . . [the crystallization process] itself is a resultant rather than a

primary attribute. The atoms or ions which make up a crystal have
definite sizes and are attracted or repulsed by different forces.

Crystal form is the consequence of the interaction of the attractive
and repulsive forces and or the ordered packing of the atom.

this suggests better than any explanation I could give the way my
works are formed. There is an idea, the basis of an internal
structure, expanded and split into different shapes or groups of
sound, constantly changing in shape, direction, and speed,
attracted and repulsed by various forces. The form of the work is
the consequence of this interaction.
[The third draft includes a final sentence.] Possible musical forms

are as limitless as the exterior forms of crystals. . . .
The difference between form and content: There is no difference.

Form and content are one. Take away form and there is no
content, and if there is no content there is only a rearrangement of
musical patterns but no form.

The “idea” referred to above seems most plausibly to be Varèse’s

characteristic, incantatorally linear, quasi-vocal gesture: a strongly
pitch-centered, gesturally propelled, rhythmically irregular, gradually
pitch-expanding, beam of sound. It is heard in many, nearly all, of the
works, but most clearly at the beginning of Amériques, Octandre (all
three movements), and Intégrales.
If one views the phenomenon of crystallization from a scientific
perspective, their dazzling, (literally) multi-faceted brilliance comes
about as a result of differently directed forces acting at different rates.
While, depending upon the precise orientation of radially diverging
trajectories and their rates of evolution, the composite process can
result in simple and appealingly symmetrical forms, it can also generate
unexpected, non-symmetrical shapes of such variety that one is unable
to intuit how they might have arisen from the same process differently
balanced. And one can see that there is much to support the idea that
this metaphoric relationship has genuine foundations in Varèse’s work.
He uses, indeed, a limited set of component elements (sound
beams/masses) and processes (opposition, penetration, repulsion,

projected influences) manifested in his modest repertoire of completed
works. One senses that many more compositions might have been
created without additional resources.
To reveal a new world is the function of creation in all the arts,

but the act of creation defies analysis. A composer knows about as
little as anyone else about where the substance of his work comes
from.

I hope to demonstrate in this commentary that acts of creation by

no means “defy analysis.” I do not think Varèse’s statement here is
valid. Still, from another perspective, it is possible that one of the
reasons that Varèse’s music has attracted such uncommonly wide-
ranging and variably-based response is precisely because it has not been
easy for commentators to objectify in useful ways what his
pronouncements meant or how his products related to an
uncommonly idiosyncratic (seemingly mysterious) set of principles.
Risset quotes Varese regarding his interest in “quasi-seismographic

notation”:
The new notation must embody the new concepts—it will give
important suggestions for composition.

June 2004, pp. 27–54
Risset continues that “We talked about weaving together natural and
synthetic sound.”
Their contrast can be powerful, perhaps more theatrical than

musical. But filtering can make the two worlds come closer.

June 2004, pp. 27–54
It is not surprising that Varèse was concerned about the issues to be

confronted in combining natural and synthetic sound during the
period in which he was engaged with Déserts. “Filtering” seems to have
served him as a catch word for what would now be called DSP, or
digital signal processing.
One should compose in terms of energy and fluxes. There are

interplays and fights between different states of matters—like
confrontations between characters in a play. Form is the result of
these confrontations.

June 2004, pp. 27–54
10. ARCHITECTURE AND THE PHYSICAL WORLD
Most of my life I have been rather more closely associated with

painters, poets, architects, and scientists than with musicians.
Perhaps this is why my point of view has differed so radically from
that of most musicians. . . . I sought (and found) sympathy and
corroboration from the practitioners of the other arts.

Musical Studies September 4, 1959) TS SS
I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects

and physical phenomena. As a child, I was tremendously
impressed by the qualities and character of . . . granite. . . . I used
to watch the old stone cutters, marveling at the precision with
which they worked. They didn’t use cement, and every stone had
to fit and balance with every other. So I was always in touch with
things of stone and with this kind of pure structural architecture
[referring to the Tournus Romanesque church]—without frills or
unnecessary decoration. All of this became an integral part of my
thinking at a very early stage. . . .
I wanted to find a away to project in music the concept of

calculated or controlled gravitation, how one element pushing on
the other stabilizes the total structure, thus using the material
elements at the same time in opposition to and in support of one

another.
Gunther Schuller: “Conversation with Varèse,” Perspec-

tives of New Music, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1965
One notes Varèse’s positioning of this aesthetic environment in

regard to the later American masters Cage and Feldman, for whom
visual art was nourishing.
Varèse’s disavowal of ornamentation must come under question in
relation to his incantatory sonic beams, or, alternatively, the meaning
of “decoration” reconstrued. Not only do these passages illuminate
Varèse’s frequent use of the terms “block” and “mass,” but they might
be seen to reinforce, in the case of the central “idea” of a piece (as
discussed in 9), that what might appear “ornamental” can in fact be
structural, calculated to optimize ongoing projective character.
(Evidence of this phenomenon will be seen in Varèse’s graphic art in
the second part of “The Last Word is: Imagination.”)
The analogizing of stone work with musical structure is particularly
apt in Varèse’s case. His use of the word “project” for the transfer of
physical characteristics into music also suggests the possibility that
“projection” in other contexts might refer to analogy or parallelisms.
Varèse continues by more explicit analogy:
As the architect bases his structures on a proper knowledge of the

physical materials he uses, the composer should, in building his
sonorous constructions, have thorough knowledge of the laws
governing the vibratory system . . . and the possibilities that
science has already abundantly placed, and continues to place, at
the service of his imagination. The last word is: Imagination. . . .
It was Helmholtz [the path-breaking German physician and

physicist, 1821–1894] who first started me thinking of music as
masses of sound evolving in space, rather than, as I was being
taught, notes in some prescribed order.
Varèse, quoted from Alcopley: “Edgard Varèse on Music

and Art,” Leonardo 1 1968, pp. 187–195
Whether or not Varèse possessed the “thorough knowledge” he

advocates here, it certainly is the case that the knowledge he did have,
in concert with his visionary aims, masterful ear, and unforgiving
aesthetic sensibility, produced a music that more closely adhered to his
articulated ideals than does that of any rival.
11. (UNREASONABLE) FORCE
Force is referred to in the seminal Santa Fe lecture, already quoted in 8

above:
The more I work and am confronted with new problems, the

more I am convinced that three essential principles are at the base
of all creation:
1 Force, not as effect but as cause which means the principle of

modification of a preexisting state.
Varèse in May 1933, as reported by the photographer Brassaï, proposed

that:
In the final scene [of L’Astronome], when the astronomer is

volatilized into interstellar space, factory sirens and airplane
propellers were to sound. Their “music” was to be as strident and
unbearable as possible, so as to terrify the audience and render it
groggy. At that moment . . . the powerful spotlights supposedly
raking the sky up on stage would be turned abruptly down into
the auditorium blinding the audience and filling them with such
panic that they would not even be able to run away.
Brassaï: “Edgar [sic] Varèse ou la Musique Sidérale,”

Arts-Spectacles, 8–14 December 1954, p. 4. Quoted in
Olivia Mattis, “Varèse’s Multimedia Conception of
Déserts,” The Musical Quarterly Vol. 76, No. 4, Winter
1992, p. 572
Here, if the report is to be credited, Varèse went much further than

elsewhere in describing the sheer physical and psychological impact
that he had in mind when creating. As the date of this attribution is
proximate to that in which he began directly to interact with the
radical theatrical conceptions of Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) some
impact derived from the example of the latter’s audacity might be
anticipated. It would be interesting to know just how literally Varèse
did align himself with the intensity of these reported positions. His
other writings adhere to a far more reserved orientation: music is surely
to be emotionally powerful, but perhaps not aggressively coercive.
12. SIRENS AND SPACE
As frequencies and new rhythms will have to be indicated on the

score, our actual notation will be inadequate. The new notation
will be seismographic.
Varèse was certainly aware of the fact that complex sound (vibratory)
phenomena can be usefully represented two-dimensionally, as
frequency versus time plots. Whether seismographic or sonographic
vocal representations, they provide a pictographic representation of
sound behaviors that is better suited to displaying dynamic variability
than are the specific steps in traditional music notation.
It is curious to note that at the beginning of two eras: the

Mediaeval primitive and our own primitive era (for we are at a
new primitive stage in music today) we are faced with an identical
problem: the problem of finding graphic symbols for the
transposition of the composer’s thought into sound. At a distance
of more than a thousand years we have this analogy: our still
primitive electrical instruments find it necessary to abandon staff
notation and to use a kind of seismographic writing much like the
early ideographic writing originally used for the voice. . . .
Formerly the curves of the musical line indicated the melodic
fluctuations of the voice, today the machine–instrument requires
precise design indications.
With [two small sirens], and using also children’s whistles, I made
my first experiments in what I later called spatial music.

[The] beautiful parabolas and hyperbolas of sound the sirens gave

me and the haunting quality of the tones made me aware for the
first time of the wealth of music outside the narrow limits imposed
by keyboard instruments.
Varèse, quoted in Gilbert Chase: America’s Music: From

the Pilgrims to the Present, McGraw-Hill, 1992.
The fact that Varèse came upon this sonic phenomenon through the
explicitly physical medium of the hand-held siren is important.
Compare, in the earlier instrumental works, the vocal aura of the
sirens’ admittedly limited utterances (limited by the same physical
nature that lent them a “natural” rooting as experience). They affect
one at a gut emotional level: moaning, keening, groaning, in protest,
misery, isolation. They are calls, cries, overheard, attempting
projection. They feel (as they are) physically plausible. The sweeping
arcs of the more high-powered industrial sounds or the composed
signal generator frequency–time arcs in Poème Électonique, however,
feel supra-real, influential by evoked associations more than by
inherent character. In a sense, Varèse escaped the confines of physical
instruments not by electronic magic, but rather on the strength of
harnessing to musical uses an unexpected physical system, one that
had, not incidentally, the avowed purpose of commanding emotional
response and impelling listeners to appropriate action.
I have always felt the need of a kind of continuous flowing curve

that instruments could not give me. That is why I used sirens in
several of my works. . . .
Today such effects are easily obtainable by electronic means. In

this connection it is curious to note that it is this lack of flow that
seems to disturb Eastern musicians in our Western music. To their
ears it does not glide, sounds jerky, composed of edges of intervals
and holes and, as an Indian pupil of mine expressed it, “jumping
like a bird from branch to branch.”

the Yale School of Music), February 8, 1962, TS SS
Varèse’s writings do not give much attention to the issue of

continuity within musical dimensions, a subject that Xenakis would be
more directly conscious of, and something that Varèse’s imagined
musical machines would certainly have granted general access to. Here,
by invoking “curve,” “flow,” and “glide,” he suggests a sensitivity to
the value of continuous alteration (in the pitch realm) as contrasted to
the quantized “steps” that are more commonly assumed in the western
tradition. This emphasis, in turn, doubtless arose from his increasing
engagement with electroacoustic media.
13. SOUND ROUTES
In Poème Électonique:
I used natural sounds of various kinds—feet and finger tapping,

voices, etc.—treated electronically, as well as sine waves mixed and
transposed and, of course, loops.

the Yale School of Music), February 8, 1962, TS SS;
Electronic Music (“A Sunday Afternoon of Contem-
porary Music”) Nov. 9, 1958 TS SS
The music [on tape] was distributed by 425 loudspeakers; there

were twenty amplifier combinations. It was recorded on a three-
track magnetic tape that could be varied in intensity and quality.
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, reverberations, etc.

“Sound routes” suggests, again, something beyond the more

amorphous designations of “penetration,” “repulsion,” and “beams”
previously cited. Here, because of the adjacencies of large number of
speakers installed by the Philips engineers in the inner surfaces of their
pavilion, the simulation of actual paths moving along the walls of an
architecturally elaborate space was possible simply by smoothly
panning the content of individual source tracks of prepared electro-
acoustic sound from one loudspeaker position to the next at controlled
rates and over pre-determined paths. One would like to know more
about the claim that the “intensity and quality” of the pre-recorded
sound could be varied. The very detailed article “A Virtual-Reality
Reconstruction of Poème Électonique Based on Philological
Research”11 makes passing reference to a “quality” dimension in its
examination of the still extant evidence: for some sounds, two versions
existed on separate tracks, one reverberant, the other dry. Perhaps
there was more, but as the Philips Pavilion was demolished shortly
after the fair for which it was built, we know little now about the
nature of Varèse’s achievement save his satisfied assessment:
For the first time I heard my music literally projected into space.

14. INSTRUMENTS IN DÉSERTS
Déserts was conceived for two different media: instrumental

sounds and sounds electronically produced. After planning the
work as a whole, I wrote the instrumental score, always keeping in
mind its relation to the organized sound sequence on tape to be
interpolated at three different points in the score.
An interesting suggestion here is that “the organized sound

sequence” might have been conceived as a continuous whole, then
broken up into three parts. The manuscript of Déserts suggests that the
points at which organized sound was to be interpolated were
determined after the score was completed. Perhaps the electroacoustic
component was also parsed after being completely conceived.
The music played by the ensemble could be considered as evolving

in opposing planes and volumes, producing the impression of
movement in space. But the intervals between the notes,
determining the ever-changing and contrasted volumes and
planes, are not founded on any fixed assembly of intervals, like a
scale or series. . . . They are determined by the demands of this
particular work.
Quoted in Malcolm MacDonald: Varèse: Astronomer in

Sound, Kahn and Averill, 2006, p. 346, no source given
“He doth protest” more than necessary. Presumably the intent of

this passage was to deflect the temptation inevitably aroused in other
composers and theorists by the vocabulary and processes of Déserts, the
temptation to find—as indeed there is to be found—elegant, intricate,
perhaps even all-inclusive principles of pitch organization and
projection (yes) within the musical textures of the work itself.
Varèse stood throughout his creative life as implacably resistant to
the idea that theories or analyses were relevant to the creation or
experience of significant music. I had the experience, as a student, of

bringing him a carefully worked out analysis of Intégrales, and having
it dismissed peremptorily. By the time of Déserts, his ways of working
had essentialized so that the individualized beams of sound that had
served him as central subjects in earlier, signature works were no
longer necessary. They were, in fact, now largely replaced by elegantly
modeled and principled “sound-masses.” Varèse is doubtless correct in
claiming that his procedures (not identified or granted here) were
“determined by the demands of this particular work,” but this does
not, of course, mean that they were not, or could not be, deeply
principled. Still, this passage is clearly an attempt to distance himself
from being seen as having embraced a way of working that might,
then, have been applied to a class of works (as was and is the case with
most mature composers).
The work progresses in opposing planes and volumes. Movement

is created by intensities and tensions, exactly calculated and
functioning in opposition to one another; the term “intensity”
referring to the desired acoustical result; the word “tension” to
the size of the interval employed.
Quoted in Malcolm MacDonald: Varèse: Astronomer in

Sound, Kahn and Averill, 2006, p. 346, no source given
The evolution in Varèse’s thought is evident here as “intensities”

and “tensions” augment “sound-masses” and “sound beams.” He
shifts metaphors in mid-stream. At first “planes and volumes” are
invoked, but then the “acoustical result” is tied to “the interval
employed.” This is at least a tacit admission of the fact that the impact
of component structures in Déserts was indebted to his use of explicit
and principled interval relationships. The categorical identity of an
interval has acquired a higher status.
Risset quotes Varèse in relation to his reluctance to speak of the processes

he used:
No one wants to see the scaffoldings. Moreover, if I make my

method explicit, someone might believe that it is the method. But
there is no winning formula. . . . Every one must invent his own.

June 2004, pp. 27–54
Varèse was plagued not only by a lack of access to the kinds of

electronic equipment he desired, but by conflicts with collaborators
and the high-frequency hearing loss that accompanies aging. Risset
writes that “There was no empathy between [Pierre] Schaeffer and
Varèse, and that the latter despised the groupe de musique concrète as a
clique. Varèse did not get along either with the technicians of the
Philips studio in Holland when he realized the Poème Électonique a
couple of years later.” Risset goes on to observe that the tapes
themselves also inevitably deteriorate.
When better assistance was available, other difficulties interfered.
“Vladimir Ussachevsky [co-director of the Columbia-Princeton
Electronic Music Studio] helped Varèse revisit his tapes. He told me
that Varèse often wanted them to sound more brilliant—but, as
Varèse’ hearing had lost its sensitivity to high frequencies . . . he tried
to compensate this loss by increasing loudness. This led to further
saturation and distortion as a result of the limitations of available
electronic equipment.”12
15. ELECTROACOUSTIC INTERPOLATIONS FOR DÉSERTS
Magnetic tapes of organized sound are transmitted on two

channels by means of a stereophonic system to provide a sensation
of spacial [sic] distribution of the sound sources to the listener.
There are four instrumental sections of different lengths and three
interpolations of organized sound. The music given to the
instrumental ensemble may be said to evolve in opposing planes
and volumes, producing the sensation of movement in space. But,
though the intervals between the pitches determine these ever
changing and contrasted volumes and planes, they are not based
in any fixed set of intervals such as a scale, a series, or any existing
principles of musical measurement. They are decided by the
exigencies of this particular work.
[Crossed out:] Of the interpolations of organized sound it should

be noted that the first and third are based on sounds (sounds of
friction, percussion, hissing, grinding, puffing) first filtered,
transposed, transmuted, mixed by means of electronic devices and
then composed to fit the preestablished plan of the work.
Combined with these sounds, as a structural and stabilizing
element, (especially in the third interpolation) are fragments of
instrumental percussion, some already present in the score, others
new.
The second interpolation is for an ensemble of percussion

instruments alone. The music rises to a climax in the 3rd
interpolation and the 4th instrumental section, finally fading out
in a long pianissimo. [End deleted passage.]
Edgard Varèse: “Deserts,” a two-page typescript of what

appears to be a program note, a translation from Varèse’s
hand written materials in French SS
A compact though hardly conventional program note (apparently)

that betrays the misgivings the composer had about discussing the
interpolations—especially where the technical procedures were
concerned. In a sense, of course, specifying the (crossed out!) filtering,
transposing, transmuting, and mixing would have been roughly
equivalent to admitting, in an instrumental context, that he had, at the
least, a process, perhaps even a methodology.
What, exactly, Varèse meant by the phase “the intervals between the
pitches” cannot be known. At the least, however, he is stating that the
specifics of harmonies (and presumably their registral dispositions—
though this is not stated) are fundamental to the identity of his musical
material. The question one would like to have asked him is: How can
pitch intervals “determine” and yet remain unprincipled?.
As in 8 above, with the term “calculated,” there is another possible
door ajar here: Varèse writes that there was a “pre-established plan of
the work.” One could take this in a completely pragmatic (thus
“innocent”) sense. The detailed mixing-scores for interpolations I and
III (respectively, two and three versions each) now in the Sacher
Foundation’s Varèse Collection constitute a practical, graphical guide
that specifies how the materials gathered for the interpolations
(whether electronically altered or not) are to be juxtaposed and
superimposed at a second-by-second level of specification. But the
existence of a “preestablished plan” is directly at odds with Varèse’s
earlier claim that the form of a work only discovers itself through the
creative process.
Varèse reports, in “Spatial Music,” in 1959, that:
. . . it was not until 1954 that I had the opportunity of working in

a studio with electronic equipment for composing on tape. In the
fall of that year Radiodiffusion Franaçaise invited me to finish my
tapes of organized sound for Déserts in their studio in Paris. I had
begun them on my one tape recorder in New York.

It is reported that Varèse took both “scores” and “sound materials”

with him to Holland. I presume that the “scores” included both the
instrumental and vocal music he had composed for use as recording
sources, as well as the mixing scores illustrated in the second part of
“The last word is: Imagination.”
But one cannot help wondering whether he might have also meant
that the overall structure of Déserts was “pre established” at some level.
This would open up another potentially illuminating path for
exploration, one that might, in the end, provide keys to the central
mystery of Varèse’s achievement, the capacity that is most remarkable
on a strictly musical level: the editorial acumen that allowed him to
make such canny and powerful use of material collage. It is possible to
understand, by a careful reading, the majority of what he has to say
about the spatial aspects of his music and his dreams in this regard.
The same cannot be said about his ability to manage the commanding
succession of musical materials in his compositions: it remains a
mystery.
16. METHODOLOGIES AND SYSTEMS
There is no creator, no matter how sure of his direction, of his

chosen road, who can possibly live limited by the boundaries of a
fixed aesthetic. A composer conscious of the many different
aspects of his own nature will always refuse to be regimented,
imprisoned in a School, reduced to a category. It is certain,
nevertheless, that every composer has a sort of elastic working set
of rules even if they are only represented in his rejections.

Music” (hand-written note), 1948, TS SS
A quite reasonable perspective that occurs in a more general context

than is usual for Varèse: a set of lectures addressing music in the
Twentieth Century. This circumspect description (“a sort of elastic
working set of rules”) seems to have been all he was willing to
advance, but it is creditable.
Each new work should have, as a means of expression, a fresh

technique, appropriate and flexible, in no way thwarting the free
yield of the conception.
Edgard Varèse: No. 8 of 13 aphorisms in “By The

Dozen,” [Santa Fe New Mexican?, 1937?], TS SS
The word chance expresses only our ignorance of causes.
Edgard Varèse: The last of 13 aphorisms in “By The

Dozen,” [Santa Fe New Mexican?, 1937?], TS SS
These two aphorisms raise again the fundamental Varèsian conflict.

He wants both stability and flexibility, causal certainty and chance, a
“chosen road” and refusal of regimentation. Only very near the end of
his life, when he (as well as Stravinsky, who adopted—adapted—serial
ideas in the 1950s) seems to have felt the pressure of the times, did
Varèse directly address Schoenberg’s influence and serialism.
Here, Varèse speaks at a slightly earlier time, of the significance he

ascribed to “this technique”:
If I treat at some length of the 12 tone method of composition, of

its originator, Arnold Schoenberg, of his two most distinguished
pupils, Alban Berg and Anton von Webern, and of certain
composers in this country who are applying this technique, it is
because I consider this phase of music important. It is important
in the same way that cubism is important in the history of the fine
arts. Both came at a moment when the need for a strict discipline
was felt in the two arts, in painting because of the orgy of color
and light of the impressionist school, structure and form seem to
have been lost sight of; in music because extra-musical factors
became the concepts of primary importance, to be transmuted
into and conveyed by music. Pictorial conceptions, impressionist
tonal substance, literary symbolism, atmospheric evocations,
expressionism, futurism . . . music was called upon to express
them all. Even if one disagrees with the premises of Schoenberg’s
new method, one must admit that there was a pressing need for a
discipline that would bring music back to its own domaine of
sound, and free it from non-musical preoccupations from being a
vehicle of substances foreign to its essence.
[And in another version of the same text:] But we must not forget
that neither Cubism nor Schoenberg’s liberating system method,
is supposed to limit art or to replace one academic formula with

another. Art to go forward must resign itself to the rigours of
creative unrest. Art like science, as I have said, can only live in a
state of permanent revolution. The 12 tone method and Cubism
are media and not finalities. Braque, Picasso, Derain passed
through Cubism. They have been careful not to become prisoners
of a liberating system.

Music” (hand-written note), 1948, SS
The 12 tone system is not a revolutionary System but the result,

the outcome of the exploration of the chromatic scale.
Schoenberg himself defined it—a way of composing.

Risset’s detailed narrative of interactions he had with Varèse includes

several references to the subject of “method” in Varèse’s work. In
writing of André Jolivet’s teaching and its relation to Varèse’s
“processes,” Risset writes: “One of them was the notion of reserved
pitches. Rather than repeating the 12 tones in the same order, as
prescribed by Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic technique, use only 11 of
them: gradually the absence of the 12th will be felt and it will acquire a
strong significance when it appears. There was also the paradoxical
notion of ‘development by opposition’ rather than by consequence,
which can be linked to notions of transmutation. Indeed, Varèse
acknowledged that he used such processes and many others, but did
not like to expose them—‘on ne visite pas le cuisines dans les
restaurants’ [Varèse said].”13
The following brief passages are illuminating but cannot rise to the level
of a “position” such as can be discerned in some of the preceding sections of
this essay:
I do not believe in schools—even the most avant garde—as most

of them produce only copyists—and new clichés.

A composer if he wants to obtain the results his conception

demands, must never forget that his raw material is sound, must
think in terms of sound and not in terms of notes on a page, must
understand not only the mechanisms and possibilities of the
various sound-machines that are to bring his music to life, but
should also be familiar with the laws of acoustics.

Taking the issue of methodology into more specific terrain, there are
both pitch-oriented and rhythmic-oriented examples of systematic
material organization in the Sacher Varèse collection. In the pitch
realm, there are numerous sketches of localized dimension that specify
distributed series. (See Example 1)
There are also several apparently “privileged” rows meticulously
drawn out and presented in compact format on heavier paper. The
implication drawn here is that such independent items, prepared with a
higher-than-normal amount of calligraphic care, were intended as
resources, not only as noted items of interest. This would appear to
establish, beyond serious doubt, that Varèse either used serial structure
(in the late work), or was in a state of advanced consideration for
doing so. (See Example 2)
EXAMPLE 1: A REGISTERALLY DISTRIBUTED ROW.

[NB: “A” ASSOCIATED WITH E-NATURAL ON THE UPPER STAVE SHOULD BE “E”]
From materials in Sacher folder 1.3 [92S][Mappe2][3]
EXAMPLE 2: A “PRIVILEGED” ROW
In relation to rhythm, however, the evidence is more extensive and

more explicit. Although I will suggest, here, that there is a procedural
order, in the elements presented, neither the time at which these
sketches were made, nor their order can be determined with certainty.
Example 3 shows a structure of rhythmic motives contained in a
slightly perverse set of eleven rather than twelve beat-columns (cf.
above with regard to Jolivet and the “missing note”), each containing
distinct rhythmic motives. The second line, labeled “O,” has seven of
the possible eleven “beats” occupied. Its “inversion” (OI), on the first
line above, presents identical rhythms with reversed stems and the
implication that their identity draws upon three levels: high (above the
reference line), medium (on the reference line), and low (below the
reference line). Although there are some notational inconsistencies, the
“inversion” is rigorous and complete.
EXAMPLE 3
The bottom line, labeled “R,” uses a set of rhythmic motives also
present in seven of the possible eleven beat opportunities. Of these
seven motives, two are novel (transformed versions of their
counterparts in O. Each of the eleven columns maintains a consistent
beat subdivision (e.g., five for the first, zero for the second, eight for
the third, then 4, 6, 8, 0, 8, 6, 4, 8).
On the same manuscript page, Varèse has tried out alignments of
these basic sequences (Example 4). The second of these provides the
better outcome.
But this is not the end of his explorations. On another sheet Varèse
has taken the individual beat-motives and created “rhythmic
hexachords” from them. E.g., drawing from the original O chart, and
numbering the eleven beat columns from left to right, 1 to 11, he then
placed these items in a 6 × 6 matrix:
142857
285714
428571
571428
714285
857142
EXAMPLE 4: O AGAINST RI (DELAYED TO THE 5TH BEAT),

AND R AGAINST O (SIMILARLY DELAYED)
The sequence 1 4 2 8 5 7 is kept intact, row by row, but permuted

by rotation that produces a unique sequence for each row, where the
first column is arranged in numerical order (i.e., 1 2 4 5 7 8).
Similarly for the R matrix:
142857
285714
428571
571428
714285
485712
Note that, by not having labeled meticulously, Varèse makes an

error in the bottom line of this matrix, which should read: 2 8 5 7 1 4
(Example 5).
Here is the amusing “clincher” in relation to the use of the number
7 as a “base” for his operations within a field of eleven possibilities.
Note, in Example 5, below, that 1 divided by 7 = 0.142857. . . .
There can be no further doubt about the essentially rational and
methodologically principled position to which Varèse’s creative process
had moved before the end of his life. This further establishes, I believe,
grounds for treating his career-long association with spatial aspects of
music—as conceptual potential, as instrumentally evoked realizations,
EXAMPLE 5: SPECIFIC 6 × 6 MATRIX OF RHYTHMIC MOTIVES

“O” CHART FROM VARÈSE SKETCHES
and as electroacoustically more advanced manifestations—as an

invitation, even an urging towards the extension of sound spatializa-
tion that is now possible. (See Example 6.)
Varèse’s musical materials arose out of a well-informed and deeply
considered set of investigations and consequent desires. His utilization
of these materials in musical sketches (whether having resulted in
completed works or not) were similarly informed and directed. When
he, at last, had access to electroacoustic “sound-machines,” he carried
his dreams in relation to musical space as far as he was able to. We are
now positioned to do all that he imagined. It would seem that there
exists an implied obligation to go now where he was unable to. This
might reasonably begin with his own musical materials. At UCSD,
some serious preliminary work of this sort has been done by Jaime
Oliver, Jacob Sudol, Paul Hembree, and Dustin Donahue. Some of
their work has been heard with interest and favor by Varèse’s heir and
executor, Chou Wen-chung. The present study has been carried
forward by my belief, at first intuitively sensed, and now intellectually
buttressed, that there was a substantive foundation to Varèse’s
continuing expressions of concern involving spatial considerations. It is
hoped that, to conveniently truncate the last line of Melville’s The
Confidence Man, “something more may follow from this. . . .”
EXAMPLE 6: 6 × 6 RHYTHMIC MATRIX WITH MOTIVES INCLUDED

NOTES
1. I assume that the typescripts consulted in the Sacher collection’s

archives were largely done, as has been anecdotally confirmed, with
the composer’s wife, Louise, working interactively with her
husband from hand-written drafts, some of them in French.
2. Jean-Claude Risset, “The Liberation of Sound, Art-Science and the
Digital Domain: Contacts With Edgard Varèse,”, Contemporary
Music Review, Vol. 23, No. 2, June 2004, pp. 27–54
3. “The Intégrales of Edgard Varèse: Space, Mass, Element, and
Form,” Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 17, No. 1, Winter, 1978–
79, also, cf. discussion under 7.
4. John Strawn, “The Intégrales of Edgard Varèse: Space, Mass,
Element, and Form”, in Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 17, No.1,
1978.
5. Cf. “Psychological constraints on form-bearing dimensions in
music,” Contemporary Music Review, Vol. 4, November 1989.
Digital Domain: Contacts With Edgard Varèse,” Contemporary
Music Review, Vol. 23, No. 2, June 2004, pp. 27–54.
7. “Varèse and the Lyricism of the New Physics,” The Musical
Quarterly, Vol. 75, No. 1, Spring, 1991.
8. Louise Varèse, quoted in a footnote in Alcopley: “Edgard Varèse
on Music and Art,” Leonardo I, 1968 pp. 187–195.
9. Anderson, John D., “Varèse and the Lyricism of the New Physics,”
The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 75, No. 1, Spring 1991, p. 44.
10. Cf. The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film,
Michael Ondaatje, Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
11. Computer Music Journal, Vol. 33, No. 2, Summer 2009
(Lombardo, Valle, Fitch, Tazelaar, Weinzierl, and Borczyk).
Digital Domain: Contacts With Edgard Varèse,” Contemporary
Music Review, Vol. 23, No. 2, June 2004, pp. 27–54.
13. Ibid.
REFERENCES
Many of the materials directly attributable to Varèse can be found

in the Paul Sacher Foundation collection. The abbreviations TS
(transcript or typescript) and SS (Sacher Stiftung) are used.
Anderson, John D. 1991. “Varèse and the Lyricism of the New

Physics.” The Musical Quarterly 75/1: 31–49.
Babbitt, Milton. 1966 “Edgard Varèse: A Few Observations on His
Music.” Perspectives of New Music 4/2: 14–22.
Cage, John, ed. 1947. “Edgard Varèse and Alexei Haieff Questioned
by Eight Composers [Arthur Berger, Paul Bowles, Merton Brown,
Elliot Carter, Carter Harmon, Lou Harrison, Wallingford Riegger,
Stefan Wolpe].” Possibilities 1: 96–98.
Chase, Gilbert. 1992. America’s Music: From the Pilgrims to the
Present. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Chou, Wen-chung. 1966. “Open Rather Than Bounded.” Perspectives
of New Music 5/1: 1–6.
MacDonald, Malcolm. 2006. Varèse: Astronomer in Sound. Kahn and
Averill.
Mattis, Olivia. 1992. “Varèse’ss Multimedia Conception of Déserts.”
The Musical Quarterly 76/4: 557–583.
New York Times. 1936. “Varèse Envisions ‘Space’ Symphonies.”
December 6, 1936.
Risset, Jean-Claude. 2004. “The Liberation of Sound, Art-Science and
the Digital Domain: Contacts With Edgard Varèse.” Contemporary
Music Review 23/2: 27–54.
Schuller, Gunther. 1965. “Conversation with Varèse.” Perspectives of
New Music 3/2: 32–37.
Strawn, John. 1978. “The Intégrals of Edgard Varèse: Space, Mass,
Element, and Form.” Perspectives of New Music 17/1.
Thomson, Virgil. 1971. American Music Since 1910. New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
Varèse, Edgard. [n.d.]. “Deserts.” A two-page typescript of what
appears to be a program note; a translation from Varèse’s hand-
written materials in French. TS SS.
———. 1936. “Music and the Times.” TS SS.

———. 1937. “Puff Balls.” Santa Fe Lecture, September 2, 1937. TS
SS.
———. [1937] [date uncertain]. “By the Dozen.” Aphorisms
transcribed from an article possibly appearing in the Santa Fe New
Mexican. TS SS.
———. [1938–1939] [date uncertain]. “Sound, the Raw Material of
Music.” TS SS.
———. 1942. “The Art-Science of Music Today.” For Art in
Australia [Publication date, and whether the item was included,
unknown]. TS SS.
———. 1943. “The Evolution of Musical Form.” Lecture for
Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY, October 13, 1943. SS.
———. 1948. “Twentieth-Century Tendencies in Music.” Collection
of lecture notes. August 5, 1948. SS
———. 1949–1950. Déserts. Film Project, July 1949–50. TS SS.
——— 1958. “Electronic Music: A Sunday Afternoon of Contem-
porary Music.” Lecture. November 9, 1958. TS SS
———. 1959. “Autobiographical Remarks.” From a talk given at the
Princeton Seminar of Advanced Musical Studies, September 4,
1959. TS SS.
———. 1962. “The Electronic Medium.” Lecture. February 8, 1962.
Lecture at the Yale School of Music. TS SS.
———. 1966a. “Freedom for Music.” In The American Composer
Speaks: A Historical Anthology, 1770–1965, edited by Gilbert Chase.
Lecture given at the University of Southern California (1939).
Louisiana State University Press.
———. 1966b. “The Liberation of Sound.” Edited by Chou Wen-
chung. Perspectives of New Music. 5/1: 11–19.
———. 1976. “Statements by Edgard Varèse.” Assembled with
comments by L. Varèse. In Soundings 10, edited by Peter Garland.
Varèse, Edgard, and Alcopley. 1968. “Edgard Varèse on Music and
Art: A Conversation between Varèse and Alcopley.” Leonardo 1/2:
187–195.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
Brassaï. 1954. “Edgar [sic] Varèse ou la Musique Sidérale.” Arts-

Spectacles December 8–14: 4.
Frankenstein, Alfred. 1937. “Varèse, Worker in Intensities.” San
Francisco Chronicle, 28 November.
Lombardo, Vincenzo, Andrea Valle, John Fitch, Kees Tazelaar, Stefan
Weinzierl, and Wojciech Borczyk. 2009. “A Virtual-Reality
Reconstruction of Poème électronique Based on Philological
Research.” Computer Music Journal 33/2: 24–47.
Mattis, Olivia. 1992. “Edgard Varèse and the Visual Arts.” PhD thesis,
Stanford University.
McAdams, Stephen. 1989. “Psychological Constraints on Form-
Bearing Dimensions in Music.” Contemporary Music Review 4/1:
181–198.
Ondaatje, Michael. 2002. The Conversations: Walter Murch and the
Arer of Editing Film. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Ouellette, Fernand. 1973. Edgard Varèse: A Musical Biography. Calder
and Boyars.
Parks, Anne Florence. 1974. “Freedom, Form, and Process in Varèse:
A Study of Varèse’s Musical Ideas—Their Sources, Their
Development, and Their Use in His Works.” PhD Thesis, Cornell
University.
Varèse, Edgard. 1952. “DESERTS.” Unpublished document
accompanying a letter from Varèse to Merle Armitage, July 4, 1952.
New York, Armitage Collection, HRHRC.
———. 1959. “Rhythm, Form and Content.” From the chapter “The
Liberation of Sound” in Contemporary Composers on Contemporary
Music, edited by Elliott Schwarz and Barney Childs. New York:
Holt, Reinhart, Winston. 1970.
Varèse, Louise. 1972. Varèse: A Looking-Glass Diary. Davis-Poynter.

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The Last Word Is: Imagination: A Study of the Spatial Aspects of Varèse's Work (Part I:

PART I: WRITTEN EVIDENCE

T HERE FOLLOWS A COMPENDIUM of statements that Varèse wrote or

*Disclaimer: As a practicing composer for five decades, I am confident of my

a foundation on the basis of which it would be possible to understand,

My interest does not disregard, but may be seen as preliminary to

Varèse often cited the influence of Józef Maria Hoëné-Wronsky (1776–

When I was about 20, my own attitude toward music—at least

Edgard Varèse: “Spatial Music,” in Contemporary

In one typescript in the Sacher Stiftung, the often inaccurately referred-to

“. . . defining it as ‘the corporalization of the intelligence in

Edgard Varèse: “The Art-Science of Music Today”

Varese cited a formative experience he had had in the seminal Santa Fe

I want to try to make it clear to you how I have come to conceive

Several years ago, listening to the trio in the Scherzo of the

Edgard Varèse: “Music and the Times,” 1936, TS SS

. . . I became conscious of a third dimension in music. The

Edgard Varèse: “Music and the Times,” 1936, TS SS

Assuming that Varèse means that the reverberation-time in the hall

By projection I mean the feeling given us by certain blocks of

Edgard Varèse: “Music and the Times,” 1936, TS SS

There is a mixture of metaphors here: Varèse refers to the “blocks of

For the ear as for the eye it gives a sense of prolongation . . . a

Edgard Varèse: “Music and the Times,” 1936, TS SS

This seems to settle the matter: the “sense of prolongation” could

Much later, in 1965, Gunther Schuller quotes Varèse:

It seems to me that [Milton Babbitt] wants to exercise maximum

Varèse, quoted in Gunther Schuller: “Conversation with

One wonders what durational order of magnitude Varèse would

uninterrupted dying away of their acoustical essence towards

2. TRANSMUTATION AND LIBERATION

Varèse’s experience stimulates the desire for spatialized sounds:

I began listening to the sounds around me from all directions and

Varèse quoted in Alcopley: “Edgard Varèse on Music

. . . electronic instruments are the portentous first step toward the

Edgard Varèse: “The Art-Science of Music Today”

Varèse’s reference to “sounds around me from all directions”

least) to concretize the evocative influence of reverberant sources.

I conceived Intégrales for spatial projection—that is, for certain

Louise Varèse: “Statements by Edgard Varèse”

While in our musical system we deal with quantities whose values

Louise Varèse: “Statements by Edgard Varèse,”

I hope in the near future to have at my disposal, equipment which

Varèse quoted by John Strawn in a preliminary version

Here, Varèse renders explicit the proposal inferable above, indicating

“Cltte., Cor., Trptte., Trbne.—très homogènes et équilibrés—

Intégrales, m. 203, Colfranc 1980

Showing that the composer explicitly identifies this composite

“Clarinettes; = sonorité creuse (légèrement dominantes)”

“Cor., Trptte. en ut, 3me Trombone, très equilibrés;—Ptes. Fls.,

Intégrales, m. 178, Colfranc 1980

“En dehors—au meme plan que le Trombone jusqu’a 5”

Octandre II, m. 43, Ricordi 1956

Strawn draws the conclusion that in “footnotes from Intégrales and

So an important cautionary emerges: the terms “figure,” “mass,”

A visual illustration may make clear what I mean: Imagine the

Louise Varèse: “Statements by Edgard Varèse,”

If the fixed values referred to earlier are taken as a given, a “series of

an Eb-clarinet could morph into a muted trumpet, while the trio of