EDGARD VARÈSE

SOUND

Edgard Varèse or Edgar Varèse (both spellings were used by the composer himself at different times in his life) was a French naturalized American composer, born December 22, 1883 in Paris and died November 6, 1965 in New York. Initially trained at the Schola Cantorum and the Paris Conservatory, Varèse found with more independent artists, such as Debussy and Busoni, the necessary encouragement for his personal expression. Indeed, well before 1914, Varèse considered abandoning classical composition methods, the tempered system and traditional musical instruments to use “the sound material itself”.

This ideal led him to destroy his first scores as far as Americas — where he already used the frequency and intensity modulated sounds of a siren — and to encourage research in the field of acoustics, from the dynamophone to the productions of Léon Theremin and Maurice Martenot. Varèse abandons the orchestra from Arcana, for more reduced and individualized instrumental ensembles.