Edgard Varèse

Edgar ( d) Victor Achille Charles Varèse ( born December 22, 1883 in Paris, † November 6, 1965 in New York ) was an American composer and conductor of French origin.

Life

Varèse was the eldest child of the Italian Henri Varèse and his French wife Blanche -Marie Cortot. He grew up in Paris and with his maternal grandparents in Le Villars in Burgundy on; a formative role in his childhood played the grandfather Claude Cortot. In 1892 his parents moved with him to Turin. There he undertook eleven years a first composition studies: Martin Pas, an opera by Jules Verne for boy's voice and mandolin. The father was an engineer, wanted for his son the same professional way and demonstrated their mathematical and scientific training. The musical interests of the son he was hostile to; this secretly took lessons: In 1900, he became a student at the Turin Conservatory. He was a drummer with the Opera Orchestra and gained experience as a conductor. In the same year his mother died the strained relationship with his father, who married a second time, intensified.

1903 Varèse finally broke with his father and went to Paris, where he took up in 1904 to study music at the Paris Schola Cantorum. His teachers were Albert Roussel ( counterpoint), Vincent d' Indy ( composition, conducting ) and Charles Bordes ( Music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance ). In 1905 he moved to the Paris Conservatory and studied with Charles -Marie Widor (composition). He founded his first choir, stood in connection with the artist group La attic, which was enthusiastic about the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, and composed works for orchestra first. In 1907 he finished his studies with Widor and married the actress Suzanne Bing. In addition, he met Claude Debussy personally know, whose music had greatly impressed him since his time in Turin.

At the end of the year, Varèse moved with his wife to Berlin. Presumably he had read Ferruccio Busoni's signature design a New Aesthetic of Music, at least he was looking at this close contact and became his disciple. He corresponded with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, after his play Oedipus and the Sphinx, he composed an opera. He also founded here a choir, made ​​the acquaintance of Maurice Ravel, Richard Strauss, Romain Rolland and - during a visit to von Hofmannsthal in Vienna - Gustav Mahler. Rolland was a patron of Varèse. The orchestral work was premiered by the Bourgogne Blüthner Orchestra through the intercession of Richard Strauss on 15 December 1910 as the first of his works to the public in Berlin. Earlier, in October his daughter Claude was born. He heard the first performance of Pierrot Lunaire in 1912 by Arnold Schoenberg, a key work of 20th-century music.

1913 divorced yourself Varèse. During an extended stay in Paris a fire in Berlin destroyed his manuscripts left behind almost all of his works composed until then. In Paris he witnessed the scandalous premiere of another key work: Igor Stravinsky's ballet Le sacre du printemps. Influences and quotes from Stravinsky's Sacre and Petrouschka appeared later in the work of Varese. He also worked on a stage project of Jean Cocteau.

At the beginning of WWI in 1914, Varèse returned to Paris for the time being. The following year he emigrated like many other Parisian artists in the United States, on December 29, 1915, he arrived in New York. He met here at the Dadaists Marcel Duchamp and wrote for an artists' magazine of Francis Picabia. He also learned the then most important representatives of the New York avant-garde art to Walter Arensberg and Alfred Stieglitz. He worked as Notenkopist on the orchestration of foreign compositions. His rehearsal of the Requiem of Hector Berlioz and its performance at the April 1, 1917 brought him his first major success as a conductor who gave him more exposure. In the same year he married his second wife, the American Louise Norton. The New Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1919 by him had with his ambitious program of old and new music with critics and audiences no success, so he made his conducting activities there quickly. Together with the harpist Carlos Salzedo and with the financial support of two patrons of 1921 he founded the International Composers Guild ( ICG) for the purpose of performance of the entire spectrum of the then current new music. The following year, established at his suggestion Busoni and Heinz Tiessen the European counterpart, the International Composers Guild ( ICG ), but compared to the somewhat later founded the International Society for Contemporary Music ( ISCM ) gained little influence and had only a short time.

1921/22, Varèse wrote the orchestral work of Americas, follow to 1927 mainly chamber music works. Compared to his works from the Paris and Berlin, he developed in his new compositions an entirely new musical language. He became an American citizen in 1927, the same year he released the ICG, but founded already in the following with Henry Cowell and Carlos Chávez Ramírez the Pan American Association of Composers ( PAAC ), which had the support of contemporary composers of the Americas set a goal.

1928 Varèse went back to Paris. It was there, as well as in Germany, to the first performances of his pieces composed in the United States. André Jolivet in 1930 for some time his pupil, he was in contact with Heitor Villa -Lobos and Antonin Artaud. His plan for a laboratory in which artists and scientists together new possibilities of sound production should explore in music, could not be realized. In 1933 he returned to New York.

For Varèse a twenty-year period, which was marked by severe mood swings and depression and in which it apart from the flute piece Density 21.5 (1936 ) began to publish any work, and ( up to Deserts in 1954 ) completed no major work. 1934 first recording session was taken up with one of his works ( ionization), from 1936 he lectured in Santa Fe. In November 1937 he moved to San Francisco, in the following May to Los Angeles, where he tried to attract people interested in his music in the film business in Hollywood, but was unsuccessful. He returned in 1940 returned to New York, founded in 1941 to New Chorus, later to Greater New York extended chorus, with whom he performed primarily ancient music.

In 1950 he was invited to hold a course in composition at the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt. Thus, an enhanced reception of his work began among the young European composers; his works have been performed increased again. He began the composition of Deserts, employing the then novel magnetic tape as a sound source. At the premiere in Paris in 1954, which was broadcast live on the radio in stereo, there was a big scandal, but was quickly followed with success and further performances in Europe ( Hamburg, Stockholm ) and. Upon his return in 1955 in the USA It followed as the Poème électronique next big project, which was created in collaboration with Le Corbusier and his then assistant Iannis Xenakis. It was a composition for several tapes that sounded in the pavilion of the Philips company at the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1958 on a system of 300 loudspeakers. This work heard over 2 million visitors to the pavilion, it was repeated after his return to the United States in New York.

After that Varèse began two other compositions, Nocturnal and Nuit, but could not finish it. On November 6, 1965, he died of a thrombosis in a New York hospital. His legacy is now in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel.

Among the musicians who have expressed particular admiration for Varèse, include Wolfgang Rihm and Frank Zappa.

Works

• Un grand sommeil noir based on a poem by Paul Verlaine for soprano and piano (1906 ) for large orchestra, orchestrated by Antony Beaumont

Almost all the works from the early phase before moving to the USA in 1915 are considered to be destroyed by the composer or gone lost, including

• Trois pièces pour orchester. Three Pieces for Orchestra (1905 )
• Chansons avec orchester. Orchestral songs (1905 )
• Le fils des étoiles. Opera (1905 )
• Poème des Brumes for Orchestra ( 1905)
• Chanson des jeunes hommes for Orchestra ( 1905)
• Prélude à la fin d' un jour. Symphony for large orchestra, inspired by a poem by Léon Deubel (1905 )
• Rhapsody novels for Orchestra ( 1906)
• Apothéose de l' océan for large orchestra (1906 )
• Le délire de Clytemnestre. Tragic Symphony on a text by Ricciotto Canudo (1907 )
• Bourgogne ( Burgundy dt ). Symphonic poem for large orchestra (1908 )
• Gargantua. Symphonic poem for large orchestra (unfinished, 1909)
• More light for Orchestra ( 1911)
• Les cycles du nord for Orchestra ( 1912)
• Oedipus and the Sphinx, opera by Hugo von Hofmannsthal ( 1908-14 )