ex tempore - Vol IX/2, Summer 1999

Varèse: looking for the new...

alcides lanza
edited by Meg Sheppard

Much has been written concerning the move by Edgard Varèse to New York City, and his admiration for the New World. This has been discussed particularly in connection with analysis of his orchestral work Amériques. This essay deals with Varèse's compelling need to break away from things European, and the challenges, ideas, new aesthetic ideals presented to him by the "new" world. It was for him a look into the future. This paper will look into Varèse's relationships with other artists - not necessarily musicians - his predilection for scientific notions as core ideas for some compositions, his consistent use of Spanish (translated or not) for almost all his compositions that use text. Varèse felt a need to walk away from systematized methods of composition. He was always searching for freedom of aesthetics, and from the restrictions of tonality, scales, and equal temperament. His renunciation of European ideals and methodologies, resulting in his embracing wholeheartedly living in America and things "American", are evident in all his works produced after his move to New York. Most of Varèse's compositions written in Europe before his coming to New York in 1915 were destroyed by fire in a warehouse in Berlin, where he had left them in storage. From this period he kept only the orchestral version of Bourgogne, the symphonic piece that had been premiered in Berlin in 1910. It is significant that in his decision to destroy Bourgogne in New York, in 1963, Varèse was in a way, severing his last artistic link with Europe.

Quest for New Sounds, New Instruments

Daniel Chennevière, better known in America as the composer Dan Rudhyar (also a painter, writer, mystic and critic) in his book Art as release of Power wrote "Our notes are edges of intervals, of empty abysses. The melodies jump from edge to edge...It is a music of mummies, of preserved and stuffed animals which look alive enough perhaps, yet they are dead and motionless. The inner space is empty. The tone entities are dead, because they are empty of sonal energy, of sonal blood. They are but bones and skin." (Rudhyar, 1922). How close those words echo the aspirations and desires that Varèse had for the inner qualities of sound - that energy that he compared to vital forces emanating from living matter. Very early in the century he showed interest in the siren, that sonic instrument which is always connected with danger or fire - a utilitarian instrument, but one that could provide him with the continuous gliding line, that hyperbolic curve able to include micro-intervals. By the time he was living in New York, the sounds of boats in the harbour, and the sirens from fire trucks and patrol cars became a constant soundscape Varèse could enjoy anytime he opened a window.

As soon as he arrived in New York (in 1915) he was interviewed by the New York Telegraph and the Morning Telegraph. His beliefs in the potential of the "new" were frankly stated:

Our musical alphabet must be enriched. We need new instruments very badly. The Futurists (Marinetti and his noise-artists) have made a serious mistake in this respect. Instruments, after all, must only be temporary means of expression. Musicians should take up this question in deep earnest with the help of machinery specialists. I have always felt the need of new mediums of expression in my own work. I refuse to submit myself only to sounds that have already been heard. What I am looking for are new technical mediums which can lend themselves to every expression of thought and can keep up with thought. ¹

His early interest in the interstices between adjacent semitones indicate his moving away from the European system so strongly based on pitch and intervals and attached to scalar modes and equal temperament. When we add to this Varèse's favored use of dissonant intervals, seconds, sevenths, ninths and also cluster formations, the road to the use of noises and experimental music was open. For example, not only did he use sirens in Amériques (1921), but he had used them in experimental work before, in Paris:

When I was about twenty...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 Helmholtz, and was fascinated by his experiments with sirens described in his Physiology of Sound. I went to the Marché aux Puces [Flea market] where you can find just about anything, in search of a siren, and picked up two small ones. With these, and using also children's whistles, I made my first experiments in what later I called spatial music.²

By using certain percussion instruments, gongs, tam tams, cymbals or anvils, Varèse was in a certain way "filling up" interstices between adjacent tones, - with innovative results in the domain of timbre and verticalities. It is obvious that Varèse was a true innovator in the use of solo percussion, and in the assignment of important roles to the percussion section in his orchestral and chamber orchestra works.³ Even if we recognize that it was the Group of Five in Russia⁴ that brought the colours and rhythms, the intensity and timbrical richness of folkloric percussion into 'classical, symphonic' music in the last two decades of the 19th century, it remained for Varèse to extract such a wealth of ideas and timbres, using innovative rhythms and stratified writing for his percussion groups. He introduced novel concepts such as sound masses and intersecting sonic planes - with processes that included expansion, projection, interaction, penetration and transmutation of those layers of materials. Writing about Déserts, Varèse explains -

...although the intervals between the pitches determine the ever-hanging and contrasted volumes and planes, they are not based on any fixed set of intervals such as a scale or series, or any existing principle of musical measurement. They are decided by the exigencies of this particular work.⁵

In short, Varèse was not interested in writing 'notes' that respond vertically to the rules of harmony; instead he was searching for the note that sounds 'in a certain way' for a particular instrument, and in the orchestral context of the moment. The American composer Henry Cowell has written:

...one must consider that besides the harmony of notes, which with Varèse is somewhat secondary, there is at any given time a harmony of tone-qualities, each of which is calculated to sound out through the orchestra. For example, Varèse will use a certain chord. Superimposed upon this chord and more important than the chord itself to Varèse, is the harmony resultant from the tone-qualities of the instruments owing to their particular sound in the register in which he scores each; so that, while the chord might be found in many a modern composer's work, it assumes a character found only in Varèse's music.⁶

It is of interest to note that during the 20's and 30's - when Varèse wrote the majority of his works written in America - the prevalent compositional trends in Europe were based on systems (free atonal, organized atonal or regressive neoclassicism) which by definition could only exist by utilizing notes, pitches and intervals. It is clear that Varèse was searching for ways to stay apart from those compositional approaches, finding in the New World different attitudes and the possibilities of staying apart - even physically - from European ways. In that respect, it is worth mentioning Varèse's declaration to an inquiring reporter concerning the founding of the Pan American Association of Composers (1928):

The Pan American was born because I realized that Europe was drifting back to neo-classicism or rather what is so-called...You can't make a classic; it has to become one with age. What is called classicism is really academicism, the influence we want to combat as an evil thing, for it stifles spontaneous expression...It is not that I believe music should be limited to a passport but rather that today very little music is alive in Europe.⁷

His interest in glissandi and in very fast and "ripping" chromatic scales speak of his desire to 'fill' the gaps between adjacent notes, both horizontally and vertically (see, for example, Écuatorial, after rehearsal 15, Theremin,⁸ trombone and piano parts). Some of these gestures, to be performed so rapidly - almost like 'appoggiaturas' - could bring the slant of the glissandi almost to a vertical positioning. In the analysis of his works we frequently encounter minimal differentiations of dynamic levels on the same note, the note being repeated, which has replaced melody (see also in Écuatorial, trumpet, 3 bars before rehearsal 3: high B natural, in less than one second, has f p ff ). Since the listener does not find the customary melodic patterns (sometimes the many parts having been reduced to a repeated note) it is possible to concentrate on small dynamic or rhythmical details. The Canadian composer Gilles Tremblay has written:

When the body of sound thins down till it is monody, the musical fabric, as though relieved of a burden, springs to life and becomes melodic. This is perhaps the transmutation of the vertical into the horizontal, to use one of the terms of alchemy...⁹

Use of Text in Vocal Works

It is time to consider the relationship to the Spanish language that exists in almost all the vocal works written by Varèse. From his catalog of works we can mention:

Offrandes (1921), for soprano and chamber orchestra, with percussion (text
     by Vicente Huidobro and José Juan Tablada).

Écuatorial (1933-34), for solo bass voice, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, piano,
     organ, 2 Theremins¹⁰ and percussion (text from the Popol Vuh, provided by Miguel Angel Asturias).
Nocturnal (1959-61), chamber orchestra with piano, chorus of basses and
     solo soprano (unfinished, but completed by Chou Wen-Chung) (text from House of Incest, by Anaïs Nin).
Espace (never finished, multilingual texts including Spanish).

Etude for Espace (1947), for two pianos, percussion and mixed chorus (multilingual texts)
Night (Nuit) (1963), for soprano soloist and small orchestra with flute, oboe,
     clarinet, horn, 1 or 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, double-bass, percussion
     (texts also from House of Incest, by Anaïs Nin) (never completed)

In order to reflect on the presence of a "Spanish" connection through these works, we should look at the many close friendships with Latin American writers which Varèse enjoyed - particularly during his brief return to Paris in 1928. These include, among others Cuban Alejo Carpentier, Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias and Chilean Vicente Huidobro. Offrandes uses two poems, one is by Huidobro, and the other by the Mexican poet José Juan Tablada. The two poets were from Spanish speaking countries, but resided in Paris at the time. Their poems were written in French. The poems were respectively "Chanson de là-Haut", by Huidobro, and "La Croix du Sud", by Tablada. The title for "Chanson de Là-Haut" was apparently derived by Varèse from the last line of the poem just before he took the lines to be used for Offrandes. The line is "Qu'est que tu vois là-haut." and was part of the longer poem entitled "Tour Eiffel", published in The Citoyen de l'Oubli by Huidobro. For his composition Varèse extracted one section, effecting some changes and omissions. A "Song from on high" could certainly imply 'looking down from space' - that is, not having one's feet on Earth (neither in France or America?). Except for the first line that mentions the river Seine, all other references are to perspectives away from Earth (for example, "I watch Earth spinning", "all the seas"). "La Croix du Sud" constitutes the second song of Offrandes. The title itself - The Southern Cross - brings us to the realm of space - again away from Earth, away from Europe. A link between the two songs can be found relating 'Polar dawns' from the first, with 'the pole' and 'Aurora Borealis' in the second. The Southern Cross is the well known constellation visible only in the southern hemisphere, and not at all visible from anywhere in Europe. Of interest here is the writing for percussion - ethereal and mysterious - in a kind of gentle ostinato, that provides an ideal atmospheric setting to the poem. The score carries the indication "La batterie dans un sentiment de monotonie et somnolence".

The poet José Juan Tablada and his wife Nina were personal friends of Varèse, and the composer eventually dedicated Hyperprism to both of them. "Chanson de Là-Haut" is dedicated to Louise Varèse, and "La Croix du Sud" to his friend and collaborator Carlos Salzedo. Écuatorial (note the Spanish spelling) uses text taken from the Popol Vuh, part of the sacred book of prayers of the Maya Quiche. The title, as Varèse himself has declared, intended to suggest the geographical areas of pre-Colombian culture. The text, which is written in Spanish, brings forth many of Varèse's favorite literary images, some mentioned above concerning Offrandes. A quote from the poem itself, near the end, will suffice:

Give Life, O All-Enveloping force, in the sky,
on the Earth, at the four corners,
at the four extremities,
as long as dawn exists,
as long as the tribe exists!

("Ho-hé whoo- dad la Vida, Oh, Fuerza envuelta en el Cielo,
en la Tierra, en los cuatro ángulos,
en las cuatro extremidades,
en tanto exista el alba, en tanto exista la Tribu!")

The Guatemalan poet and novelist Miguel Angel Asturias had published his book Leyendas de Guatemala (which appeared in French as Legendes de Guatemala, in 1932). Asturias dedicated the copy he sent to Varèse by writing "a E.V., Maestro-mago de los sonidos estas leyendas de Guatemala, con toda mi admiración y afecto, Asturias, 1932".¹¹ Varèse was absolutely taken by the great prayer of supplication in the Popol Vuh texts which became the text used for Ecuatorial. He finished the composition in New York the following year. The sacred prayers of the Popol Vuh were published in the Spanish translation of Father Jimines. Even though the gift from Asturias was the French version (done by Francis de Miomandre, with a preface by Paul Valéry) Varèse, who knew Spanish quite well, chose to work with the original Spanish version.

Within this group of compositions, we must mention Nocturnal, with text by Anaïs Nin. From her book House of Incest, Varèse took isolated words, phrases or fragments of phrases to create his working text, with interpolations of vowels, phonemes or syllables by himself. These are mostly harsh and guttural exclamations without semantic content. On the other hand, when the text in Nocturnal has enough semantic content to allow for linguistic recognition, it is always in English. We must remember that Nocturnal, in a way is only a fragment of a larger project in continuous transformation. Initially, Varèse considered using invocations from several ancient civilizations.

Anaïs Nin, the well known writer of erotica, was born to a family of Spanish musicians that included Joaquín Nin y Castellanos, Cuban pianist and composer, and Joaquín Nin-Culmell (born in Berlin but considered a Spanish composer). As in the case with other writers and poets, the Varèse were intimate friends with Anaïs Nin. It is not a surprise then, to know that Varèse contemplated and started as yet another vocal composition based on texts from the House of Incest, as mentioned above. Looking at Espace (which was never finished), and its derivation Étude for Espace (1947) written for two pianos, percussion and mixed chorus we see that besides planning - as early as 1929 - to use yelling, grunting, moaning, puffing and hissing, it had multilingual texts - another Varèse's aperture signaling his desire to look into many directions, to encompass it all, all cultures - including,

Voices in the sky, as though magic, invisible hands were turning on and off the knobs of fantastic radios, filling all space, criss-crossing, overlapping, penetrating each other, splitting up, superimposing, repulsing each other, colliding, crashing. Phrases, slogans, utterances, chants, proclamations...snatches of phrases of American, French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, German revolutions like shooting stars, also recurring words poundingly repeated like hammer blows or throbbing in an underground ostinato, stubborn and ritualistic...also with some folkloric phrases, because of their human, terrestrial qualities. I like to embrace all that is human, and also all that goes from the more primitive until the far out reaches of science.¹²

The sketches and plans for Espace were transformed several times but the composition was never completed. At different times from the early 30's to the 50's Varèse had different proposals for similar, related projects. An original plan was called "The One All Alone, a Miracle", based on American Indian myths. Eventually this project was given another try as "Astronome," a futuristic work involving interstellar communication, and total destruction brought upon the Earth. Of the different versions only the one called Etude for Espace was finished, and was premiered on April 20, 1947 by the New Music Society at the New School for Social Research, NY, conducted by the composer. Varèse also created the music on magnetic tape for the film by Thomas Bouchard "Around and about Miró" (1955), the celebrated Spanish painter, for its sequence "Good Friday procession in Vergès". In it Varèse produced a tapestry of differentiated sounds which were the echoes of the disparate visual elements. Varèse was applying the techniques that he had mentioned before when, in 1940, talking about the use of organized sounds on film, he said, "we are now in the possession of scientific means not merely of realistic reproduction of sounds but of production of entirely new combinations of sounds. Any possible sound we can imagine can be produced with perfect control of its quality, intensity and pitch, opening up entirely new auditory perspectives". Varèse corresponded with some Latin American composers - mostly with the Mexican Carlos Chavez and the Argentinian Juan Carlos Paz. Paz, who had written and published an extended article ("Varèse's contribution to experimental music," 1959), had also exchanged some letters with Varèse concerning Paz's own Continuidad, 1960 (a symphonic piece in 5 movements, the last one dedicated to Varèse). Juan Carlos Paz, in his well known book Introducción a la música de nuestro tiempo has written:

Varèse, truly a pioneer of non-tempered music is also one of the most active composers in the field of experimental music...his compositions are masterpieces of futurist anticipation and realized to perfection. Basing his music on scientific notions, this inventor of music or this architect of sounds works with rhythms, frequencies and dynamics, he uses electric instruments, he dreams of a music outside equal temperament where the perspectives of moving sound masses, suddenly colliding, exploding or penetrating each other, offer the listener musical actions of cataclismic proportions, evoking the most powerful elemental and primitive forces.¹³

Musical Organizations initiated byVarèse

It was in 1921 that Varèse founded the International Composers Guild(ICG) in New York City, to "...centralize the [compositional] works of the day, to group them in programs intelligently and organically constructed, and, with the distinguished help of singers and instrumentalists to present these works in such a way as to reveal their fundamental spirit...The ICG refuses to admit any limitation, either of volition or of action. The ICG disapproves of all "isms"; denies the existence of schools; recognizes only the individual". Earlier in the same manifesto (written by both Varèse and Carlos Salzedo) it is stated that "...dying is the privilege of the weary. The present day composers refuse to die. They have realized the necessity of banding together and fighting for the right of each individual to secure 'fair and free presentation of his work'. It is out of such collective will that the ICG was born".¹⁴ During 6 years of producing concerts, the ICG played works by 56 composers of 14 different nationalities. Among the composers performed, those from the Americas included Chavez, Ruggles, Varèse, Acario Cotapos, Cowell, Torpadie, Grant Still, Rudyhar, Rietti, Ornstein and McPhee.

After the 'cycle' of the ICG was fulfilled, Varèse founded another organization, the Pan American Association of Composers (PAAC) - this time with the more focused goal of "giving concerts with works by composers of North, South and Central America". The organization was founded by Varèse, Henry Cowell, Charles Ives and Carlos Chavez. In 1928 the PAAC presented concerts with music from all the Americas, achieving international recognition for those composers. Varèse was promoting the need to move away from the provincialism typical of European political and artistic thinking. He declared

...'Nations', is an old concept. The people that do not have the feeling of belonging to the whole of humanity, they are idiots. What is the meaning of that, a 'nation'? As for myself, I am not French, I am not American, I am a citizen of the world...When they ask for my nationality, I declare myself as 'planetarian', but when I have declared myself planetarian and I look to the galaxies that surround us, I find myself very provincial.¹⁵

It seems obvious that even as Varèse made a selection of European avant garde composers to play in his own programs or in the programs for the ICG (Debussy, Ravel, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Casella and Malipiero), by the time of the organization of the PAAC his interest in composers from the Americas had become paramount.

Varèse on Varèse, "looking for the new"

"I did not think of the title "Amériques" as purely geographic but as symbolic of discoveries - new worlds on earth, in the sky, or in the minds of men." (1957, Odile Vivier: Varèse)

"(about Amériques) ...this composition is the interpretation of a mood, a piece of pure music absolutely unrelated to the noises of modern life which some critics have read into the composition. If anything, the theme is a meditative one, the impression of a foreigner as he interrogates the tremendous possibilities of this new civilization of yours." ("The Evening Bulletin, Philadelphia, April 12, 1926 Varèse, E." )
"Truth exists only insofar as art gives it a meaning. The joy of the artist is in the hunt...For my part, I cannot resist that burning desire to go beyond the limits." (Figaro, Paris, December 1928)

In a letter to José Rodriguez, these strong opinions concerning young French composers and neoclassicism:

American music must speak its own language, and not be the result of a certain mummified European formula...It is disheartening to see the young school here in France becoming zealously academic. The neoclassical ideal does not certainly make for creative effort. It is lassitude constructing a theory by which to excuse itself and this theory has become the fashion.¹⁶

In Central Europe I have found nothing that may be interpreted as a completely new orientation by the young composers... Even if their music is of interest, the followers of Schoenberg do not represent a new original style. Egon Wellesz, Anton von Webern and Alban Berg are, no doubt, very creative, but they are only the most visible representatives of one school, they are not free...I believe that during these years after the war (1918) a new culture is being developed, and that in America it will become a musical renaissance...¹⁷
The essential touchstone for me was Busoni's prophetic book, Entwurf einer Neuen Aesthetik der Tonskunst [Sketches for a New Aesthetic for Music]. This predicts precisely what is happening today in music - that is, if you pass over the whole dodecaphonic development, which in my view represents a sort of hardening of the arteries. I find the whole 12-tone approach so limiting, especially in its use of the tempered scale and its rigid pitch organization. I respect the 12-tone discipline, and those that feel they need such discipline. But it reminds me of Beckmesser's "Tablatur", and it seems much more fruitful to use the total sonic resources available to us.¹⁸

During 1960, interviewed by the German critic and musicologist H.H. Stuckenschmidt, Varèse declared: "You still have dodecaphonic music over there? You are so academic, you Europeans, aren't you?"¹⁹

His Latin American Friends

We have already mentioned that Varèse's friends included Huidobro, Carpentier, Tablada, Asturias, Chavez, Anaïs Nin - all recognized writers, poets or musicians of hispanic extraction. We could add to the list many other names, among them the composers Juan Carlos Paz (Argentina) and Heitor Villa-Lobos (Brazil), the painters Diego Rivera (Mexico), Joan Miró (Spain), and Francis Picabia, the Spanish dadaist poet and painter. Varèse befriended Villa-Lobos in Paris, during his return there in the late twenties. With Juan Carlos Paz he had some correspondence, as he did with Carpentier and Chavez. Paz had written extensively about Varèse in his several books on the music of our times. It was in his book Alturas, tensiones, ataques, intensidades that Paz has written: "Varèse, aware of the irreversible decline of a completed cycle of western music, thought that other principles than the ones commonly in use were needed. According to Varèse the new musical possibilities have scientific and mathematical structuring."²⁰

His fondness for Spanish and Latin American culture, prompted him to initiate and organize a collection to aid the Spanish Republic. In the area of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Varèse lived for quite sometime in the mid-thirties, he was able to raise more than 1000 dollars, a considerable sum of money those days. As the president of the 'Committee to Aid the Spanish Republic' he spoke in public and sent communiqués to the newspapers describing the lack of medication, drugs, antiseptics, which were "resulting in thousands of people and soldiers, women and children, from the cities of Bilbao and Santander, to be dying of gangrene in the most agonizing pain".²¹ In New Mexico Varèse was lecturing and teaching, but also got very involved in getting to know the local population - especially the Indians and the Mexican-Americans - their pains and sorrows, their myths and anecdotes. Varèse was entering a dark moment in his life. He was unable to compose, and not having achieved the recognition that he so much deserved, he was filled with despair. Varèse became demoralized and began mentioning ideas of committing suicide. Nevertheless, it is at this same time that he was again thinking of his work Espace, and he had a vision of a work with choir that should be a celebration of brotherhood, freedom and peace. Varèse contributed greatly to the aesthetic of the need for freedom and individual expression by each artist. He found what he was looking for in the New World - new possibilities, a lack of reverence for the traditional, a real desire to "tirar al aire" and see how it falls. The migration liberated him, and he returned the favor through his extraordinary contributions in liberating his audience. Just listen to all his music, to all the music between, inside and around the notes.

Notes:

¹ Varèse, 1916.

² Varèse, 1959.

³ The classical orchestra had used only tympani, cymbals and triangles, just to stress certain harmonic cadential points. In Varèse's hands we see an enlarged field of percussion instruments which included many of Latin American origins, cocos, rattles, guiros, Indian Drums, anvil, Lion's roar (described by Varèse as 'string drum'), sandpaper, twigs and Cuban claves.

⁴ The Group of Five included Moussorgsky, Cui, Balakirev, Borodin and Rimski-Korsakov.

⁵ Varèse, 1955.

⁶ Cowell, 1933.

⁷ Varèse, 1934

⁸ Early electronic instrument invented by the Russian Leon Theremin (the correct Russian name is Lev Sergeyevich Termen).

⁹Tremblay, 1959 .

¹⁰ For the first performance the two Theremins were replaced by two Ondes Martenot, and indicated as "Ondes" in the published score. Maurice Martenot was the French inventor for whom the instrument was named.

¹¹ "to E.V., Master-magician of the sound, these legends of Guatemala, with all my admiration and affection, Asturias, 1932".