NEW MUSIC Reports: Edgard Varèse & the Radical Transformation of American Music (1915–1927)

The Enduring Impact of the Varèse Decade The decade from 1915 to 1927 transformed New York City from a provincial outpost of European Romanticism into the vanguard of the global avant-garde. Varèse’s legacy during these years was a fundamental redefinition of the composer’s role: from a creator of melodies to an "engineer of sound". The influence of this period can be traced through the subsequent work of composers like Henry Cowell, Carlos Chávez, and Charles Ives, all of whom were championed by Varèse through the ICG and the later Pan American Association of Composers. Even more significantly, Varèse’s focus on timbre and "organized sound" became the cornerstone for the development of electronic music in the 1950s and 1960s, inspiring a lineage of musicians that extends from John Cage to Frank Zappa. The "radically progressive" ideas Varèse introduced—equal pay for conductors, democratic orchestral governance, and a refusal to repeat works for the sake of familiarity—remain a challenge to the contemporary musical establishment. In those twelve years, Varèse proved that music could be a "scientific construct of sounds," a laboratory for the soul that was as vast as the galaxies he invoked in Arcana. When the era ended in 1927, it was not because the energy had run out, but because Varèse had successfully exploded the traditional concept of music, leaving only "organized sound" in the silence that followed. Full report pdf [1Mb] http://www.picture-poems.com/pdfs/varese-radical-decade.pdf IMAGE: Varèse c. about the time of his HYPERPRISM premiere, 1923 INTRO: NIGHTWIND from PHAROS / ASKO Ensemble / CODA: StarCYCLE DUO “Eltanin” for two timpanists, Both pieces are on Soundcloud….