I see what you mean, Richard. I'm not having this problem when I'm listening to Varèse's early pieces, but I do have problems with Déserts, the only piece by Varèse I can't get into. I think it's too long (even without the outdated interpolations) and mismatched, to use your word.


I agree. I think Varèse really did something new in an uncompromising way. Constant Lambert said that modern music was in decline during the period in which Schoenberg left free atonality behind him and Stravinsky was turning towards neo-classicism. I don't know if Lambert was right on this, but he's having a point here, I think. The music of Varèse is a very fine example of what musical innovation could be only a decade after Pierrot Lunaire, The Rite of Spring and Jeux.

The ASKO Ensemble certainly knows how to play Varèse. I have to say that I was a bit disappointed by the complete works set conducted by Riccardo Chailly on DECCA. I also think that the ASKO recording conducted by Cliff Crego mentioned by Bryn is a lot better.

2 takes on this subject:

1. Somewhere on this site (can't find it just now) I remember RB mentioning that although the pieces sound great in concert, they can be rather disappointing listened to at home. I've often wondered about this and ended up cursing the exigencies/vagaries of studio recording and reproduction that simply doesn't and maybe cannot do a music a much deserved justice. Low and behold, this was also a complaint Frank Zappa had. According to 2 or 3 musicians involved at the time (I think this was a project with Ensemble Modern in the late 80's), shortly before his death , he had the idea of recording  all the chamber pieces with the quality and care that would go into recording a rock album, ie with 'ideal' acoustics, - each musician being recorded individually and making sure the final mix did justice to each instrument. Unfortunately, despite the existence of these recordings, the proposed box-set hasn't yet emerged and still awaits final editing/CD pressing... but by all 2 or 3 reports, the results are "fantastic", and "at last you can hear everything you hear in concert, but never heard on record...".

2. Despite having only written a handful of pieces (i can cite the most important ones for me here & now: Hyperprism, Ionisation, Integrales, Octandres, Density 21.5, Ameriques, Ecuatorial, that's all folks, I can't stand Poeme Electronique, and Deserts seems somehow mis-judged and imbalanced...) there is little (to my knowledge) written about his activities as a conductor , which in relation to his composition is of fundamental relevance.

The 'inner counting' inherent to his work complements/strengthens  other aspects (the often mentioned timbral innovation, the short-lived-ness of each idea, the sonic energy, use of percussion, etc). This has often been a background thought after having learned/conducted these works, an element which is perhaps as perceivable as a performer as for a listener: it is as if the activity of 'counting' , as each episode unfolds, were a part of the aesthetic of this music, regardless of whether it was consciously intended or not.

One might imagine 'counting' to be necessary to perform all music, it mostly is ( ) however, in a time-based art,  differences of temporal measurement,  bar-division , bar length, rhythmic structures and the way micro-dramaturgies are connected , have become as important when listening to V., as the sheer sound of it:  I 'hear' and 'follow' the changes of bar and tempo (not merely because I know the scores) clearer with Varese (and Stravinsky) than with ... Schoenberg, Webern, R.Strauss, Berg, etc.       

Am I talking crap, or has anyone else had this experience??



that's just great. it goes:

BA BA BA, BAAA, BA BAAAAAAAAA

BA BA, BABABABABABA BA BAAA, ...

we're talking about the same one... ?

Richard, was it a concert in the Matinee op de Vrije Zaterdag series, somewhere in 1997?

I think that if Varèse had wanted to "develop" his materials he could have done so (if only we could hear his lost earliest works). To me the components of his music are the "objets sonores avant la lettre" I referred to before, that is to say internally complex sound-objects with a dynamism of their own, and I can well imagine that he wrote a lot more of them than he actually used, also that he wrote them without initially deciding which order they should occur in, both of which techniques clearly play important roles in the original formulation of musique concrete, but also (slaps forehead at previously missing the obviousness of this) in film-making.

As for Déserts, I have to admit quietly that in the Boulez version (ie. without the electronic segments) I find it very convincing indeed. I did once discuss with a conductor the possibility of performing it with new (live) electronic segments to replace the ones Varèse made, but this idea came to nothing, and I'm not sure whether it's actually an interesting one.

Pim, 1997 sounds very likely; I was living just behind the Concertgebouw at the time and dropped in frequently.

It's probably useful in this context to remember V's own preferred structural paradigms, which had not a lot to do with received forms, but everything to do with scientific formulations and natural phenomena (crystals, most obviously); so that, in trying to weigh up the approriateness of the length of his works, or the degree to which he 'developed' his 'material', we should probably take into account these sorts of 'laboratory' conditions. I don't think he gave a monkey's about 'proportion'.

Octandre is a very fine piece. This is just a thought: there is some music that presents material that implies developmental potential, but then 'refuses' to do so (some of the best Sciarrino can be like this), thus creating a tension. And other music where the material doesn't seem to have such potential (this is part of the problem with some Stravinsky, I reckon - not that I'm trying to suggest he's a lesser composer than Sciarrino by any means). Do you think Varèse falls into either of these categories?

Just to be a bit pedantic, using those particular models for structural paradigms does not necessarily guarantee that a sonic analogue will 'work'. Isn't this a case of shifting spatial models into a temporal medium? (I do like some Varèse, by the way)

But the internal proportions of the pieces are in fact very carefully measured, aren't they? (Again, almost as if they were lengths of tape or film.) On this subject, and the interesting comparison Ollie made earlier with Webern, I think that while four minutes of Webern feels to me like four minutes, four minutes of Varèse seems a lot longer (not in a "when is this noise finally going to END" kind of way, though Amériques sometimes does that to me). Maybe this is some kind of subconscious awareness of the rest of the "iceberg".

Agreed Richard. But I think that's what I meant by 'rhetoric' earlier. The forcefulness of the outcomes of the local structures often seems disproportionate to their length - the [cresc] - sff thing. But yes, I like the effect. I just don't think that was his priority.