I'm with you on the bowed cymbals, Ollie. As with the sirens, the problem is not so much the pitch being there but that the composer has tried to ignore it and that percussionists in general don't place a high priority on actually being able to play the cymbal with a bow, as opposed to making a sound with it at more or less the indicated point in a score. That this can be done is proved beautifully by Eddie Prévost, particularly in Interworks, a CD of improvised duos with John Butcher, where soprano saxophone and bowed percussion blend to the point that one is often surprised as some component of the composite sound reveals itself to have been the instrument one thought it wasn't.

With regard to the scale of Varèse's compositions, I was reading last night that Nocturnal was originally intended to be a rather extended work, which had been in progress for ten years at the time when a provisional version was "completed" by Chou Wen-chung for the premiere in 1961. As far as I know, Varèse's Nachlass has never really been investigated and organised, so it could be that there's more music lying around waiting to be put into a performable state.

I wonder if Frank Zappa's idea for recording Varèse's music "properly" would have gone as far as he did in his own Civilization Phase III, that is to say sampling single sounds from the instruments (of Ensemble Modern) and constructing the music on a computer. Some of the resulting pieces were subsequently performed live by EM and others, but the "artificial" versions have a sonic quality which is quite unique. I think it's a shame though that FZ never really applied himself to questions of structure: while the materials he uses are often strongly reminiscent of Varèse, the forms are quite perfunctory in comparison.

Changing the subject somewhat, this is from a radio interview given by Charlie Parker in January 1954:


(the rest is here: http://www.plosin.com/milesAhead/BirdInterviews.html)

Quite so. (Well, don't do those drugs anyway.) What might we have heard from such a collaboration?

As for Chou, I had the impression (which might be wrong) that his interest in the material has been more by way of keeping control over it than opening it up to the world. I'll report back on that.

Sure, Tuning Up and Dance for Burgess are both pretty embarrassing, in a sense; and come to think of it I've only heard negative things about Chung's involvement with Varèse's work, which I'm so far not convinced is fair in any other case (waiting to be convinced by Richard...)

As for Varèse himself I'm afraid I've never been entirely convinced. I think it's probably just a matter of taste, but I think I hold towards Varèse something like Aaron C's unaccountable negative opinion of Xenakis: I get on badly with the impression of what I can only describe as primitivity, or a sort of unpleasant inchoateness, and particularly the limitations of the harmonic language (how many fourths, fifths, major sevenths and minor ninths can one write in one's life, especially if one only makes eight or nine pieces?!).  I can certainly appreciate his importance and his particular genius, but I don't really find myself wanting to listen that often.

^{and any composer who thinks bowed cymbals are pitchless deserves what they get}

You're welcome, for the article, autoharp. I hope some others read it. I also do not like Intégrales, but I do want to defend Déserts, which not few have maligned here.

I don't regard the work as being complete without the electronic interpolations, even if Varèse accepted it that way -- a lot of the things he said have to be taken as compromised, he was after all a strange mix of idealism and compromise, living in a time of great uncertainty for the avant-garde and being by his nature an organizer and agitator for new music, with a priority on getting it performed and heard. In any case, it's true that the piece is not as 'tight' as Ionisation or Octandre, though I think that comparison isn't very fair. After all, it is about an alien landscape.

I think it's one of the few pieces in which Varèse seems willing to completely let go of expectations (regarding such basic compositional strategies as 'contrast', 'resolution', 'development') and also one of the few (next to Ecuatorial) which he doesn't end abruptly or diffidently. In other pieces, the most disappointing aspect is that he makes half-baked concessions to traditional formal demands at times, but these seem tacked-on, almost perfunctory -- well, half-baked sums it up already.

Aaron doesn't take to Xenakis? Interesting... As for your aversion to Varèse, Evan, I sympathize completely. I hear a great deal of ambivalence in his music, disguised by bravado, nothing like the brave new world we often attribute to him... except in Déserts.

I read this over, it looks a little half-baked itself, but I'll post it anyway.

Edit: re OS's Sonata Form observation, I wasn't aware of a score that shows sonata-form analysis of Ionisation, but I do hear sonata form in more than one of his works, particularly Octandre (spanning all movements, that is). I suspect Varese didn't object to this analysis, but I speculate that he wouldn't be bothered to care. Pure speculation.

I only saw a score when I first heard the piece, perhaps I overlooked the markings?

From http://hunsmire.tripod.com/music/ionisation.html:


Hm.

A bit of googling suggests only that Slonimsky's analysis might have been reprinted in a Colfranc edition of the score. I shall check further.