I hate to be a heretic but I actually find some of these performances more involving than on the Decca box (as well as embodying some of the orchestral virtues of togetherness which are indeed required from time to time) and at that price, well, the overused phrase 'can't go wrong' springs to mind.

(French bassoons too, by the way. )

It is evident that the Member comprehends neither our words nor Varèse's music. He looks like a lost gnat on the surface of Arcana's profundities.

Let us explain what we are talking about. The incomparably great Oxford English Dictionary defines "mysticism" as "belief in the possibility of union with the Divine nature by means of ecstatic contemplation; reliance on spiritual intuition or exalted feeling as the means of acquiring knowledge of mysteries inaccessible to intellectual apprehension."

In Grove we read that "It was the MYTHOLOGY of science that Varèse embraced rather than its method; titles such as Ionisation and Hyperprism are hardly more than evocative. The scientist seems to have been for him a figure parallel to the Romantic artist: an individual elevated above the masses by his access to the MYSTERIES of nature. His ideal was PARACELSUS, from whom he took a HERMETIC inscription for the score of Arcana, not Albert Einstein, who only wanted to talk to him about Mozart."

Grove goes on thus: "Ecuatorial, setting a tribal incantation, . . . most pointedly indicates that the DISTANT PAST was almost as important to Varèse as the present and the future; Leonardo, Paracelsus and the Greeks meant more to him than did later thinkers."

Is we wonder the Member now beginning to get a glimpse of the picture? It is in fact all most frightfully MYSTICAL is it not?

We turn then to Odile Vivier's little book entitled simply "Varèse." In it we read the following:

1) In 1906 Fauré accepted Varèse as a student at the Conservatoire. There he became the star pupil of Widor's class, because of the ease and accuracy with which he performed his counterpoint exercises. He was in other words a natural composer who got a good grounding.

2) At about this time he composed an opera entitled The Son of the Stars, setting a MYSTICAL text by Joséphin Péladan (pictured).


Peladan's father initiated him into esoteric doctrines and Eastern religions. He became infatuated with occultism and MYSTICISM, and behaved as a magician during the whole course of his life. Besides "Idealistic and Mystical Art," "Istar or the Victory of the Ego," and his novels "The Supreme Vice" and "The Androgine," he left works for the theatre which he called "Wagneries." These include the aforementioned Son of the Stars, and also Oedipus and the Sphinx. Here a further question at once arises - we do not yet know whether there was a connexion between Péladan and Hofmannstal, the librettist of Varèse's 1913 opera bearing that same appellation, Oedipus and the Sphinx. All we can tell is that it all still sounds VERY MYSTICAL, and we hope the Member is still with us.

3) At the age of twenty, Varèse discovered and appropriated the definition of music given by Hoene Wronski: "the embodiment of the intelligence which lies in sounds." And at this time his friend Maurice Pelletier introduced him to the work of Paracelsus, and initiated him into the ideas of the ALCHEMISTS. There Varèse discovered new principles which stimulated his creative imagination, in particular the principle of the transmutation of elements, which he was later to use in his works. He studied the principles of hermetic astrology, and took from them the applications to music which stimulated his imagination. He meditated on Paracelsus's medical precepts: association, disassociation, and coagulation. "The coagulation of ultra-sonic sounds consists of the depositing by ultra-sonic waves of small particles in large quantities," he later wrote. It was particularly the idea of the transmutation of elements which attracted him: he applied to a "cell" or a sound-mass various tensions and rhythmic displacements, various gravitational functions such as attraction and weight, and various dynamics. He sought he said neither to develop nor to transform: what he wanted was to TRANSMUTE.

4) So now we turn to one of Varèse's most interesting works: ARCANA! Could any name possibly sound more mysterious and MYSTICAL? Well it is true that neither Messiaen nor Boulez managed to perceive any "transmutations" therein, and they did try we are told, rather like the Member perhaps. But Varèse on the first page of Arcana set this inscription from Paracelsus: "One star exists, which is above all the others. It is the Star of the Apocalypse. The second star is the Star of the Ascendant. The third star is the Star of the Elements, of which there are four. There are, then, six fixed stars. Beside these there is a further star, Imagination, which gives birth to a new star and a new heaven." Varèse explained the presence of this quotation as follows: "These words serve as a dedication, they make my symphonic poem [for that is how the composer referred to his Arcana] a sort of homage to their author, but they did not inspire it, and the work is not a commentary upon them. Art is not born of Reason. It is the treasure hidden away in the unconscious, in that unconscious which has more comprehension than our lucidity. In Art, an excess of Reason is fatal. Beauty never comes from a formula. It is the imagination which gives form to our dreams." Well! We are put in mind of the constants of mythology, of Jung's collective unconscious and its archetypical images. Of a universal and absolute theogonic process, in other words.

What remains to be said is at once the most self-evident and the most curious point, namely that this symphonic poem of secrets (Arcana) is in fact a rewriting of Ighor Strawynsci's so influential ballet music to the Vernal Sacrament (that's the accepted translation of the Greek mysterion is it not). One (or at least we) clearly hears, passage by detailed passage, how Varèse has gone through the older work, and extracted the best essences and most MYSTICAL moments.

Perhaps the last word should be given to two fellow composers after the first performance of Arcana in 1932. Paul Le Flem called it then "the most perfect and finely balanced work," and Florent Schmitt said it was a "magnificently stylised nightmare, a nightmare for giants."

Um, I am tempted to enquire who it was that wrote the original that PG is, one suspects,  likely to have paraphrased, but I won't, because that would be unfair.

All quibbling aside, that was surely a majestic and surpassingly wonderful post from Member Grew for which I for one am deeply grateful. I had no idea the connections with 'Old Europe' had run quite so deep.

Yes, you're right, it would certainly seem fair that the performed piece take precedence over the 'hidden' unknown quantity, since something obviously becomes knowledge the more airing it gets. GP doesn't write, as far as I can see, if the Ritmica pieces were perhaps performed earlier & individually , but that Varese certainly knew of their existence ... Furthermore,  she does mention an orchestral piece by Roldan, La Rembambaramba which includes 6 percussion groups (& also has a percussion only movement), & was performed under Slonimsky in mid 1931, he also conducted Integrales and La Rem in the same program in Paris in Feb. 1932. see the german text if your spanish isn't up to it 

Since I didn't really want to quote out the whole article, GP traces the reception by musicologists to Roldans' work, especially the rather delightful Varese scholar F.Ouellette (1966):

"Alfred Frankenstein, when talking on the Ritmicas by AR, affirms that these pieces were composed in 1930, & then claims that Roldan & not Varese had been the first comploser in using percussion alone. Anyway , we shouldn't forget that these pieces by Roldan are very minor and are based on rhythms of the Cuban folklore and do not employ more than a few instruments. Number 6 , for instance, rests on a rumba rhythm. These are quite primitive pieces on folkloric rhythms. Ionisation is, of course, the first work of pure music for percussion alone born in the West and not referring to any folklore."   

Other similarly tasteless comments are offered by Odile Vivier & G.Charbonnier.
...so, Raspberries for F.Ouellete & co. However, GP maintains that this species of northern hemisphere/abstract over national musics chauvanism has persisted, the Varese/Roldan is merely an example, so i'm interested you picked up on it OS.


OH NO, you're not supposed to say that 

OK, ...it's only just northern hem 


...which I had completely forgotten, not wanting to place too much favour on northern hemisphere composers... Certainly a good point, the difference however might be whether the Interlude is performable as a piece in its own right... personally I'd have nothing against it (it's basically my favourite Shostakovich work) , only I can't quite remember if there would be a 'join' problem ...

There's also the Concerto for percussion and orchestra by Milhaud (1930), but the less said about that the better... It's a piece where my kneejerk reaction is to favour combining marimbas with chainsaws than just with orchestras...
 
I'd certainly like to hear these famous pieces by Roldan, has anyone else ever heard of him?
Also, during that first performance in New York of Ionisation, didn't a young (perhaps still student) A.Copland play as well as , the rumour  being that the orchestral musicians couldn't really master it, therefore Slonimsky hired composers and Cuban musicians I think there's a disc of a recording made around that time...

"We clearly hears, passage by detailed passage...?" In which case, these passages need detailing for us all, Mr G. I'm no Varèse specialist, but I do know Arcana more than tolerably well, and Le Sacre virtually off by heart, yet apart from the one glaringly obvious passage, which not so much extracts the best essences as the michael, being to all intents and purposes a straight lift from the end of part one, I'm at a loss to find these mystical borrowings. Where are the bi-tonal chord combinations which create such crepuscular darkness at the start of part two, or the additive rhythms of the Danse Sacrale, so complex that Stravinsky was able to play them long before he'd worked out how to notate them accurately? Pray reveal precisely the nature and location of these arcane and mystical borrowings to the readers of this thread, that we too may reach that furthest star.

I feel sure that SCGrew is familiar with the last year's exhibition at the Museum Tinguely, and the book, available in a number of languages, which derived from it. Mind you, studying engineering hardly helps with understanding science, does it?