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		everything you need to know about
		Edgard Varèse The highly influential French avant-garde composer who settled in America. Ahead of his time, the quest to free sound from the limitations of normal instruments led Varèse to combine technology with art, focussing on percussion instruments and electronics, taped sounds, loud speakers, sirens, dissonance and extremes of contrast.
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		Amériques Cleveland Orchestra / Dohnányi Decca 443 172-2 Déserts Polish National RSO / Lyndon-Gee Naxos 8.554820		Born: 1885 Died: 1965

I long for instruments obedient to my thought and whim, with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, which will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.

Varèse in 1917.

within bbc.co.uk music:

Varèse biography

Varèse discography

Classical news, reviews and listings

Profiles A-Z listing

elsewhere on bbc.co.uk:

Le Corbusier: His collaborator at the Philips Pavilion

elsewhere on the web:

Edgard Varese, his Life and Works

Excellent, comprehensive site

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.

VARÈSE IN ONE MINUTE

Pioneering French composer who lived in New York
He wrote carefully organised pieces that explore a thin line between music and noise
Introduced Debussy to Schoenberg's music, and was a close friend of Busoni
Ionisation was the first piece to be written for a percussion ensemble, and also included a siren
The premiere of his Hyperprism scandalized New York in 1923
Varèse was an early exponent of electronic music with his Déserts and Poème Electronique
He looked, and sometimes acted, like an eccentric, mad professor

related by time:

Busoni biography (friend and mentor)

Debussy profile (friend)

Satie biography (friend)

Stravinsky profile

Hindemith biography

Xenakis biography

related by location:

Philip Glass profile

John Cage profile

Frank Zappa biography

Zappa remembers Varèse as "the idol of my youth"

related by genre:

A Quick Guide to Experimental Music

A Quick History of Modernism

Classical Music Homepage

Edgard Varèse, Father of Electronic Music: A quirky site

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.

Varèse

GOOD RECORDINGS

A GOOD READ

The Complete Works
Royal Concertgebouw, ASKO Ensemble/Chailly
Decca 460 208-2
Brilliant recordings.

Boulez conducts Varese

Density 21.5 etc.
New York PO, Ensemble InterContemporain/Boulez
Sony SMA 45844
Formidable exponent.

Percussion Music

Ionisation
New Jersey Percussion Ensemble/Desroches
Nonesuch 79150
Excellent US group.

Kent Nagano - Offrandes

Offrandes
Bryn-Julson, French Nat.Orch./Nagano
Erato 4509 92137-2
Bryn-Julson soars.

Treib: Space Calculated in Seconds: The Philips Pavilion, Le Corbusier, Varese

Space Calculated in Seconds: The Philips Pavilion, by Marc Treib
(Princeton UP, 1996)
Debut site for Varèse's Poème Electronique.

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