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Mentioned in 3,440 internet sites, Varese is on a par with Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Stockhausen and Cage. Published in June 2002,
mine is the first true biography of 'the great emancipator of noise' (Sunday Times). Dealing with sound as a Dada-Futurist painter would vision, Varese soundtracked industrial society as Debussy - an early influence - had more pastoral settings.
He spoke of music - or 'organized sound' as he called it - as an 'art-science', and investigated the possibilities that machines rather than instruments might offer with regard to extending the sonic vocabulary available to composers, thus anticipating the electronic ventures of less innocent cultural generations. Indeed, while outlines continue to dissolve between rock, classical and jazz, the pioneering tonalities of Varese were as likely as anything from the Top 40 to blast from the car stereo of the self-improving pop musician.
So far as Frank Zappa ever had a boyhood hero, it was Varese - who also inspired the disparate likes of The Grateful Dead, Chicago (who issued a single entitled 'A Hit For
Varese') and Laurie Anderson. He was revered too by Stravinsky, Stockhausen and Cage as well as Charlie Parker, Roland Kirk, Eric Dolphy and further avant-garde
jazzers.
Resembling the proverbial 'mad professor', Varese revelled in the distractions
of his everyday existence - the tangles of shopping precincts, industrial zones and glass palaces, connected by droning arteries of traffic. As such, New York,
French-born Edgard's adopted city, is comparable to Gauguin's South Sea island or Byron's Italy in its potential to bring forth greatness or at least accommodate
it.
Commensurate with the often surreal landscapes of urban North America is Varese's most renowned work, Ionization (1931), scored for percussion and sirens, and described in The New York Times as 'this terrible and
marvelous work'. In similar vein, Deserts caused as much uproar at its 1954 premiere as Stravinsky's Rite Of Spring had in the same Paris theatre nigh on half a century earlier. Deserts was also first music ever to be broadcast on radio in stereo.
Perhaps the most original and adventurous of twentieth century composers, Varese remains both a figurehead and grey eminence of modern music. Me? I have to be in a specific mood for Varese's music, but when I am, I find it a real cool way-out sound. That's my perspective. However, if, after purchase of
a Varese album, you think he's a load of old rubbish, don't come crying to me.
Copyright Alan Clayson
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