Varèse

by Malcolm MacDonald

"The works of Edgard Varese (1883-1965) represent the most radical expression of 20th-century Modernism in music. He created such staggering orchestral showpieces as Ameriques and Arcana, mainstays of the instrumental repertoire like Octandre and Density 21.5 and also pioneered works for percussion ensemble and electronic music, with tape and with electronic instruments. Varese was a prophet of the future and remains an inescapable presence in the modern concert repertoire." "The core of this book is a series of descriptive analyses, accessible to any literate music-lover, of all Varese's available works. Malcolm MacDonald relates them to the aesthetic and scientific ideas which underlay Varese's boldly original view of sound and musical structure. He shows how Varese's conception of a music that 'explodes into space' and of 'intelligent sounds moving in space' arose partly from 20th-century man's expanding consciousness of his place in the universe. Yet they also derived from the esot