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11 Edgar Varèse and Igor Stravinsky N o one exemplifies the intertwining of French and American music better than Edgar (sometimes spelled Edgard) Varèse. He was born in Paris in 1883, and after many transatlantic comings and goings he settled in New York City, where he died in 1965. For most of his adult life he felt himself to be a quintessential New Yorker, and loved his bohemian surroundings in Greenwich Village. VarèsestudiedwithVincentd’IndyattheScholaCantorum(1903–1905) and then at the Conservatoire, but the greatest influences on his early musical development were Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky. He knew Satie, Apollinaire, Picasso, Duchamp, and others of the Parisian avant-garde but was not part of their or any other school. A long period of study in Berlin (1907–1913) led to his acquaintance with the structural innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, who became another seminal influence. In 1913 he brought some Schoenberg scores back to Paris with him and was the first to introduce Debussy to this new kind of music. The French master’s comments on this German newcomer were ambiguous: “Take the music of Arnold Schoenberg, for instance. I have never heard any of his works. My interest was roused by the things that are written about him, and I decided to read one of his quartets, but I have not yet succeeded in doing so.”1 Schooled as an engineer specializing in the science of sound (he said he preferred the phrase “organized sound” to the term “music”),2 Varèse was fascinated by the early experiments with electric instruments then taking place in Paris. Throughout his life he tried to find or invent new instruments through which to express the sounds of modern civilization. In 1915, after serving for several months in the French army, Varèse went to the United States where he helped to found the International Composers’ Guild. He introduced much modern music to American audiences through this organization, yet most were not terribly receptive to it. He was back in Paris in time for the much touted premiere of George Antheil’s Ballet mécanique, the best-loved scandal of the 1923–24 season. His own Amérique, begun in 1921 but revised throughout the decade, has much in common with the Antheil piece. Music Musique 122 Much has been written about Amérique. To Henry Cowell it was “a Frenchman’s concept of America,” hence the French spelling of the title. It is “acrid and telling, with a magnificent hardness of line,” continues Cowell . “Varèse breaks no rules of ordinary harmony; they do not come into consideration at all.” In his article on Varèse, published in American Composers on American Music, Cowell also passes the rather curious judgment that Varèse’s work “has nothing in particular to do with America,” a statement countered by many who find in it the very heart of New York City.3 But in the 1920s and early 1930s, to portray America in sound was to recreate the atmosphere of the wide open spaces, the mountains and the prairies, as Copland and Thomson did. This is the very nostalgia Varèse eschews. To a more recent critic Amérique combines “the monumentality of Europe’s Romanesque cathedrals with the noise, vulgarity and anxiety of American life,”4 an assessment easier to agree with. Varèse himself said that Amérique symbolized “New Worlds on earth, in the sky, or in the mind of men.”5 Listening to Amérique is a taxing experience. In its definitive version it is scored for 125 musicians including a twelve-person percussion battery. Its rhythmic complexity stems from Varèse’s decision to deemphasize melody and harmony, both of which he considered inappropriate to representations of modern life. This is an aesthetic attitude which he shared with both Antheil and Pound. Whatever references to melody do occur are interwoven in continuously evolving polyphony, with as little repetition as possible. The piece begins in a deceptively quiet, wistful mood. A flute passage reminds the listener of Debussy, especially the evocative solo-flute passage that begins the older composer’s L’après-midi d’un faune. Soon, however, brass and massed strings interrupt the idyllic sounds (interestingly enough, Debussy encouraged Varèse to find his own sounds, even to use noise if that’s what he needed to do). Harp glissandi return Debussy to mind, and a sort of agon between the two opposing strains ensues. There...

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