A Study of the Spatial Aspects of Edgard Varèse's Work, Part II

g e n e r a l a r t i c l e The Last Word Is: Imagination A Study of the Spatial Aspects of Edgard Varèse’s Work, Part II: Visual Evidence R o g e R R e y n o L d S Edgard Varèse was one of the singular musical innovators of the creative aspirations and barriers to their fulfillment (techno- 20th century. Central to his thinking was an informed yet uniquely logical, contextual, logistical), it is useful to consider what imaginative position regarding metaphoric “space.” Through contacts he did in situations over which he had unimpeded control. with science, he developed an idiosyncratic vocabulary involving ABSTRACT “rotating planes,” “beams,” “projection” and “penetration.” His This was not the case in the realm of musical composition outlook was both conceptually and musically (especially in Intégrales) because limitations of performance capacity, as well as the manifested. The first part of a two-part article, “The Last Word Is: available strategies for the electronic manipulation and dis- Imagination, Part I: The Visual Evidence” (published in Perspectives of semination of sound, thwarted the demands of his imagina- New Music), references Varèse’s writings and lectures. The second tion. But in other ways, his work—musical sketches, graphic part, published here, is concerned with the visual evidence, a context art, marginalia, doodles and diagrams to be found among his within which his spatial ideas could be directly manifested without the distortions of electroacoustic sound projection or vagaries of instrumental materials in the Sacher Archives—manifests directly the ways and vocal performance. In original artworks, marginalia, doodles and in which his desires could be addressed. No claim is made an array of spiral diagrams, Varèse directly portrayed his concepts that Varèse’s hand and eye were as accomplished as his ear. with remarkable lucidity. Nevertheless, the relationships enumerated, examined and commented upon here are—though necessarily incomplete The Visual EvidenCe at this stage—evidently relevant to an eventual understand- ing. This study lays out, in five sections, a range of evidence This two-part essay [1], the second part of which is published for consideration; some of it is straightforward in its implica- here, considers Edgard Varèse’s relationship to the subject of tions, some can be only poorly understood. space, both in its literal and metaphoric senses. His music manifests space and also interrogates existing ideas about the 1. ArchitectuRe role that spatial relationships can have in the experience of music. Varèse spoke and wrote about his spatial thinking fre- Varèse spoke with passion about the impact of observing quently throughout his life. His interest in psychoacoustics, stonecutters at work, how the precision of their cuts and particularly the writings of Helmholtz, and later, other more their shaping of stone blocks allowed structures to stabilize current figures, underlay his quite radical considerations and through their own weight and the interdependent forces they pronouncements on the subject. The verbal dimension of his generated. Figure 1 shows the Saint Philibert de Tournus nave thinking is covered in detail in the first part of my essay. The that Varèse referred to in an interview with composer Gun- present part contains the second half of my investigation and ther Schuller: comprises a variety of visual material that can be understood Every stone had to fit and balance with every other. to have a relationship to Varèse’s concepts of space, along pure structural architecture—without frills or unnecessary with associated commentary. decoration. when I composed Rhapsodie Romaine I was My aim is to seek corroborative evidence regarding the thinking of Romanesque architecture . I wanted . to terminology and concepts advanced by Varèse in relation to project in music the concept of . controlled gravitation, space. In view of the continuing interplay in his life between how one element pushing on the other stabilizes the total structure, thus using the elements at the same time in op- position to and in support of one another [2]. Roger Reynolds (composer, researcher), Department of Music, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, U.S.A. Louise Varèse quotes her husband as saying: Email: <[email protected]>. See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/50/5> for supplemental files associated If there is any strength or beauty in my music, I owe it to with this issue. Saint-Philibert [3]. ©2017 ISAST doi:10.1162/LEON_a_01160 LEONARDO, Vol. 50, No. 5, pp. 477–485, 2017 477 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_01160 by guest on 28 September 2021 The appeal of this rough and asymmetrical structure from the early 11th century is evident. The materials used in the larger edifice, their form-bearing capacity, the interplay of simple symmetries with canny imbalances—it all bespeaks a structuring that both is principled and yet was fashioned as it evolved. Such a relationship between ends and means can surely be understood as formative to Varèse’s creative life. 2. Musical SketcheS Varèse’s sketching for the seminal realization of relationships between the incantatory lines (“beams”) and chordal blocks (“masses”) in his composition Intégrales can be seen as pro- ceeding independently in the drafting examples in Figs 2–4. Figure 2 shows a detailed laying out of the linear element in a manner completely separated from parallel efforts to find a vertical sonority that will suitably complement it. The fashioning of the line was processed more rapidly and with more decisive nuance. Its chordal complement was still un- certain here with regard to density, pitch content, registral parsing and placement. Evidently, these two essential aspects of Intégrales—the most explicit of his middle-period works as regards spatial metaphor—were conceived of as independent elements. Varèse interacted substantively with the New York jazz Fig. 1. The Saint Philibert de Tournus nave. (Photo by Dougsim. Image scene in the mid-1950s, partially as a result of the urgings of source: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:St_Philibert_Tournus_nave.jpg>. composer Earle Brown. During the period just before he left Creative Commons CC-BY.SA 3.0 License.) for Eindhoven to work on Poème électronique, there were a number of improvisatory sessions at his 188 Sullivan Street home in Manhattan. Oliva Mattis indicates there were as many as five during 1957. For one of them, Varèse prepared a graphic score that laid out a pitch-relative, time-coordinated mapping of gestural interplay for eight musicians (Fig. 3). The original was about two by three feet on onion-skin paper [4]. As no tempo marking is indicated, the anticipated energy level of this graphic prescription is unclear. The occasional rhythms indicated reflect Varèse’s frequent intermixing of differing beat subdivisions in rapid succession. One can infer that the eighth player is a trombonist as a result of the “slide” indications (rather than “gliss.,” which would have suggested contrabass). There are gestural imitations, repetitions and inversions, but most of the components are relatively brief, set off from one another by rests in staggered alignment. Significantly, Varèse utilized the same abstract graphic material as a point of reference for his work on Poème électro- nique, as can be seen in Fig. 4. New sources such as “pure sine wave generator” and “distorted sine wave filtered” (each with a relative band of frequency variation indicated) are specified for the realization of part-identical gestural components. A specific scaling of dynamics in terms of decibel strengths is also shown at lower left. This precision is an interesting remnant of the interfacing between Varèse and the Philips engineers with whom he worked, not always easily, it would seem: “Varèse was in conflict with the Philips Corporation for demanding that their engineers create sounds which they considered too difficult to produce” [5]. Fig. 2. Edgard Varèse, page from the sketches for Intégrales. (Edgard Varèse Collection, Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel. Used by permission.) 478 Reynolds, The Last Word Is: Imagination Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LEON_a_01160 by guest on 28 September 2021 Fig. 3. Edgard Varèse, graphic score for an improvisation. (Edgard Varèse Fig. 4. Edgard Varèse, improvisation score detail adapted for Poème Collection, Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel. Used by permission.) électronique. (Edgard Varèse Collection, Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel. Used by permission.) Fig. 5. Edgard Varèse, marginalia from a letter to Louise. (Edgard Varèse Collection, Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel. Used by permission.) 3. MargInalia And Graphic ReSourceS Around the same time as the improvisatory gesture-score, Varèse included a more nuanced graphic invention on the edge of a letter to Louise. Titled Voilà ton solo, it is aria-like (Fig. 5). The relative height of the line would appear to indi- cate (significantly) continuous pitch fluctuation up and down without the gestural separation of the eight-part improvisation guide shown in Fig. 3. Whereas thickness suggests in- tensity to the eye, the hairpins and dynamic levels specified below are largely contradictory. There is a singular accent marking above, correlated with a graphic outcropping of the central calligraphy. An alternative possible significance to the variation of thickness—speculative, to be sure—might be the suggestion of proximity: thin = far, thick = near. Figure 6 shows a most intriguing page from the sketches Fig. 6. Edgard Varèse, page from the sketches for Déserts. (Edgard Varèse for Déserts. One would be hard pressed to imagine a more Collection, Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel. Used by permission.) explicit rendering of the notion of “projection,” raised in so many contexts by Varèse from the 1930s onward. The graphic reflection at the lower left of this page invokes the spirit of [C, G#, A, B] that then stretches out to a seven-note complex the gestural pitch successions on stave lines above.

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