Edgar Varese was an American composer, though he was born in Paris on December 22nd, 1883. He was very influential toward the use of atonality and rhythmic complexity, which he began to use in his works composed during the 1920’s. Varese didn’t truly start studying music until 1903, and by 1905 he was enrolled in Charles-Marie Widor’s composition class at the conservatoire. After living in Paris, he moved to Berlin for a short while, moved between the two cities, and made friends Hofmannsthal, Rolland and Debussy. However, he was never able to retain steady work in Europe, so in December of 1915, he departed for the USA. Here, he worked for some time, joined the Pan American Association for Composers, but still visited Paris occasionally. After a failed attempt to persuade two Paris companies to invest in electric instrument research, Varese was very depressed. He wrote Density 21-5 in 1936, but nothing else until a decade later. Density 21-5 was titled after the instrument it features: Barrere’s platinum flute. The density of platinum happens to be 21-5. The piece is for solo flute, and is very atonal. It features a large pitch range, and very strong dynamics. During his decade free of composing, Varese was a teacher. In his last years, Varese saw great appreciation of his work. He won an astounding amount of awards, had more and more his scores transcribed and performed. Unfortunately, one of his pieces, Nocturnal, was never finished because of his death in 1965.
Here is a link to the song, though it's on our midterm listening exam also.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCFk0f8szes
Maybe my ears are broken, but I don't even hear it as very atonal. Sure, I don't hear tonicizations and cadences, but he is by no means trying to distance himself from a pitch center. I guess I would go further to say that it is somewhat tone-centric. However, like in tonality, he establishes clear motives, and they get modulated and developed as the pieces goes along. The 102 motive is particularly prevalent throughout, and it is spiced with extended techniques and chromatic color. A lovely piece, truly.
ReplyDeleteThis is always a tricky question; the word "atonal" is always a moving target. In the sense that "tonal" music can imply a certain degree of functional tonality, it would techinically be "atonal". But the piece does exhibit a certain degree of pitch centricity, so Michael is right in the sense that there is some kind of pitch hierarchy, unlike the classical free atonal works of Second Viennese variety.
ReplyDeleteI had a theorist on my dissertation committee, Ed Pearsall, who is an atonal music specialist. His definition for atonal music was anything after functional tonality, which meant that music like Debussy, Ligeti, Ravel, Bartok, etc. were technically "atonal", even if they used triads in a non-functional way.
For me, I think the idea of "post-tonal" music is useful. That is, music after functional tonality... which would encompass a great majority of the music written after 1900.
I think Kyle is picking up on the dissonanted melodic writing-- the use of overwhelmingly so-called "dissonant" melodic intervals and a fair amount of chromatic saturation. We should look at this piece in class sometime, since these are interesting issues to explore.
Nice job on the post, Kyle.
Another interesting piece by Varese, in a slightly different vein, is Poem Electronique. We studied this a little bit in the Computer Music class I took last year.
ReplyDeleteSimilar issues seem to arise in the descriptions of electronic music as they do in the classifications of post-tonal music ("is it 'atonal,' 'pan-tonal'..."). A lot of listeners might write off this piece as "full of random sounds," but it clearly features unifying timbres, gestures, and other recognizable musical devices. These are essentially the same techniques that (non-electronic) post-tonal music utilizes to organize structures and maintain comprehensibility, in the absence of tonal harmonies.
I apologize.
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