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2 mm. after reh. 9 - reh. 10
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Skills & Techniques: Accuracy, Loud Playing, Low Register, Rhythms
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Horn 1-8 (F)
All excerpts from Arcana taken from score with permission granted.
Arcana
Music by Edgard Varèse
Copyright © 1931-1964 Casa Ricordi Srl, part of Universal Music Publishing Classics & Screen
International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Europe BV
Arcana
Music by Edgard Varèse
Copyright © 1931-1964 Casa Ricordi Srl, part of Universal Music Publishing Classics & Screen
International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Europe BV
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Chicago Symphony Orchestra (2001)
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Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (1994)
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Composer & Composition Information
Edgard Varèse (1883-1965)
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EDGARD VARÈSE, whom many refer to as the father of electronic music, was born in 1883 in Paris, France. He spent the first ten years of his life in Paris and Burgundy. Family pressures led him to prepare for a career as an engineer by studying mathematics and science. Interested in music, he used the scientific principles learned in the classroom to study the science of sound. He entered the Schola Cantorum in Paris in 1903, but unhappy by the philosophy of instruction held by its director, quit his studies there in 1905 to enter the Paris Conservatoire.
In 1907, Varèse left Paris for Berlin and developed a close friendship with Ferruccio Busoni. It was during the next several years that Varèse, while composing in Berlin, met such composers as Strauss, Debussy, and Satie, as well as writers Apollonaire and Cocteau, who were all impressed by his compositions and new musical ideas. He had an interest in new instruments, particularly electronic ones. It was Debussy that gave the young composer much inspiration, encouraging Varèse to look at non-western music for inspiration. After serving in the French army during World War I, Varèse moved to Greenwich Village in New York. He fell in love with the sounds of the city and used it as his inspiration. Varèse spent the first few years in the United States meeting important contributors to American music, promoting his vision of new electronic music instruments, conducting orchestras, and founding the New Symphony Orchestra. It was also around this time that Varèse began work on his first composition in the United States, Amériques, which was finished in 1921. It was at the completion of this work that Varèse founded the International Composers' Guild, dedicated to the performances of new compositions of both American and European composers, for which he composed many of his pieces for orchestral instruments and voices, specifically Offrandes (1922), Hyperprism (1923), Octandre (1924), and Intégrales (1925). The text is reprinted from Los Angeles Philharmonic where more information about the composer can be found. The image is reprinted from Chou Wen-Chung. |
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Arcana
If the composition of Arcana had begun with the effortlessness of a dream—as the musical notation accompanying this account in his letter seems to show—to continue from these initial ideas proved anything but easy. Originally intended to be ready by early 1926, so that Leopold Stokowski could consider including it in a program to be given at Carnegie Hall that spring, Arcana was not actually finished for another year after that, and during all this time Varèse worked on nothing else.
For Varèse, writing music was always difficult. His rejection of all compositional “systems” forced him to invent every piece essentially from scratch. Often compared his approach to that of the scientist/inventor, in fact, and referred to himself, not as a composer but (in his words) “a worker in frequencies and intensities” whose methods were scientific in spirit if not in specific procedure.
Small wonder, then, that Varèse in the midst of his labors would have thought of Paracelsus, the 16th-century physician whose lifelong efforts to introduce some measure of order into the chaos that then passed for pharmacology partook of both chemistry and alchemy. For Paracelsus, the arcana were the hidden powers that “can change us, bring about transmutations, can renovate and restore us”; the specific, “immaterial talents” of substances that drive out disease. And capturing these powers in effective medicines was as much a task for magic as for experiment. Varèse’s own quotation of Paracelsus on the flyleaf of his score stands as an acknowledgement of his precedent for his own melding of art and science.
The text is written by & reprinted from Jonathan Bernard (American Symphony Orchestra) where more information about the composition can be found.
For Varèse, writing music was always difficult. His rejection of all compositional “systems” forced him to invent every piece essentially from scratch. Often compared his approach to that of the scientist/inventor, in fact, and referred to himself, not as a composer but (in his words) “a worker in frequencies and intensities” whose methods were scientific in spirit if not in specific procedure.
Small wonder, then, that Varèse in the midst of his labors would have thought of Paracelsus, the 16th-century physician whose lifelong efforts to introduce some measure of order into the chaos that then passed for pharmacology partook of both chemistry and alchemy. For Paracelsus, the arcana were the hidden powers that “can change us, bring about transmutations, can renovate and restore us”; the specific, “immaterial talents” of substances that drive out disease. And capturing these powers in effective medicines was as much a task for magic as for experiment. Varèse’s own quotation of Paracelsus on the flyleaf of his score stands as an acknowledgement of his precedent for his own melding of art and science.
The text is written by & reprinted from Jonathan Bernard (American Symphony Orchestra) where more information about the composition can be found.
Notable Performances/Recordings:
Columbia Symphony Orchestra (2010)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra (2001)
New York Philharmonic (1990)
Columbia Symphony Orchestra (2010)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra (2001)
New York Philharmonic (1990)