VARESE, EDGARD

born Dec. 22, 1883, Paris died Nov. 8, 1965, New York City original name Edgar Varse French-born American composer and innovator in 20th-century techniques of sound production. Varse spent his boyhood in Paris, Villars in Burgundy, and Turin, Italy. After composing without formal instruction as a youth, he later studied under Vincent d'Indy, Albert Roussel, and Charles Widor and was strongly encouraged by Romain Rolland and by Claude Debussy. In 1907 he went to Berlin, where he was influenced by Richard Strauss and Ferruccio Busoni. In 1915 he immigrated to the United States. Varse's music is dissonant, nonthematic, and rhythmically asymmetric; he conceived of it as bodies of sound in space. After the early 1950s, when he finally gained access to the electronic sound equipment he desired, he concentrated on electronic music. Varse actively promoted performances of works by other 20th-century performers and founded the International Composers' Guild in 1921 and the Pan-American Association of Composers in 1926; these organizations were responsible for performances and premieres of works by Bla Bartk, Alban Berg, Carlos Chvez, Henry Cowell, Charles Ives, Maurice Ravel, Wallingford Riegger, Francis Poulenc, Anton von Webern, and others. He also founded the Schola Cantorum of Santa Fe (New Mexico) in 1937 and the New Chorus (later, Greater New York Chorus) in 1941 to perform music of past eras, including works of Protin, Heinrich Schtz, Claudio Monteverdi, and Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Varse's works include Hyperprism (1923) for wind instruments and percussion; Ionisation (1931) for percussion, piano, and two sirens; and Density 21.5 (1935) for unaccompanied flute. His Dserts (1954) employs tape- recorded sound. In the Pome lectronique (1958), written for the Philips Pavilion at the Brussels World's Fair, the sound was intended to be distributed by 425 loudspeakers.