Sarah Kumar
Dr. Bernd Herzogenrath
The Future of (American) Music
05 Mar. 2023
Listening Report on Edgar Varèse’s Ionisation
In
Robert Henderson’s article about Edgar Varèse, he states that Varèse himself
had said that he “always listened to the sounds” around himself and that he was
the “first composer to explore, so to speak, musical outer space, the first to be
moved by living sounds and to make music with them” (943). This can be observed
in his piece Ionisation which incorporates many different instruments.
Even while playing together, they have their own distinctive sound that can be
heard clearly.
Especially
interesting is the naming of the music piece – Ionisation – which refers
to the ionization of molecules in physics. Varèse’s idea of sound is that
“sound is only an atmospheric disturbance,” and he said that his influence
stems from “natural objects and physical phenomena” (“Lecture Slides” 13-14).
This can be observed early on in the piece by the adding and subtracting of
different instruments that together create a sound able to approximate the flow
of physical phenomena in the world. The instruments seem to be played in
disarray and at random, but I think that this randomness has a purpose. In
order to stay as closely to what natural objects would sound like, they imitate
disturbances in the atmosphere which are in itself random.
As the
pace picks up about halfway into the music piece, the sound gets frantic. It
reminds me of big, extravagant movements. The long, winding, and deep sound of
one instrument creates this languid feel in the room, while the percussion
instruments become more frantic sounding. While the deep sound goes down in
timbre, the percussion instruments go up, which is what is creating this
movement that I visualize as a person’s arms going up and down at different
times. Varèse did say that he “was trying to approximate the … inner,
microscopic life,” and the way the sound goes up and down at different times
resembles the workings of the inner life which is always moving, like the
process of ionization subtracting molecules from atoms.
Towards
the end, it gets quieter and deeper in sound, with the occasional percussion
instrument, piano notes, and what sounds like chimes being played. The slowing
down of the instruments is akin to the abating of a storm. It reminds me of how
during rainstorms or just especially windy days, everything outside makes
noise. The instruments are disturbing the atmosphere the same way a natural
phenomenon would. In addition, I think that the varying tones of the
instruments and their working together while still being able to be
distinguished from one another adds a newness to the way instruments are
traditionally thought to make sound together, especially since I have not heard
them played together in such a manner before.
Works Cited
Henderson, Robert. “Varèse.” The
Musical Times, vol. 106, no. 1474, 1965, pp. 942–44. JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.2307/954344. Accessed 4 Mar. 2023.
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