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Listening Report on Edgar Varèse’s Ionisation

 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.

Herzogenrath, Bernd. “Lecture Slides: Schöneberg – Varese – Schaeffer – Stockhausen.” Google Drive – Reader FUTURE OF MUSIC, 16 Nov. 2022, https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1runVZB5RFhKVa_SgaMft1o2M1ITypP15?usp=sharing. Accessed 5 Mar. 2023.
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