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Several years ago during an intense period of research I came across an essay called "The Liberation of Sound" by Edgar Varese. Varese is sometimes referred to as "The Father of Electronic Music." The primary reason he is known in this way is because of his experimentation with timbre, new instruments, and electronic resources.
When I was first exposed to his ideas I immediately recognized them in my own thoughts and music, since so many of the composers and CD's I enjoyed listening to brought his ideas to life in music. Without realizing it I was actually practicing his approach to music and sound creation inadvertently via osmosis. I absorbed his ideas through the music I loved and they become part of my musical thought processes.
I wanted to share these ideas with you, especially those of you who love ideas and to learn about music. Edgar Varese's influence is so immense you may discover that you actually don't like his music, but you will recognize his ideas in the music you do love. Moreover, you'll also find that without his influence the music you love might not even exist today. To learn more about Edgar Varese, click here.
And to learn more about his ideas here are a few samples from "The Liberation of Sound":
"As far back as the twenties, I decided to call my music "organized sound" and myself, not a musician, but "a worker in rhythms, frequencies, and intensities."
"We should also remember that no machine is a wizard, as we are beginning to think, and we must not expect our electronic devices to compose for us. Good music and bad music will be composed by electronic means, just as good and bad music have been composed for instruments. The computing machine is a marvelous invention and seems almost superhuman. But, in reality, it is as limited as the mind of the individual who feeds it."
"And here are the advantages I anticipate from such a machine: liberation from the arbitrary, paralyzing tempered system; the possibility of obtaining any number of cycles or if still desired, subdivisions of the octave, consequently the formation of any desired scale; unsuspected range in low and high registers; new harmonic splendors obtainable from the use of sub-harmonic combinations now impossible; the possibility of obtaining any differentiation of timbre, of sound-combinations; new dynamics far beyond the present human-powered orchestra; a sense of sound-projection in space by means of the emission of sound in any part or in many parts of the hall as may be required by the score; cross rhythms unrelated to each other, treated simultaneously, or to use the old word, "contrapuntally" (since the machine would be able to beat any number of desired notes, any subdivision of them, omission or fraction of them) - all these in a given unit of measure or time which is humanly impossible to attain."
Click here to get a copy of the "The Liberation of Sound" as a PDF file.
Marc
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