Edgard Varèse

My mother, Janine Bourgoin, studied composition with Edgar Varèse in New York City for a few years after the end of World War II.  She is from Burgundy, as was Varèse -- and Varèse loved talking to her in dialect, just for fun.  Varèse showed her many of his scores as he was working on them.  On March 21, 1948, he gave her a copy of Density 21.5 (which was composed in 1936).

He signed it: à Janine B. affectueusement, Varèse, N. Y. 21-III-48.

Density 21.5 is a one-page work.  Because of the page number 13 in the upper right-hand corner of this edition, this copy appears to have been an example of the first edition printed for Henry Cowell's modern music review New American Music.  The footnotes in the bottom left corner mention the first performance by Georges Barrère in 1936 and the revision in 1946.  So this printed edition must date from 1946 or later.  It bears no publisher's name.

Several years later, Varèse also gave my mother a signed copy of the first recording of Density 21.5 (plus three works for instrumental ensembles) by French flutist Réné Le Roy on the historic 1950 LP of Varèse works for the EMS Label.  EMS stood for Elaine's Music Shop, a record store in New York.

Incidentally, the signatures on both the music and the LP record cover show that Varèse kept the accent grave in his name.  I once read in a record review a silly statement by some music critic that Varèse dropped the accent grave as a symbolic statement to show his liberation from the old world of Europe.  Well, not by 1950 he hadn't.

Varèse was an incredibly stubborn man, and he was undoubtedly the most financially impractical composer who ever lived.  It is a mystery on what he and his wife existed in Greenwich Village all those years -- except Louise's meager earnings as a translator.  My mother's tuition as a private pupil undoubtedly put food on Varèse's table.

Varèse might have had some substantial income from one of his compositions -- but that never happened because of his stubborness and a stroke of misfortune.  Virtually all of Varèse's early compositions are now lost.  It is a myth that he destroyed them as bold gesture of turning his back on the past.  His early works were accidentally burned in a fire.  Among them was a very substantial work for orchestra entitled Bourgogne (Burgundy.)  It was a large-scale symphonic rhapsody in a style that synthesized the two great musical influences of his youth: Debussy and Richard Strauss.  Varèse knew Debussy personally, and he studied for many years under Richard Strauss.  Bourgogne was performed with major German orchestras conducted by Otto Klemperer and Kark Mück, among others, and in France by G. Straram with his orchestra.  It was a hit.  Everybody loved it. 

After Varèse's early music burned in the fire, he never attempted to reconstruct his early scores from memory.  This too has been interpreted as his bold rejection of the past, looking only to the future.  The truth may have been more prosaic.  He was either very deliberate and slow, or he was just plain lazy.  For a composer who lived into his eighties and kept his faculties until the end, his entire life's output of music is incredibly skimpy.  Of course, his catalog would have been much broader if his early works had survived. 

Undoubtedly, once the musical mainstream discovered Varèse's avant-garde music in the Sixties, his early Romantic-Impressionist works would have been rediscovered and performed as well -- if they had been available.  Bourgogne could easily have been for Varèse what L'Oiseau de feu was for Stravinsky and Verklaerte Nacht was for Schoenberg: a big Impressionist-Romantic money-maker.  Even if Varèse was not able to recall exactly the original composition of Bourgogne, he certainly could have produced a score somewhat resembling the original and called it a revision.  It is a mystery why he didn't -- because he was indeed proud of the piece.  He told my mother so.

my mother: Janine Bourgoin Chapuis

(1924 Fez, Morocco - 2005 Marsannay-la-Côte, France)

A few years ago ago, a colleague at San José State University -- who is also a professional antiquarian -- came across a wooden plaque in a garage sale.  It was Edgar Varèse's 1962 Grammy Nomination for Arcana as "the best classical composition by a contemporary composer."  He gave it to me to give to my mother as a momento.