Edgard Varèse's Lost Works

[Thatfabulousalien]

So as the modernist alien I am, I love Varese's work dearly.
One of the things that does trouble me is how most of his output was lost.
His output contained a symphony, operas, symphonic poems, Nocturnes, Rhapsodies and many more orchestral and chamber pieces.

Because of his high level of early 20th century innovation, it bugs me even more that I can hear these lost works 

[EddieRUKiddingVarese]

Yep, is one of the enduring legacies of Varese's works the lost piece's 

and there are many and then there are the incomplete works too


The lost piece's

Martin Pas, opera,  boys' voices and mandolin (c1895)
Chansons avec orchestra (c1905)
Colloque au bord d'une fontaine (c1905)
Dans le parc (c1905)
Le fils des étoiles, opera (c1905)
Poèmes des brumes (c1905)
3 Pieces, orchestra (Souvenir?) (c1905)
Chanson des jeunes hommes, orchestra (c1905)
Prélude à la fin d'un jour, after L. Deubel, orchestra (c1905)
2 rhythmic prose pieces (Deubel) (c1905)
Rhapsodie romane, orchestra (1905-6; pf version, fp. Paris, 1906)
Apothéose de l'océan, sym. poem, large orchestra (1906)
La délire de Clytemnestre, tradegie symphonique (1907)
Bourgogne, large orchestra (1907-08) - score destroyed by Varese, c1962
Gargantua, sym. poem, large orchestra (1909) - incomplete
Mehr Licht, orchestra (1911; preworked as Les cycles du nord, orchestra, 1912)
Les cycles du nord, orchestra (1912) [see Mehr Licht]
Oedipus und die Sphinx, opera (1908-14)
Danse du robinet froid (1917-19)

[Mirror Image]

Why is this thread in the poll section of the forum?

[EddieRUKiddingVarese]

Lets nominate our favorite missing piece then

Mine would be Bourgogne

[GioCar]

Lost or...destroyed by the composer?
I had always thought that Varèse had consciously decided to let those works fall into oblivion...

[Monsieur Croche]

"What happened to those pieces? Incredibly, most of them were destroyed by a warehouse fire at his publishers in 1918, during the Berlin uprisings that marked the end of the war."

"Most of his other early scores were lost, but Bourgogne survived, only to be destroyed 40 years later by the composer himself in a fit of depression."

That warehouse fire (why does this article not mention the publisher's name?, if I recall, account for a good lump of lost scores by a number of composers of the era, French and otherwise.  It was an era of no photocopy, and many of these scores and their parts were handwritten, and there was only one copy!

https://atuneadayblogdotcom.wordpress.com/tag/bluthner-hall/


Best regards.

[Dax]

The one (only one?) which survived is the brief song Un grand sommeil noir which doesn't give too much indication of later tendencies. Attractive but not earth-shattering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWyTe78X9F4

Tony Beaumont's orchestration (easily found after the above) is an intriguing suggestion of how those hard-edged piano sounds translate.

[EddieRUKiddingVarese]

"What happened to those pieces? Incredibly, most of them were destroyed by a warehouse fire at his publishers in 1918, during the Berlin uprisings that marked the end of the war."

"Most of his other early scores were lost, but Bourgogne survived, only to be destroyed 40 years later by the composer himself in a fit of depression."

That warehouse fire (why does this article not mention the publisher's name?, if I recall, account for a good lump of lost scores by a number of composers of the era, French and otherwise.  It was an era of no photocopy, and many of these scores and their parts were handwritten, and there was only one copy!

https://atuneadayblogdotcom.wordpress.com/tag/bluthner-hall/


Best regards.

Nice summary Crochie

[EddieRUKiddingVarese]

The one (only one?) which survived is the brief song Un grand sommeil noir which doesn't give too much indication of later tendencies. Attractive but not earth-shattering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWyTe78X9F4

Tony Beaumont's orchestration (easily found after the above) is an intriguing suggestion of how those hard-edged piano sounds translate.

Very cool was nice to hear

[jochanaan]

What would interest me about these lost works is how they might show his development from the Impressionist master who wrote Un grand sommeil noir to the supreme modernist he became.  Of his mature scores, Ameriques and Offrandes alone hint at what might have come before, with their hints of tonality and sensuous tonal palette.

But perhaps he said it best: "They call me an 'experimental' composer, but that is incorrect.  When a work reaches the public, it is a finished product, not an experiment.  My experiments go into the waste-paper basket."  (I'm typing from memory, so that quote is probably inaccurately quoted. )  It is well-known that he wanted to be judged by his later works, and at least in later times seems to have considered the loss of the earlier works no great one.