The Space Aesthetics of Edgard Varèse's music

Abstract

Edgard Varèse(1883-1965), a 20th century French-American composer, is famous for his contributions of tape music and research on electronic instruments. Theses creative ideas had already been performed on the productions of instruments. Its focus is based on the operating mode of Sound- masses in space, and was further analyzed by scholars who study Varèse. This is also my motive to research the music of Edgard Varèse. The Music of Edgard Varèse (1987) by the scholars Jonathan W. Bernard(1951- ) is organized by the analysis of Spatial Environments. Another text “The Intégrales of Edgard Varèse Space, Mass, Element, and Form” (1978) weitten by John Strawn, has great details about the background of creativeness and analyzation of space. Varèse expressed his ideas about Sound- masses, timbres and ‘Organized Sound’ with great details in the “The Liberation of Sound”. The main space in my dissertation is surround with Intégrales, the work of wind and percussion. The study method operates to include both the pitch-class sets and Spatial Environment analysis methods from Bernard. The first step is representing the sense of Space creation in real examples to “The Liberation of Sound”. Furthermore, the above method can bond withorchestration to explore the space aesthetics found in the music of Varèse. Finally, this research fully represents the muscal character of the spatial aesthetics of Varèse.