Edgard Varése did not create electronic music, but he sure did take the first great big step from the foundations the futurists placed before him. Varese did not want to create music so erratic that it was just a collection of different noises, he did something more than the pioneers of noise that came before him.
In ‘The Liberation of Sound’ Edgard Varése discusses the newly emerging electronic music that he ultimately helps establish.
Our new liberating medium – the electronic – is not meant to replace the old musical instruments which composers, including myself, will continue to use.
I love his idea of simply using noise as another instrument in one’s musical arsenal, a development over how the futurists before him saw noise music whereby the noise on its own made the music.
Not to discredit the futurists, their experiments with music were essential to develop Varése’s music, and thus contemporary electronic music, in fact, what I appreciate about the futurists over Edgard is that they employed a full range of noises to make music, not just mechanical noises, the beeps and boops, but the sounds of every day life. The best contemporary electronic music often is inspired by both.
Varése’s electronic poem, much like the earlier works of the futurists, although fascinating and at times exhilarating, was not appealing like a modern techno song might be to me. It isn’t an absolute banger or anything, I don’t believe it was written to sound traditionally pleasing to the ear, or make someone dance, it was written to expand our conception of what music could be, and I believe it did just that.
I don’t believe it was ever meant to be this coherent piece at all but rather a collection of tid-bits from what could be songs of the future, and over half a century later it is hard to deny how reminiscent some parts of this piece are to contemporary music across all genres and mediums, from industrial rock & electronica to ambient music used in films, TV, & video games.