Déserts (1950–1954) is a piece by Edgard Varèse for 14 winds (brass and woodwinds), 5 percussion players, 1 piano, and electronic tape."Blue" Gene Tyranny (2010). "[ Déserts for brass, percussion, piano & tape]", AllMusic.com.
Percussion instruments are exploited for their resonant potential, rather than used solely as accompaniment.Sitsky, Larry (2002). Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: a Biocritical Sourcebook, p.533. . According to Varèse, the title of the piece regards "not only physical deserts of sand, sea, mountains, and snow, outer space, deserted city streets… but also distant inner space… where man is alone in a world of mystery and essential solitude."
History The piece was created as a soundtrack of a modernist film.Griffiths, Paul (1995). Modern Music and After, p.129. . According to "Blue" Gene Tyranny, "It is now recognized as an exceptional example of truly humanistic music." It "has been described… as atonal, athematic,… amotivic," and its orchestration has "been labeled subtle." As Paul Griffiths describes:
Varèse began composition in 1953 (or 1952) upon the anonymous gift of an Ampex tape recorder. Through connections in New York City, he met Ann McMillan, a young composer and music editor at RCA Red Seal, who became his assistant; McMillan recorded the sounds of factories and percussion instruments which Varèse would use in this composition. He continued to work on the piece at Pierre Schaeffer's studio at Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française in the late 1950s, and later revised it at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in the early 1960s. Dèserts may be performed without the tape sections, reducing its length by seven minutes.
The first performance of the combined orchestral and tape sound composition was given at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on December 2, 1954, with Hermann Scherchen conducting and Pierre Henry in charge of the tape part. This performance was part of an ORTF broadcast concert, in front of a totally unprepared and mainly conservative audience, with Déserts wedged between pieces by Mozart and Tchaikovsky. It received a vitriolic reaction from both the audience and the press. Igor Stravinsky was complimentary of the piece, speaking favourably of the piece's "form based on patterns of recurrence and incidence". Moreover, he appreciated the attempt to combine live instrumental music with electronic recording and considered it "the most valuable development in Varèse's later music."
Instrumentation
The piece is scored for the following instruments.
Woodwinds 2 flutes (both doubling piccolo)
Brass 2 horns 3 trumpets 3 trombones 2 tubas
Percussion (5 players) 4 timpani, vibraphone, 2 suspended cymbals, tenor drum, and claves glockenspiel, snare, field, and tenor drums, 2 timbales or tom-toms, 2 suspended cymbals, cencerro, tambourine, and 3 Chinese blocks 2 bass drums with cymbals, field and tenor drums, cencerro, guiro, claves, tambourine, and chimes vibraphone, 3 gongs, 2 lathes, guiro, and tambourine xylophone, 3 Chinese blocks, 3 wooden drums, guiro, claves, maracas, and 2 lathes
Other
1 piano electronic tape
References
External links "Varese: Deserts", UMWindOrchestra.com.