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Contemporary musical composition, like other modern art forms, has shown two contradictory trends: it has sought to 1) come closer to reality than it ever has before; and 2) destroy reality or transmute it beyond recognition. In this sense, Composer Varèse is a typical 20th century artist. He goes about with a tape recorder, picking up very real sounds that may range from a factory whistle to an organ note to a kissing sound captured right at home. Then, by using electronic machinery that might have baffled his father, he takes the "raw" sounds, breaks them up into components, forms rhythmic patterns with them, amplifies and filters them till they bear no resemblance to their former selves. After such treatment, the kiss, for instance, sounds like three people in high heels kicking out a wicked beat.
Last week, at Manhattan's Town Hall Composer Varèse exhibited his latest composition, a piece for orchestra and tape recorder entitled Deserts. Onstage was a 20-man orchestra, five of whose members played percussion. Backstage, peering out under beetling brows, was Composer Varèse himself, one hand on the controls of an Ampex tape recorder, the other giving the beat to Conductor Jacques Monod onstage. Nobody could miss the fact: about to turn 70, Varèse is as unreconstructed a rebel as he was 35 years ago.
Faceless Roar. The composition started with chimes, but chimes whose tone got an added kickoff from a xylophone tick and was sustained by the high squeal of clarinets. For the next 21 minutes nothing else was so recognizable. Instrumental sounds tumbled about in wild confusion; there was never a concerted attack or a distinguishable pulse. The percussionists made sense only because many of their rat-a-tats and grumblings came out as minute variations on themes. The winds, on the other hand, were so overpowering, so agonizingly taut, that the listener felt lucky to find a recurring chord to hang on to.
Suddenly, Paris-born Conductor Monod, at 28 a standout interpreter of contemporary music, dropped his arms, and the orchestra stopped; but instead of silence, a frightful, apocalyptic roar came from one of the two loudspeaker units. At first it seemed to have no connection with the preceding part, but then it began to come clear through the clangorous fog: many of the rhythms were regurgitations of foregoing rhythms. Twice more the taped sounds interrupted the orchestra, each time became more drastic, until the effect was of actual terror, as machine-gun bursts alternated with animal wails, with monstrously loud cricket chirps, with the sounds of huge crowds of faceless people roaring. Eventually, a passage of simple dissonance sounded as sensual as Ravel.
Tumultuous Labors. "Why do I compose the way I do? Because it pleases me," says Varèse amiably, and will say no more. But there is evidence that Varèse writes that way as a protest. First there was his antimusical father to protest against, then (although his early work earned Debussy's admiration) an indifferent or hostile public. Again and again, his career ran into difficulties. Just as he was beginning to work on an opera with Librettist Hugo (Rosenkavalier) von Hofmannsthal,