Edgard Varese Quotes & Sayings

#1. I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.

Edgard Varese

#2. I have just begun a work in which an important part is given to a large chorus and with it I want to use several of your instruments - augmenting their range as in those I used for my Equatorial - especially in the high range.

Edgard Varese

#3. There are two infinities: God and stupidity.

Edgard Varese

#4. I rather like a certain clumsiness in a work of art.

Edgard Varese

#5. In every domain of art, a work that corresponds to the need of its day carries a message of social and cultural value. It is the artist who crystallizes his age ... who fixes his time in history.

Edgard Varese

#6. I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena.

Edgard Varese

#7. The present day composer refuses to die.

Edgard Varese

#8. Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.

Edgard Varese

#9. I do not write experimental music. My experimenting is done before I make the music. Afterwards it is the listener who must experiment.

Edgard Varese

#10. A work of art must make the rules: rules do not make a work of art ... I tell people I am not a musician; I work with rhythms, frequencies and intensities ... tunes are merely the gossips of music ...

Edgard Varese

#11. The beginning of art is not reason. It is the buried treasure of the unconscious ... that unconscious which has more understanding than our lucidity.

Edgard Varese

#12. There is an idea, the basis of an internal structure, expanded and split into different shapes or groups of sound constantly changing in shape, direction, and speed, attracted and repulsed by various forces.

Edgard Varese

#13. Men set themselves a goal, and having attained it, are satisfied and grow paunches. In their complacency they forget that their only future is now death.

Edgard Varese

#14. No matter how consummate a work of art may seem, it is only an approximation of the original conception. It is the artist's consciousness of this discrepancy between his conception and the realization that assures his progress.

Edgard Varese

#15. I don't want to write any more for the old Man-power instruments and am handicapped by the lack of adequate electrical instruments for which I now conceive my music.

Edgard Varese