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ABSTRACT IN FRENCH: Le deux décembre 1954 à Paris, au Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, était créée, dans le cadre de la programmation musicale de la R.T.F., une oeuvre d'un compositeur alors très peu connu en France, Déserts d'Edgar Varèse. Le compositeur y développait une esthétique marquée par la volonté d'intégrer à la musique occidentale des sons jusqu'alors refoulés (percussions, bruits d'usines, etc...). Or, la présence de tels sons dans un cadre très institutionnalisé et codifié, provoqua des réactions violentes de la part du public présent. À partir de sources variées, issues notamment des fonds de la R.T.F. (archives écrites, fonds sonores et télévisuels), on cherchera à mieux saisir ce scandale, en privilégiant une approche micro-historique nous permettant d'analyser les raisons qui poussèrent certains à faire comprendre au compositeur que sa musique, par son caractère d'étrangeté, n'était pas « à sa place ». Ceci nous permettra d'éclairer la postérité du scandale qui, si elle fut peu importante dans l'opinion, fut plus déterminante pour les compositeurs contemporains, qui firent de l'événement une sorte de « bataille héroïque » de la création artistique moderne, instrumentalisant ainsi la transgression, érigée en norme. // ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: On December the 2nd 1954, in the theater of the Champs-Élysées, a masterpiece entitled Déserts, composed by Edgar Varèse, who was unknown in France at that time, was created in the framework of the musical programming of the R.T.F.. Edgar Varèse developped in Déserts an aesthetic marked by the will of integrating into western music sounds that were unused before (percussion, noises from factories and so on...). However the use of such sounds in a very institutionalized and codified framework provoked violent reactions from the audience that was present. Referring to various resources from the R.T.F. (written, sonorous and television archives), we will try to understand that scandal better by priviledging a micro-historical approach. This will help us to analyse the reasons why some persons made the composer understand that his music was out of place because of its strangeness. All this will lead us to explain the importance of the scandal even if it did not remain in people's mind. However it was determining for the contemporary composers who celebrated the event as a kind of heroic battle concerning modern artistic creation. Thus transgression was magnified and became a standard. Reprinted by permission of Société d'histoire moderne et contemporaine

More than half a century after his most important works were created, the French-American modernist EdgarVarese still has the power to startle listeners. His most famous slogan called for 'the liberation of sound' and last weekend's Varese 360 [degrees] festival certainly supplied London's Southbank Centre with a greater concentration of ear-opening music than it had heard in a long time. The programme opened with the first British performance of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Texan Tenebrae and ought to have closed with the world premiere of Gorecki's Fourth Symphony. Ill-health prevented its completion, so instead we heard Gorecki's grief-laden Third Symphony, an often misunderstood work that in 1977 signalled the Polish composer's break with modernism, but placed him far ahead of the later 'holy minimalists'.This ethereal performance, featuring soprano Joanna Wos, was dedicated to the memory of Poland's recent air-disaster victims.

Really the performances needed no help, because they had the kind of intensity that captures one's eyes and ears completely. The most overwhelming of the three concerts was the final one given by the National Youth Orchestra, conducted by Paul Daniel with tremendous focus, but with an eye to the music's odd moments of poetry and humour. There were 155 players on stage for [Edgar Varese]'s largest work, Ameriques, plus male chorus and soprano Elizabeth Watts for Nocturnal, his haunted setting of verses from Anais Nin's House of Incest.

FOR the cost of a movie, lunchtime concertgoers during the international festivalof the arts have had the chance to see works performed by some of New Zealand's topmusical artists. Today till Sunday the concerts at St Andrews on The Terrace feature some of New Zealand'stop classical musicians performing contemporary and 20th century works by New Zealandand international composers. * Today, Trio Victoria bring together Wilma Smith, concertmaster of the New ZealandSymphony Orchestra, Euan Murdock, head of string studies at Victoria University,and Thomas Hecht, head of piano at Victoria. Trio Victoria, whose debut performancelast year was described as a \"momentous beginning\", will play New Zealand composerRoss Harris's piano trio, which the group premiered last year.

New York Philharmonic: An American Celebration (New York Philharmonic Special Editions) 'WHAT IS American music?\" For some reason, that stubbornly unanswerable question has fascinated generations of pundits. For 100 years they have argued ferociously over wheIP0 ther American composers should emulate Wagner or borrow from American Indians, absorb jazz or stay aloof, evoke the Rockies or the sidewalks of Paris, please the uninitiated or challenge the erudite. How refreshing, then, to find all those lions and lambs sprawled together in a peaceful heap on the New York Philharmonic's 10-CD set, \"An American Celebration.\" The rigorously below-IP0 14th Street minimalist Steve Reich shares disc space with Ivy League modernist Jacob Druckman and mystical symphonist Alan Hovhaness. A century's worth of \"shoulds\" about American music has effectively been neutralized. At least within the flag-wrapped confines of the box, everybody is getting along. Like the previous two bulky releases from the New York Philharmonic's archives of live recordings, \"An American Celebration\" is a landmark set. It tells the story of an orchestra's long and complex entanglement with its country's music, narrated in a series of momentous evenings. For an ensemble that has a reputation for resisting new music, the Philharmonic sure sounds like it's having a good time.

Director Raffi Armenian introduced Wednesday's Canadian Chamber Ensemble program in the John Aird Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University by warning more than 100 listeners that [Edgar Varese]'s 1924 Octandre, scored for woodwind quintet, plus trumpet, trombone and string bass, was supposed to prove that; music cannot express emotion and, that tonality (the key system) is dead. In fact, long before he had access to early electronic and computer technology, Varese was trying to remove the untidy human variables from music altogether.

On May 15, 1970, at a UCLA concert, Zubin Mehta directed the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert version of the film about life on the road with the Mothers of Invention. [Frank Zappa]'s description is pure composer-speak: \"200 Motels is a surrealistic documentary, but it might also be helpful to think of the overall shape of the film in the same way you might think of the shape of a piece of orchestral music, with leitmotifs, harmonic transpositions, slightly altered repetitions, cadences, atonal areas, counterpoint, polyrhythmic textures, onomatopoeic imitations, etc.\" Perhaps the earliest Australian collaboration was Peter Sculthorpe's Love 200, which assembled the folksinger Jeannie Lewis, the rock group Tully and the Sydney Symphony for the last night of the 1970 Sydney Proms. From the mid-1980s, rock musicians such as Elvis Costello tentatively approached such classical artists as the Brodsky Quartet and, in 2001, soprano Anne Sophie Van Otter. THE renowned keyboard player of Deep Purple, Jon Lord, now 60, studied piano at the Royal Academy, and composed his 55-minute Concerto for a concert in Royal Albert Hall on September 24, 1969. After two concerts in the Hollywood Bowl in August 1970, the score disappeared. A young Dutch musician, Marco de Goeij, spent two years transcribing the work from recordings.

[Frank Zappa] was a supreme subversive, luring in unsuspecting listeners with comic rock pieces then exposing those listeners to an expansive spectrum of musical and political musings way out of the mainstream. A master of juxtaposition, Zappa kept his work ebbing and flowing between humor and seriousness throughout 27 years of recording and performing. Absurdist, surrealist, iconoclast, curmudgeon and pervert are all tags that were hung around Zappa's neck at one time or other in his 52 years. But provocateur may be the only suitable label. An air of weirdness pervades most of Zappa's work. From his first record with the Mothers of Invention, \"Freak Out!\" through some 50 releases and countless performances, Zappaphiles have always been treated to a world view through a cracked prism. He made light of our foibles and fears and called into question just about every form of authority. Eventually, Zappa's music took on a life of its own, generating a mythology codified by mud sharks, penguins in bondage, the Muffin Man, Lonesome Cowboy Burt, Uncle Meat and Plastic People, and other pieces of homespun folklore.

Apart from some pitch problems in the opening aria, Miss [Kathleen Battle] was better in Bach's ''Wedding'' Cantata (BWV 202). Here she sang with straightforward sobriety and considerable grace, matched in John Mack's rendering of the work's prominent oboe line and Daniel Majeske's solo violin playing. Otherwise this was a rather old-fashioned account by today's standards, with warm string textures and a bassoon bass doubling that gave it the sound of a 1950's vintage Bach performance. It has a bit of everything: passages orchestrated with a Mahlerian richness; patches of jazzy brass writing; a siren and all manner of percussion; Latin cross rhythms; dense chordal clusters, and melodic fragments from Stravinsky's ''Rite of Spring.'' And it is not without humor: [Edgar Varese] wrote ''Ha! Ha! Ha!'' under one of the trombone lines to make his intention clear. As an evocation of its time and place, it is uncannily successful.