\” … Am I alone in this, or didn\’t Paul Griffiths express himself rather ambiguously? At the back of my mind I was wondering exactly what Varese would have been playing but I let that pass. And \”swinging\” (Griffiths\’ word) would ordinarily suggest performance, I think, rather than a chart.\”

Steve Layton to Richard Buell (10/12/06, e-mail quoted by permission):

\” … In fairness, the book isn\’t *absolutely* clear on the matter. It seems that Varese just contributed the \”chart,\” but who knows? Maybe he\’s in there banging one of his gongs or something. We won\’t know until the recordings are made available, and maybe not then …

\”I picked the book up right away when I read a blurb about it on Kyle Gann\’s blog (he contributed one of the chapters, so probably got a copy as soon as it was published). You know, it\’s actually the catalog of an exhibition held this past summer at the Sacher Foundation in Switzerland. To see it all in person would have been a real trip!

\”Louise Varese wrote her husband\’s bio, and it\’s actually pretty tough/fair considering, and well worth finding a copy. But she only got volume one completed. and that only went to about 1928 or 29. What\’s great in this book are the number of references taken from the surviving draft of the unpublished volume two; getting a better idea of what Varese was up to (and not up to) for the 25-odd-years until \’Deserts.\’\”

\” … I\’d love to know more myself! This stuff seems to have just had its very first good look-through and sorting. Now if somebody will turn a few grad students loose on it, dissertations await …\”

– RB

The whole thing’s tied up with the creation of the Poeme Electronique around 1957. Varese wrote a kind of graphic score or “sketch” before ever going off to Europe to have the engineers at Phillips Lab realize it. You can see part of it HERE.

Interestingly enough, it seems to be practically identical with the “chart” that varese brought to these sessions to have the jazz guys improv from! (there are images of both in the book).

Besides the jazz guys, some of the sessions included John Cage and Merce Cunningham (and Teo Marcero says that Charlie Mingus was there, too). Also sitting in was Earle Brown, who was working at Capitol Records and seems to have put the whole thing together. It only lasted from March through August, when Varese took off for Europe.

It’s a wonderful book, full of fascinating and surprising documents and information. Now that Varese’s archive has a home, someone can someday finally start on a real, full and rounded biography; until then, this book will at least fill in some of the holes.