AMS-NE Chapter Meeting Saturday, September 28, 2013 University of Massachusetts Amherst Erinn Knyt, " New Instruments, New Sounds, and New Musical Laws: Ferruccio Busoni, Edgard Varèse, and the “Music of the Future”" The disparity between Edgard Varèse’s early European compositions, described in Romantic or Impressionistic terms by those who heard them, and his experimental American compositions has contributed to the widespread assumption that Varèse reinvented himself after encountering the sights and sounds of New York. When composers are named as sources of influence, Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy are most frequently mentioned. Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky sometimes follow. While these composers undoubtedly influenced Varèse, especially with regard to his harmonic choices and use of episodic structures, they did not provide models for more characteristic features of his experimental compositional style: rhythmic simultaneity, expansion of the tonal...
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