Quotes from Edgard Varese

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

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

Music is organized sound.

Music is the most abstract of the arts and also the most physical....music is under two signs, the stars and the wine

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.

There are two infinities: God and stupidity.

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

Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor.

A man is culpable in the eyes of society when he escapes from the jurisdiction of its mediocrity.

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.

An artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs.

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

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.

Contrary to general belief, an artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs.

Our musical alphabet is poor and illogical.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.