(Edgar) (Victor Achille Charles), French born American composer; b. Paris, Dec. 22, 1883; d. N.Y., Nov. 6, 1965. Varèse's paternal grandfather was Italian, and his other grandparents were French. He spent his early childhood in Paris and in Burgundy and began to compose early in life.

In 1892 Varèse's parents went to Turin, where he took private lessons in composition with Giovanni Bolzoni, who taught him without charge. Varèse gained some performing experience by playing percussion in the school orchestra. He stayed there until 1903, then went to Paris.

In 1904 Varèse entered the Schola Cantorum, where he studied composition, COUNTERPOINT, and FUGUE with Albert Roussel, preclassical music with Charles Bordes, and conducting with VINCENT D'INDY. He then entered the composition class of Charles-Marie Widor at the Paris Conservatory in 1905.

In 1907 Varèse received the bourse artistique (art's prize) offered by the City of Paris. At that time he founded and conducted the chorus of the University Populaire and organized concerts at the Château du Peuple. He became associated with musicians and artists of the AVANT-GARDE, meeting CLAUDE DEBUSSY, who showed interest in his career. In 1907 he married the actress Suzanne Bing with whom he had a daughter. Together they went to Berlin, at that time the center of NEW MUSIC. The marriage was not successful, and they separated in 1913.

Romain Rolland gave Varèse a letter of recommendation to RICHARD STRAUSS, who in turn showed interest in Varèse's music. Rolland was also instrumental in arranging a performance of Varèse's symphonic poem Bourgogne, which was performed in Berlin in 1910. The hostile reception that he encountered from Berlin critics for Bourgogne upset Varèse, who expressed his unhappiness in a letter to Debussy. However, Debussy responded with a friendly letter of encouragement, advising Varèse not to pay too much attention to critics. Later in life, Varèse destroyed the manuscript of the work.

The greatest experience for Varèse in Berlin was his meeting and friendship with FFERRUCCIO BUSONI , whose theories of music were very influential on the young composer. Also while in Berlin, Varèse composed industriously, mostly for orchestra. The most ambitious of these works was a SYMPHONIC POEM, Gargantua, but it was never completed. Several other works, including an unfinished opera, were lost under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

As early as 1913 Varèse began to look for new ways to perform and compose music. Upon his return to Paris, he worked with the Italian musical FUTURIST LUIGI RUSSOLO on this question, although, unlike Russolo, industrial noise as a new type of musical resource did not interest him. He served briefly in the French army at the outbreak of World War I but was discharged because of a chronic lung ailment.

In 1915 Varèse went to N.Y., where he met the American writer Louise Norton. They set up a household together, and in 1921, when she obtained a divorce from her previous husband, they were married.

As in Paris and Berlin, Varèse had chronic financial difficulties in the U.S. The royalties from his few published works were minimal, and in order to supplement his earnings he accepted a job as a piano salesman. He also appeared in a minor role in a John Barrymore silent film in 1918. Some welcome aid came from the wealthy patron Gertrude Vanderbilt, who sent him monthly allowances for a short time.

Varèse also had an opportunity to appear as a conductor. As the U.S. considered entering the war against Germany, there was a demand for French conductors to replace the German music directors who had held a monopoly on American orchestras. In 1917 Varèse conducted the Requiem of HECTOR BERLIOZ in N.Y. In 1918 he conducted a concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in a program of French and Russian music. He also included an excerpt from RICHARD WAGNER's Lohengrin, thus defying the general wartime ban on German music. However, he apparently lacked that indefinable quality that makes a conductor, and he was forced to cancel further concerts with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Eager to promote the cause of modern music, Varèse organized a symphony orchestra in N.Y. with the specific purpose of giving performances of new and unusual music. It presented its first concert in 1919. In 1922 he organized with Carlos Salzedo the International Composers' Guild, which gave its inaugural concert in N.Y. that year. In 1926 he founded, in association with a few progressive musicians, the Pan American Society, dedicated to the promotion of music of the Americas. He also became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

From 1926 to 1936 Varèse intensified his study of the nature of sound, working with the acoustician Harvey Fletcher and with LEON THEREMIN, then resident in the U.S. These studies led him to the formulation of the concept of ORGANIZED SOUND. The sounds used by the composer would themselves determine the organization of a composition.

The resulting product was unique in modern music. Characteristically, Varèse attached to his works titles from the field of mathematics or physics, such as Intégrales, Hyperprism (a projection of a prism into the fourth dimension), Ionisation, and Density 21.5 for solo flute. The last work was commissioned by Georges Barrère (1876-1944) and named for the atomic weight of platinum. The score of his large orchestral work Arcana derived its inspiration from the writings of the medieval Swiss philosopher Paracelsus.

Later in his career, in the 1950s, an important development was Varèse's application of ELECTRONIC MUSIC. This first appeared in his work Déserts and, much more extensively, in his Poème électronique, commissioned for the Brussels World Exposition in 1958.

The unfamiliarity of Varèse's style and the tremendous difficulty of his orchestral works led them to be performed only rarely. Among conductors, only LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI was bold enough to put Varèse's formidable scores Amériques and Arcana on his programs with the Philadelphia Orchestra. They evoked cries of derision and outbursts of righteous indignation from the public and the press.

An extraordinary reversal of attitudes toward Varèse's music took place within Varèse's lifetime, resulting in an increased interest in his works. Also, musicians themselves learned to overcome the rhythmic difficulties presented in Varèse's scores.

Thus Varèse lived to witness this long-delayed recognition of his music as a major stimulus of modern art, and his name joined those of IGOR STRAVINSKY, CHARLES IVES, ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, and ANTON WEBERN among the great masters of 20th-century music. In 1955 Varèse was elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters and in 1962 in the Royal Swedish Academy. Like Schoenberg, Varèse refused to regard himself as a revolutionary in music. Indeed, he professed great admiration for his remote predecessors, particularly those of the NOTRE DAME SCHOOL, representing the flowering of the ARS ANTIQUA.

On the centennial of his birth in 1983, festivals of Varèse's music were staged in Strasbourg, Paris, Rome, Washington, D.C., N.Y., and Los Angeles. In 1981 FRANK ZAPPA, a sincere admirer of Varèse's music, staged in N.Y. at his own expense a concert of Varèse's works. He presented a similar concert in San Francisco in 1982.