Edgard Varèse
Quotations

"A composer knows as little as anyone else where the substance of his music comes from."

 

"In Europe, when a rich woman has an affair with a conductor, they have a baby. In America, she endows an orchestra for him."

 

"I have been waiting a long time for electronics to free music from the tempered scale and the limitations of musical instruments. Electronic instruments are the portentous first step toward the liberation of music. "

 

"My fight for the liberation of sound and for my right to make music with any sound and all sounds has sometimes been construed as a desire to disparage and even to discard the great music of the past. But that is where my roots are. No matter how original, how different a composer may seem, he has only grafted a little bit of himself on the old plant. But this he should be allowed to do without being accused of wanting to kill the plant. He only wanted to produce a new flower."

 

"I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which, with their contribution to a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm."

 

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