aworks :: "new" american classical music

Ecuatorial (1934). Edgard Varèse /via another woman/

Image via Wikipedia

I just finished watching Woody Allen's Another Woman with Gena Rowlands. I have to say the most (the only?) interesting part was the use of Edgard Varèse's Ecuatorial to foreshadow anguish.

Ecuatorial (1934). Edgard Varèse /memories, or not/

As I mostly listen to music one composer at a time these days, I usually have a reasonable idea of what I am about to hear. And then today, Ecuatorial by Edgard Varèse started blaring and that first use of the theremin gave me a jolt.

Interestingly, in this interview, Leon Theremin doesn't really remember meeting Varèse, sixty years earlier.

And speaking of memory, everytime I read the word "ecuatorial," I hear in my head Patti Smith singing the phrase "ecuatorial bliss" from the classic Beneath the Southern Cross:

oh
to owe
not anyone
nothing
to be
not here
but here
forsaking
equatorial bliss

Here's to Edgard, Leon, and Patti for making my day memorable...

unfortunately, the last.fm clip stops before reaching bliss. and, last.fm has no clips for ecuatorial. although, the similar artists to varèse station starts off with some tame schoenberg, some radical pierre schaeffer, and then an hour of la monte young's well-tuned piano.

Ecuatorial (1934). Edgard Varèse

The San Francisco Symphony season:

• I Met Heine on the Rue Fürstenburg. Feldman. September. Feldman in a Paul Griffiths interview re: titles here.
• Appalachian Spring. Fanfare for the Common Man. Copland. September.
• Piano Concerto. Gershwin. Jean-Yves Thibaudet. October. Clip.
• Symphonic Dances. Bernstein. Violin Concerto.  Barber. Symphony No. 1. Corigliano. National Symphony Orchestra and Itzhak Perlman. October.
• Drala. Lieberson. December.
• Decoration Day. Ives.  January.
• New England Holidays. Ives. April. (along with Webern and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing Mahler).
• Ecuatorial. Varèse. May. Score includes two theremins or ondes martenot.