[continued]
With 27 woodwinds, 29 brasses, and the largest percussion battery of the time, Varèse stretched the post-Romantic orchestra to the breaking point, weaving a towering tapestry from unimaginable sonic strands. Bursting colors, cascading sonorities, explosive dynamics, swirling rhythms, and thrusting motions coalesce into the ever more intense eruptions of sonic phenomena that Varèse had investigated since at least 1910, and expressed later as “trajectories of sound,” “interpenetration of sound masses,” and as sound “constantly changing in shape, direction, and speed.” This persistent procession of outbursts is, however, interspersed with moments of tenderness, fantasy, and nostalgia. Memories play a large role in Varèse’s music. There are always vignettes from his past — a phrase or a single sound, sometimes a long passage — in his otherwise objective musical designs. In Amériques, one hears echoes of the Romanesque chruch at Tournus, River Soâne in Burgundy, the Mediterranean at Savona, the Hudson River, Manhattan streets, and even his mirthful grandfather or his great-uncle’s forge.
Looking back through his life and art, one is tempted to hear Amériques as if it were the prophecy of the composer’s life-long quest for the music of his vision, which remains, today, the music of the future.