[continued]
Nocturnal is a world of sounds remembered and imagined, conjuring up sights and moods now personal, now Dantesque, now enigmatic. Perhaps one should not read too much into a composer’s choice of words, but could one, knowing Varèse’s unique career, resist wondering about the line, “I rise, I always rise after crucifixion”? What about the mocking, threatening, babbling emanations from the chorus, often directed to sound “as if from underground” and “harsh”? The solo voice instructed to sing “as if in a dream” at the beginning and then “as in a trance” at the end? Then there are the sounds remembered — the liquid beat on the wood block, the shrill whistling of the winds, the tenacious shimmering of the strings — the insistent sound of a mass of shuffling feet, the flourishes of drum beats, the sudden crashing outbursts. A phantasmagorical world? Yes, but as real as Varèse’s own life.
Unfortunately, Varèse never completed Nocturnal. After its première, he decided to go ahead with another version to be entitled Nocturnal II (sometimes referred to as Nuit), which also never materialized. Except for the choice of words and instrumentation, these works are really one and the same, possessing the same ideas. Extant sketches for these works, highly fragmentary and unlabelled, date as far back as the late 1950’s. However no manuscript, even for the finished portion of Nocturnal, exists although there are a few very brief and cryptic notes suggesting some sequences of events. The only version of the score is the one made under great pressure by a copyist directly from sketches immediately before the première, with a large number of mistakes and omissions. Fortunately there are three reference copies of the score in which Varèse made extensive indications for changes and additions, of which some are specific, others have several alternatives, and still others bear no specified solutions.
After Varèse’s death, it was felt that on the one hand the history of the work and the nature of the extant materials are such that it would not be feasible to complete the score as Varèse might have envisioned it while, on the other hand, the work certainly should be heard precisely because of its history and character as described above. Since the original portion ends too soon and too abruptly it was decided that what might be called a “performance version” be made, with the original portion fully edited, incorporating Varèse’s indicated changes and additions, and with a continuing portion added to provide formal balance and to include some of Varèse’s sketched ideas not employed in the original portion.