Born
in Paris, Edgard Varèse (1883-1965) first studied under D'Indy,
Roussel and Widor at the Schola Cantorum and the Paris Conservatory.
Moving to Berlin in 1907, Varèse befriended Busoni and was
struck by his "Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music," a
text which the younger composer would cite as an inspiration throughout
his life. In 1915, Varèse moved to New York, co-founding
the International Composers Guild (1922) and the Pan-American Society
(1926) to promote contemporary music. The move to America was also
symbolic of a new beginning for Varèse's music, where he
would produce an unique and influential series of works starting
with Amériques of 1922. Most of his previous compositions
were either destroyed by himself or lost in an accidental fire,
depending on different accounts.
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