Edgard Varese: A Few Observations of His Music
Milton Babbitt · Perspectives of New Music · 1966
THIS IS, to the best of my knowledge, only the second occasion on which I have been granted the somewhat unnerving privilege of speaking publicly of a composer's music in that composer's presence. On the first such occasion, the composer was Igor Stravinsky, being done homage in his 80th birthyear; now, on this second occasion, the composer is Edgard Varese, in his 80th birthyear;1 and it was of Varese that Stravinsky has predicted: His music will survive; we know that now, for it has dated in the right way. Although I have no direct knowledge of Stravinsky's survival theory of music, I infer from this statement that it derives from Darwin rather than