Video Score: Edgard Varèse’s Octandre

A growing trend on YouTube is something that might be called video scores – a video of a music score, with page turns timed to accompanying audio. These videos are a great way to do a little score study and to learn something new.

The embedded score below of Octandre, for example, has been online for a few months and without this video, it may have never come onto my radar.

For some, the music of Edgard Varèse delineates a solid border between music and noise. For myself his music is profound, beautifully detailed and at times, sublime.

Octandre is scored for eight instruments: seven winds and string bass.  It has many moods and colors reminiscent of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

While the horn part is not prominently featured, it is interesting and fun to follow along in the score and see how the entire composition fits together.

An interesting factoid about this composition – it is the only multi-movement work that Varèse ever wrote. (!)

From the LA Phil web site:

The first performance of Octandre, whose title refers both to its eight-player ensemble and the word’s literal meaning, a flower with eight stamens, was given in New York on January 13, 1924, under the direction of E. Robert Schmitz, founder of the Pro Musica Society, dedicated to the presentation of works by living composers, and a renowned interpreter of the piano music of Debussy.

1. Assez lent

The first movement is launched by a chant-like oboe phrase – reminiscent of the bassoon melody that opens Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps), employing the minor second and its inversion, the major seventh. The clarinet responds with a chattering bundle of repeated notes, succeeded by “pumping” sounds in the brass. The movement ends “with the feeling of the beginning (a little anxious),” the composer notes in the score.

2. Très vif et nerveux

The second movement begins as a wind-blown scherzo featuring the piccolo’s repeated notes, which are pushed aside by the brass. The final chord is a fierce crescendo, which winds down to the solo double bass leading into the finale…

3. Grave-Animé et jubilatoire

…the finale, which begins “grave” but blossoms into an energetic fugue with the successive entries of oboe, bassoon, and clarinet. Octandre ends with what can perhaps be best described as a screech.

Resources:

• LA Phil Program Notes
• Dr. Steven Grimo offers detailed performance notes for conductors and performers