At the suggestion of my father-in-law, I’ve just been listening to Radio 3’s Late Junction. It’s fantastic. Some beautiful stuff. The most beautiful of which, from Monday’s show, was a piece called Poem électronique by Edgard Varèse. Unknown to me until now, it turns out he was the Father of electronic music. Poem électronique sounds like it could be Aphex Twin’s latest project, yet it was written in 1958.
“I long for instruments obedient to my thought and whim, with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, which will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.” – June 1917
The interconnectedness of this morning’s browsing is a treat. I spent the weekend clearing out my cellar in preparation for it being waterproofed and becoming my study. When I opened my copy of The Poetics of Space on the tram, he talked of the phemonological impact of the cellar and the inhabitant as a diagram of all the houses previously lived in. On the Varèse site I visited there is a diagram he sketched of Poem électronique, which is now my desktop wallpaper. It replaced the album cover I had found a couple of weeks ago at franklarosa.com of a 1950’s LP of electronic music.