Arcana / Integrales / Deserts

The thematic material of Arcana (1925-27) for orchestra - the score of which is prefaced by a quotation from the sixteenth-century Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus - is derived from the varied repetition of a handful of motifs including a rising tritone/rising tone figure also used in Intégrales. The première was given at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia on 8th April 1927 conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The title of Octandre (1923) refers to it's scoring for an octet of flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone and double bass ('octandrous' refers to a flower having eight stamens). The only work of Varèse to follow a traditional division of movements, namely Assez lent, Très vif et nerveux, Animé et jubilatoire, it grows out of the material stated by the oboe in the opening bars, with Varèse treating the octet essentially as a timbral pool from which he extracts textures of a quite startling originality.