Edgard Varèse - Dance for Burgess (1949)

“Dance for Burgess” for chamber orchestra and percussion, is a fun little work by the composer Edgard Varèse as a part of a Broadway musical project by Burgess Meredith, a dancer and Varèse’s friend. The stagework never came to fruition. Though the orchestral piece was written in 1949, it was only published in 1998, thanks to the efforts of Wen-chung Chou, who helped to edit and revise the final score. As an attempt to write for Broadway on behalf of a friend, the piece is relatively mild for a visionary like Varèse.
Chou also left other notes regarding the structure and scheme of the piece:
“The distribution of percussion instruments and stick specifications have been edited as close to Varèse’s intentions as is practical.
There is a part for tenor saxophone - bass clarinet in the manuscript. The saxophone, however, is required for only four notes, in mm. 11-12, after which the part is exclusively for the bass clarinet. That part is now assigned to the bass clarinet only. With the elimination of the need for switching instruments at m. 12, it is now possible to fill out the sonority at mm. 13-14, as in mm. 11-12. This is accomplished by adding the bass clarinet part; filling two notes into the horn part in m. 14; and assigning the B-flat clarinet in m. 14 to double the E-flat clarinet as in m. 13 - all of which is accomplished through a redistribution of instruments without adding pitches or changing octave positions.
In these same measures, phrasing for the tuba, piano, and violoncello parts have also been provided.
Throughout this tutti passage, the contrabass is silent in the manuscript. It now participates in the doubling between the tuba and piano parts, in the same manner as the violoncello part, weaving between the trombone and piano parts. The two violin and viola parts are expanded, as originally suggested in mm. 13-14.
In mm. 20-26, the distribution of the E-flat and B-flat clarinets has been edited, assigning mm. 20-22 to the B-flat part, and adding a B-flat part at m. 25, where it doubles the trumpet. In mm. 35-37, the B-flat and bass clarinet parts are added, doubling the piano, as do the piccolo and E-flat clarinet in the manuscript, at an octave higher. Similarly, in m. 43, these parts are added to double the lower octave of the piano.
In mm. 22-26, the string parts have been edited to more fully double the piano part, as intended in the manuscript. The contrabass, silent in the manuscript, now doubles the piano as do the other strings.
In m. 44, the strings are added to double the piano chord. At m. 46, in the black-and-white copies of the manuscript, the two violins are in unison, as are the viola and violoncello. These parts are now revised to cover a wider range in the doublings of the sextuplet figure. In the final measure, the violoncello part is converted to an octave double-stop, doubling the open C on the viola, while the contrabass part is added to double the violoncello’s open C.”
Date: 1949
Dedicatee: Burgess Meredith
Performers:
Riccardo Chailly as conductor
The Asko Ensemble
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Editor: Wen-chung Chou
Note: This channel does not own the score or audio, and they are only used for non-commercial purposes.

[@yourdailybeats1127]

Feels like the main character is in a dark room with 8 ninjas attacking him. Each swell was an attack. Each clash brings a burst of light

[@Adrien-on7gz]

ok