Of all the arts, music is the one communal art. It requires for its existence extensive cooperation and organization...Singing together the greatest choral music of all time is the surest way of developing in a community that sense of quality and reverence for beauty, which is the basis of a musical culture...Entertainment has its place in life just as candies and cocktails have, but health is not built on such a diet alone, nor culture exclusively on amusement.
Edgard VareseMen set themselves a goal, and having attained it, are satisfied and grow paunches. In their complacency they forget that their only future is now death.
Edgard VareseThere is an idea, the basis of an internal structure, expanded and split into different shapes or groups of sound constantly changing in shape, direction, and speed, attracted and repulsed by various forces.
Edgard VareseOur musical alphabet is poor and illogical. Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor. Why, Italian Futurists, have you slavishly reproduced only what is commonplace and boring in the bustle of our daily lives. I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.
Edgard Varese