29 Quotes by Edgard Varèse

No matter how consummate a work of art may seem, it is only an approximation of the original conception. It is the artist's consciousness of this discrepancy between his conception and the realization that assures his progress.

The beginning of art is not reason. It is the buried treasure of the unconscious...that unconscious which has more understanding than our lucidity.

Men 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.

Music is organized sound.

I rather like a certain clumsiness in a work of art.

I do not write experimental music. My experimenting is done before I make the music. Afterwards it is the listener who must experiment.

A man is culpable in the eyes of society when he escapes from the jurisdiction of its mediocrity.

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.

I don’t want to write any more for the old Man-power instruments and am handicapped by the lack of adequate electrical instruments for which I now conceive my music.