Varèse’s Poème électronique was just one part of an extraordinary multimedia experience. The piece was written for an exhibit sponsored by the Philips Radio Corporation at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. The exhibit was housed in a pavilion designed by the famous modernist architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965). “Corbu,” as he was called, also designed a sequence of colored lights and images to be projected while Varèse’s three-track tape was played from 425 speakers. The exhibit offers a brilliant example of modernist artists of various kinds working in tandem.

As visitors entered the pavilion and walked around, the music came at them from various angles. Likewise, as they kept turning corners, they kept seeing different parts of the superb building and of the light show. All this seems tame to us today, but it was arresting, even stunning, at the time.

There was obviously an element of chance in the way one got to experience Poème électronique — an element that the composer of course encouraged. John Cage (see page 367) would have concurred enthusiastically. So it is quite in Varèse’s spirit for us to take a quick tour of the pavilion, as it were, and happen to hear just the last few minutes of this music, rather than the entire work.

As we stroll within earshot of Poème électronique, an electronic crash is followed by various seemingly random rustles. Then a brilliant section displays a variety of electronic effects: low sliding groans, rattles, bell-like noises, and watery sounds. Suddenly something human joins these space-age sounds — a short vocal hum. This tells us that Varèse makes use of musique concrète in Poème: that is, he uses prerecorded sounds from real life, such as humming, singing, bells, and train noises, as well as material that is generated electronically from scratch.

The rhythm has been highly irregular. Now it slows down, and a sustained chord appears quietly, grows almost unbearably loud, and then fades. Varèse introduces isolated pitches that appear to be arbitrary, though in fact they merge into another sustained chord. We hear drum rhythms, too, and a musique concrète snare drum (remember Varèse’s affection for percussion instruments in his earlier compositions).

Humanity seems to reassert itself in the form of a soprano solo — but this is manipulated electronically so as to shriek its way out of hearing in the high register. Sharp punctuations decimate the men’s voices that follow. A mournful three-note motive (also heard earlier in Poème) is played twice with the pitches sliding into one another. Then a momentous-sounding siren moves up, falters, and moves up again until it becomes a violent noise, which ceases abruptly and mechanically.

So ends the Poème électronique: for some, on a strange note of unspecified disquiet.