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Electrosymphony
Varèse is the first person to have introduced concrete music to the orchestra: these 'interpolations' in 'organised sounds', as he called them, provoked an outcry. In 1954, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Orchestre National de France, conducted by Hermann Scherchen, created Déserts. The scandal was comparable to the one created by Sacre du Printemps at the same venue forty-one years earlier. After the uproar, the press suggested the electric chair for Varèse, the 'electrosymphonist'. What made the outrage even worse was that this concert was the first to be broadcast frequency-modulated on national airwaves. The first emergence of technology in the world of classical music turned into a
