Varese Edgard and Le Corbusier

Poème électronique is an 8-minute piece of electronic music by composer Edgard Varèse, written for the Philips Pavilionat the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. The Philips corporation commissioned Le Corbusier to design the pavilion, which was intended as a showcase of their engineering progress. Le Corbusier came up with the title Poème électronique, saying he wanted to create a “poem in a bottle”.

Varèse composed the piece with the intention of creating a liberation between sounds and as a result uses noises not usually considered “musical” throughout the piece.