Among the artifacts occupying the second floor workroom of composer Chou Wen-chung's beautiful West Village brownstone are numerous metal gongs once owned by Edgard Varèse (1883-1965), the experimentalist who revolutionized 20th-century music. One was famously used in Varèse's ground-breaking percussion work, "Ionisation" (1930-31); a second was a gift from Mr. Chou to Varèse, his former teacher, in whose former home he now lives. A visitor searching for insights into the mind of that earlier maverick is hard pressed to keep from trying them out; luckily, Mr. Chou is a generous host, and doesn't mind the clangor.
But beyond the fun, there is a point to it all: In many ways, the gong represents Varèse's musical world—there is its attention-grabbing bloom when a mallet first strikes; the mushrooming cloud of sound that follows, rich with sonorous overtones; the layers of timbre slowly revealed as its vibrations decay in the air. For an attentive listener, these reverberations offer momentary wonders. For Varèse, that search for the new—and the musically sublime—was never-ending.