In 1923, crucial points were marked in the development of Western music: Schoenberg's Op. 25 presented the beginnings of his 12-tone theory; Stravinsky's octet launched his neo-Classicist phase; Milhaud's La creation du monde integrated French "new simplicity" with American jazz. Despite the distinction of these various currents, they each concerned either a desire to innovate structure or revolutionize style. On the other hand, Edgard Varèse attempted a revolution not of style or structure, but of pure sound. "I refuse to submit myself only to sounds that have already been heard," Varèse had complained a few years earlier. "What I am looking for are new technical mediums that lend themselves to every expression of thought and can keep up with thought."

It was in this spirit that Varèse completed his groundbreaking work for wind ensemble and percussion, Hyperprisme. Varèse's search for new sounds led him to utilize the percussion section to a greater extent than any composer before him. The sensitive ear for previously unimagined timbral combinations of non-pitched percussion instruments that one finds in Ionisation (1929) was first fully established with Hyperprisme (and further developed in the wind/percussion piece Intégrales from 1926). One of the distinguishing features of Hyperprisme was that it entirely eliminated the string section (the orchestrational role of which had already been diminished in his Offrandes from 1921) because Varèse thought strings evoked outmoded Romantic modes of expression. Instead, Hyperprisme highlighted the blocky, strident character of the brass, the shrillness of the winds, and the endless variety of sounds afforded by a greatly expanded percussion battery; in addition to the flute, clarinet, and full orchestral brass section, Varèse scored the piece for nearly 20 different percussion instruments played with a variety of techniques. Of course, Varèse's skill is not measured by the sheer number of different sounds he assembles, but the way in which he assembles them. His approach to orchestration involves an extreme fluidity of texture so that instruments might follow distinct paths in one moment and assemble to create a complex composite gesture or color in the next. He often articulates the attack of a note or shape of a melodic gesture in the winds by punctuating it with percussion; in a sense, the winds act as vowels, the percussion instruments as consonants. At the same time, resonant instruments like cymbals and gongs—which offer less rhythmic agility than, say, Chinese wood blocks or a snare drum—provide a washed broadband sound that throws melodic and rhythmic elements into greater relief. Furthermore, the greater attention to non-pitched percussion demands a greater exploration of rhythmic possibilities; Varèse's ability to convey musical emotion through purely rhythmic means rivals that of any composer of the twentieth century.

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