The sketches for Edgard Varèse’s Déserts (1954) provide new perspectives on the composer’s working methods. Examination of these documents shows that the orchestral score of Déserts is built on a single twelve-tone row. This paper aims to show how Varèse formed invariant relations between set forms by the association of consecutive and non-consecutive elements. Specific examples of the compositional realization of such relationships are provided through sketch-based analyses.
