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Tuning Up is an unfinished composition for large orchestra by French composer Edgard Varèse. Conceived as a parody on the orchestral sounds before a concert begins, it was sketched in 1947 but was abandoned and never premiered. Chinese-American collaborator Chou Wen-Chung reconstructed it many years after Varèse's death, in 1998.
The piece was only picked up decades later, in 1998 by Chou Wen-Chung, who had worked closely with Varèse and championed his work as a composer, editing and reconstructing many of his works for republication after his death. The completion was made expanding the original material composed by Varèse and using, as the composer did, many quotations to other works of his. This project was commissioned jointly by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Casa Ricordi, and the Decca Record Company. It was published that same year by Ricordi and republished again in 2001.
Tuning Up begins with an A played by the oboe, an usual practice when Musical tuning since the oboe offers the most stable sound thanks to its construction and the fact that it is much less affected by other factors, like temperature or humidity. Wen-chung specifies that long fragments from each one of the parts are meant to resemble the way instruments are tuned up, without notating anything in particular. This was not Wen-chung's decision and was also present in the original sketches. The final version of the score includes tuning fragments in as much as half of the duration of the piece. A number of quotations are present in the score, among which are Varèse's previous works Amériques, Arcana, Intégrales, and Ionisation. Varèse included these quotations in the sketches. Further quotations, such as Paganini's Caprice No. 9 or the popular tune Yankee Doodle are also present in the score.
In the final, prepared version of the score, the two drafts are played one after the other, even though they are similar to a certain extent. The two drafts start at bars 1 and 41 respectively, with a small bridging section between them in bars 36 to 40. These two sections based on the sketches are concluded with different developments around the note A across the entire orchestral range. Large crescendo and diminuendo markings that do not coincide with the markings for the rest of the orchestra were also found in the sketches, probably meaning that Varèse was initially intending to add any electronic means to the score.
| Riccardo Chailly | Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra | May 1998 | Concertgebouw, Amsterdam | Decca Records | CD |
| Christopher Lyndon-Gee | Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra | November 2005 | Grzegorz Fitelberg Concert Hall, Katowice | Naxos | CD |
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