The Art of Noises
In 1913 the Italian Futuristic
painter and composer Luigi Russolo (1885-1947) published the manifesto LÕArte
dei rumori,
initially written as a letter to his friend the composer Franscesco Balilla
Pratella.
Besides writing the pamflet, he also
made a large serie of experimental musical instrument he called ÔintonarumoriÕ
(Ônoise machinesÕ). The main picture of this page is a well-known image of
Luigi and his assistant Ugo Piatti. Perhaps more convincing are the other two
pics below. Almost like a firing squad executing the old traditional classical
orchestra.
No more suitable ending could be
imaginable for these great pieces of art. The instruments were the first noise
musical instruments and were destroyed by the bombings on during WOII. The only
thing left are the weird photographs and a few obscure recordings. Afterwards
replicas of the instruments are being made, but for me there is lesser romance
in those objects.
I consider LuigiÕs awesome looking
instruments as well as the manifesto the beginning of avant-garde noise. He was
the first who took the adventure of incorporating unusual sounds in music to
bring it more alive and closer to our imagination.
The Art of Noises
by Luigi Russolo
Dear Balilla Pratella, great Futurist composer,
In Rome, in the Costanzi Theatre, packed to capacity, while
I was listening to the orchestral performance of your overwhelming Futurist
music, with my
Futurist friends, Marinetti, Boccioni, Carrˆ, Balla, Soffici, Papini and
Cavacchioli, a new art came into my mind which only you can create, the Art of
Noises, the logical consequence of your marvelous innovations.
Ancient life was all silence. In the nineteenth century,
with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and
reigns supreme over the sensibility of men. For many centuries life went by in
silence, or at most in muted tones. The strongest noises which interrupted this
silence were not intense or prolonged or varied. If we overlook such
exceptional movements as earthquakes, hurricanes, storms, avalanches and
waterfalls, nature is silent.
Amidst this dearth of noises, the first sounds that man drew from a pieced reed or
streched string were regarded with amazement as new and marvelous things.
Primitive races attributed sound to the gods; it was considered sacred and reserved for
priests, who used it to enrich the mystery of their rites.
And so was born the concept of sound as a thing in itself,
distinct and independent of life, and the result was music, a fantastic world
superimposed on the real one, an inviolatable and sacred world. It is easy to
understand how such a concept of music resulted inevitable in the hindering of
its progress by comparison with the other arts. The Greeks themselves, with
their musical theories calculated mathematically by Pythagoras and according to
which only a few consonant intervals could be used, limited the field of music
considerably, rendering harmony, of which they were unaware, impossible.
The Middle Ages, with the development and modification of
the Greek tetrachordal system, with the Gregorian chant and popular songs,
enriched the art of music, but continued to consider sound in its
development in time,
a restricted notion, but one which lasted many centuries, and which still can
be found in the Flemish contrapuntalists' most complicated polyphonies.
The chord did not exist, the development of the various
parts was not subornated to the chord that these parts put together could
produce; the conception of the parts was horizontal not vertical. The desire,
search, and taste for a simultaneous union of different sounds, that is for the
chord (complex sound), were gradually made manifest, passing from the consonant
perfect chord with a few passing dissonances, to the complicated and persistent
dissonances that characterize contemporary music.
At first the art of music sought purity, limpidity and
sweetness of sound. Then different sounds were amalgamated, care being taken,
however, to caress the ear with gentle harmonies. Today music, as it becomes
continually more complicated, strives to amalgamate the most dissonant, strange
and harsh sounds. In this way we come ever closer to noise-sound.
This musical evolution is paralleled by the multipication
of machines, which
collaborate with man on every front. Not only in the roaring atmosphere of
major cities, but in the country too, which until yesterday was totally silent,
the machine today has created such a variety and rivalry of noises that pure sound,
in its exiguity and monotony, no longer arouses any feeling.
To excite and exalt our sensibilities, music developed
towards the most complex polyphony and the maximum variety, seeking the most
complicated successions of dissonant chords and vaguely preparing the creation
of musical noise.
This evolution towards "noise sound" was not possible before now. The
ear of an eighteenth-century man could never have endured the discordant
intensity of certain chords produced by our orchestras (whose members have
trebled in number since then). To our ears, on the other hand, they sound
pleasant, since our hearing has already been educated by modern life, so
teeming with variegated noises. But our ears are not satisfied merely with
this, and demand an abundance of acoustic emotions.
On the other hand, musical sound is too limited in its
qualitative variety of tones. The most complex orchestras boil down to four or
five types of instrument, varying in timber: instruments played by bow or
plucking, by blowing into metal or wood, and by percussion. And so modern music
goes round in this small circle, struggling in vain to create new ranges of
tones.
This limited circle of pure sounds must be broken, and
the infinite variety of "noise-sound" conquered.
Besides, everyone will acknowledge that all musical sound
carries with it a development of sensations that are already familiar and
exhausted, and which predispose the listener to boredom in spite of the efforts
of all the innovatory musicians. We Futurists have deeply loved and enjoyed the
harmonies of the great masters. For many years Beethoven and Wagner shook our
nerves and hearts. Now we are satiated and we find far more enjoyment in the
combination of the noises of trams, backfiring motors, carriages and bawling crowds
than in rehearsing, for
example, the "Eroica" or the "Pastoral".
We cannot see that enormous apparatus of force that the
modern orchestra represents without feeling the most profound and total
disillusion at the paltry acoustic results. Do you know of any sight more
ridiculous than that of twenty men furiously bent on the redoubling the mewing
of a violin? All this will naturally make the music-lovers scream, and will
perhaps enliven the sleepy atmosphere of concert halls. Let us now, as
Futurists, enter one of these hospitals for anaemic sounds. There: the first
bar brings the boredom of familiarity to your ear and anticipates the boredom
of the bar to follow. Let us relish, from bar to bar, two or three varieties of
genuine boredom, waiting all the while for the extraordinary sensation that
never comes.
Meanwhile a repugnant mixture is concocted from monotonous
sensations and the idiotic religious emotion of listeners buddhistically drunk
with repeating for the nth time their more or less snobbish or second-hand ecstasy.
Away! Let us break out since we cannot much longer restrain
our desire to create finally a new musical reality, with a generous
distribution of resonant slaps in the face, discarding violins, pianos,
double-basses and plainitive organs. Let us break out!
It's no good objecting that noises are exclusively loud and
disagreeable to the ear.
It seems pointless to enumerate all the graceful and
delicate noises that afford pleasant sensations.
To convince ourselves of the amazing variety of noises, it
is enough to think of the rumble of thunder, the whistle of the wind, the roar
of a waterfall, the gurgling of a brook, the rustling of leaves, the clatter of
a trotting horse as it draws into the distance, the lurching jolts of a cart on
pavings, and of the generous, solemn, white breathing of a nocturnal city; of
all the noises made by wild and domestic animals, and of all those that can be
made by the mouth of man without resorting to speaking or singing.
Let us cross a great modern capital with our ears more alert
than our eyes, and we will get enjoyment from distinguishing the eddying of
water, air and gas in metal pipes, the grumbling of noises that breathe and
pulse with indisputable animality, the palpitation of valves, the coming and
going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of a tram on its
rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags. We enjoy
creating mental orchestrations of the crashing down of metal shop blinds,
slamming doors, the hubbub and shuffling of crowds, the variety of din, from
stations, railways, iron foundries, spinning wheels, printing works, electric
power stations and underground railways.
Nor should the newest noises of modern war be forgotten. Recently,
the poet Marinetti, in a letter from the trenches of Adrianopolis, described to
me with marvelous free words the orchestra of a great battle:
"every 5 seconds siege cannons gutting space with a
chord ZANG-TUMB-TUUMB mutiny of 500 echos smashing scattering it to infinity.
In the center of this hateful ZANG-TUMB-TUUMB area 50square kilometers leaping
bursts lacerations fists rapid fire batteries. Violence ferocity regularity
this deep bass scanning the strange shrill frantic crowds of the battle Fury
breathless ears eyes nostrils open! load! fire! what a joy to hear to smell
completely taratatata of the machine guns screaming a breathless under the
stings slaps traak-traak whips pic-pac-pum-tumb weirdness leaps 200 meters
range Far far in back of the orchestra pools muddying huffing goaded oxen
wagons pluff-plaff horse action flic flac zing zing shaaack laughing whinnies
the tiiinkling jiiingling tramping 3 Bulgarian battalions marching
croooc-craaac [slowly] Shumi Maritza or Karvavena ZANG-TUMB-TUUUMB
toc-toc-toc-toc [fast] crooc-craac [slowly] crys of officers slamming about
like brass plates pan here paak there BUUUM ching chaak [very fast]
cha-cha-cha-cha-chaak down there up around high up look out your head
beautiful! Flashing flashing flashing flashing flashing flashing footlights of
the forts down there behind that smoke Shukri Pasha communicates by phone with
27 forts in Turkish in German Allo! Ibrahim! Rudolf! allo! allo! actors parts
echos of prompters scenery of smoke forests applause odor of hay mud dung I no
longer feel my frozen feet odor of gunsmoke odor of rot Tympani flutes
clarinets everywhere low high birds chirping blessed shadows cheep-cheep-cheep
green breezes flocks don-dan-don-din-baaah Orchestra madmen pommel the
performers they terribly beaten playing Great din not erasing clearing up
cutting off slighter noises very small scraps of echos in the theater area 300
square kilometers Rivers Maritza Tungia stretched out Rodolpi Mountains rearing
heights loges boxes 2000 shrapnels waving arms exploding very white
handkerchiefs full of gold srrrr-TUMB-TUMB 2000 raised grenades tearing out
bursts of very black hair ZANG-srrrr-TUMB-ZANG-TUMB-TUUMB the orchestra of the
noises of war swelling under a held note of silence in the high sky round
golden balloon that observes the firing..."
We want to attune and regulate this tremendous variety of
noises harmonically and rhythmically.
To attune noises does not mean to detract from all their
irregular movements and vibrations in time and intensity, but rather to give
gradation and tone to the most strongly predominant of these vibrations.
Noise in fact can be differentiated from sound only in so
far as the vibrations which produce it are confused and irregular, both in time
and intensity.
Every noise has a tone, and sometimes also a harmony that
predominates over the body of its irregular vibrations.
Now, it is from this dominating characteristic tone that a
practical possibility can be derived for attuning it, that is to give a certain
noise not merely one tone, but a variety of tones, without losing its
characteristic tone, by which I mean the one which distinguishes it. In this
way any noise obtained by a rotating movement can offer an entire ascending or
descending chromatic scale, if the speed of the movement is increased or
decreased.
Every manifestation of our life is accompanied by noise. The
noise, therefore, is familiar to our ear, and has the power to conjure up life
itself. Sound, alien to our life, always musical and a thing unto itself, an
occasional but unnecessary element, has become to our ears what an overfamiliar
face is to our eyes. Noise, however, reaching us in a confused and irregular
way from the irregular confusion of our life, never entirely reveals itself to
us, and keeps innumerable surprises in reserve. We are therefore certain that
by selecting, coordinating and dominating all noises we will enrich men with a
new and unexpected sensual pleasure.
Although it is characteristic of noise to recall us brutally
to real life, the art of noise must not limit itself to imitative reproduction.
It will achieve its most emotive power in the acoustic enjoyment, in its own
right, that the artist's inspiration will extract from combined noises.
Here are the 6 families of noises of the Futurist orchestra
which we will soon set in motion mechanically:
1
Rumbles
Roars
Explosions
Crashes
Splashes
Booms
2
Whistles
Hisses
Snorts
3
Whispers
Murmurs
Mumbles
Grumbles
Gurgles
4
Screeches
Creaks
Rumbles
Buzzes
Crackles
Scrapes
5
Noises obtained by percussion on metal, wood, skin, stone,
tarracotta, etc.
6
Voices of animals and men:
Shouts
Screams
Groans
Shrieks
Howls
Laughs
Weezes
Sobs
In this inventory we have encapsulated the most characteristic
of the fundamental noises; the others are merely the associations and
combinations of these. The rhythmic movements of a noise are infinite: just
as with tone there is always a predominant rhythm, but around this numerous other
secondary rhythms can be felt.
Conclusions
1. Futurist musicians must continually enlarge and enrich
the field of sounds. This corresponds to a need in our sensibility. We note, in
fact, in the composers of genius, a tendency towards the most complicated
dissonances. As these move further and further away from pure sound, they
almost achieve noise-sound. This need and this tendency cannot be satisfied except by
the adding and
the substitution of noises for sounds.
2. Futurist musicians must substitute for the limited variety
of tones posessed by orchestral instruments today the infinite variety of tones
of noises, reproduced with appropriate mechanisms.
3. The musician's sensibility, liberated from facile and
traditional Rhythm, must find in noises the means of extension and renewal,
given that every noise offers the union of the most diverse rhythms apart from
the predominant one.
4. Since every noise contains a predominant general tone in its irregular vibrations it will
be easy to obtain in the construction of instruments which imitate them a
sufficiently extended variety of tones, semitones, and quarter-tones. This
variety of tones will not remove the characteristic tone from each noise, but
will amplify only its texture or extension.
5. The practical difficulties in constructing these
instruments are not serious. Once the mechanical principle which produces the
noise has been found, its tone can be changed by following the same general
laws of acoustics. If the instrument is to have a rotating movement, for instance,
we will increase or decrease the speed, whereas if it is to not have rotating
movement the noise-producing parts will vary in size and tautness.
6. The new orchestra will achieve the most complex and novel
aural emotions not by incorporating a succession of life-imitating noises but
by manipulating fantastic juxtapositions of these varied tones and rhythms.
Therefore an instrument will have to offer the possibility of tone changes and
varying degrees of amplification.
7. The variety of noises is infinite. If today, when we have
perhaps a thousand different machines, we can distinguish a thousand different
noises, tomorrow, as new machines multiply, we will be able to distinguish ten,
twenty, or thirty thousand different noises, not merely in a simply imitative
way, but to combine them according to our imagination.
8. We therefore invite young musicians of talent to conduct
a sustained observation of all noises, in order to understand the various
rhythms of which they are composed, their principal and secondary tones. By
comparing the various tones of noises with those of sounds, they will be
convinced of the extent to which the former exceed the latter. This will afford
not only an understanding, but also a taste and passion for noises. After being
conquered by Futurist eyes our multiplied sensibilities will at last hear with
Futurist ears. In this way the motors and machines of our industrial cities
will one day be consciously attuned, so that every factory will be transformed
into an intoxicating orchestra of noises.
Dear Pratella, I submit these statements to your Futurist
genius, inviting your discussion. I am not a musician, I have therefore no
acoustical predilictions, nor any works to defend. I am a Futurist painter
using a much-loved art to project my determination to renew everything. And so,
bolder than a professional musician could be, unconcerned by my apparent
incompetence and convinced that all rights and possibilities open up to daring,
I have been able to initiate the great renewal of music by means of the Art of
Noises.
External links
Luigi Russolo on
www.thereminvox.com
Modern ReplicaÕs of RussoloÕs
instruments
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