''The Art of Noises'' ( it, L'arte dei Rumori) is a

Futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...

manifesto A manifesto is a published declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government. A manifesto usually accepts a previously published opinion or public consensus or promotes a ...

written by

Luigi Russolo Luigi Carlo Filippo Russolo (30 April 1885 – 4 February 1947) was an Italian Futurist painter, composer, builder of experimental musical instruments, and the author of the manifesto ''The Art of Noises'' (1913). He is often regarded as one of ...

in a 1913 letter to friend and Futurist composer

Francesco Balilla Pratella Francesco Balilla Pratella (Lugo, Italy February 1, 1880 – Ravenna, Italy May 17, 1955) was an Italian composer, musicologist and essayist. One of the leading advocates of Futurism in Italian music, much of Pratella's own music betrays little o ...

. In it, Russolo argues that the human ear has become accustomed to the speed, energy, and

noise Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arise ...

of the

urban Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to: * Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas * Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities Urban may also refer to: General * Urban (name), a list of people ...

industrial

soundscape A soundscape is the acoustic environment as perceived by humans, in context. The term was originally coined by Michael Southworth, and popularised by R. Murray Schafer. There is a varied history of the use of soundscape depending on discipline, ...

; furthermore, this new sonic palette requires a new approach to musical instrumentation and composition. He proposes a number of conclusions about how

electronics The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...

and other technology will allow futurist musicians to "substitute for the limited variety of timbres that the orchestra possesses today the infinite variety of timbres in noises, reproduced with appropriate mechanisms". ''The Art of Noises'' is considered by some authors to be one of the most important and influential texts in 20th-century musical aesthetics. Russolointonorumori

The evolution of sound

Russolo's essay explores the origins of man made

sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the ...

Ancient life was all silence

Russolo states that "

" first came into existence as the result of 19th century

machine A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to na ...

s. Before this time the world was a quiet, if not silent, place. With the exception of

storm A storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment or the atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmos ...

waterfall A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in several wa ...

s, and

tectonic Tectonics (; ) are the processes that control the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. These include the processes of mountain building, the growth and behavior of the strong, old cores of continents k ...

activity, the noise that did punctuate this silence were not loud, prolonged, or varied.

Early sounds

He notes that the earliest "

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

" was very simplistic and was created with very simple instruments, and that many early civilizations considered the secrets of music sacred and reserved it for rites and rituals. The

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

musical theory Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the " rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (k ...

was based on the

tetrachord In music theory, a tetrachord ( el, τετράχορδoν; lat, tetrachordum) is a series of four notes separated by three intervals. In traditional music theory, a tetrachord always spanned the interval of a perfect fourth, a 4:3 frequency propo ...

mathematics of

Pythagoras Pythagoras of Samos ( grc, Πυθαγόρας ὁ Σάμιος, Pythagóras ho Sámios, Pythagoras the Samos, Samian, or simply ; in Ionian Greek; ) was an ancient Ionians, Ionian Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher and the eponymou ...

, and featured very limited use of

harmony In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However ...

. Developments and modifications to the Greek musical system were made during the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

, which led to music like

Gregorian chant Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe durin ...

. Russolo notes that during this time sounds were still narrowly seen as "unfolding in time." The chord did not yet exist.

The complete sound

Russolo refers to the chord as the "complete

," the conception of various parts that make and are subordinate to the whole. He notes that chords developed gradually, first moving from the "consonant triad to the consistent and complicated dissonances that characterize

contemporary music Contemporary classical music is classical music composed close to the present day. At the beginning of the 21st century, it commonly referred to the post-1945 modern forms of post-tonal music after the death of Anton Webern, and included serial ...

." He notes that while early music tried to create sweet and pure sounds, it progressively grew more and more complex, with musicians seeking to create new and more

dissonant In music, consonance and dissonance are categorizations of simultaneous or successive Sound, sounds. Within the Western tradition, some listeners associate consonance with sweetness, pleasantness, and acceptability, and dissonance with harshness ...

chords. This, he says, comes ever closer to the "noise-sound" typical of

noise music Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise within a musical context. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical ...

Musical noise

Russolo compares the evolution of music to the multiplication of machinery, pointing out that our once desolate sound environment has become increasingly filled with the noise of

s, encouraging musicians to create a more "complicated

polyphony Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...

" in order to provoke emotion and stir our sensibilities. He notes that music has been developing towards a more complicated

by seeking greater variety in

timbre In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or musical tone, tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voice ...

s and tone colors.

Noise-Sounds

Russolo explains how "musical sound is too limited in its variety of timbres." He breaks the timbres of an

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

down into four basic categories:

bowed instruments Bowed string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by a bow rubbing the strings. The bow rubbing the string causes vibration which the instrument emits as sound. Despite the numerous specialist studies devoted to t ...

, metal winds, wood winds, and

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

. He says that we must "break out of this limited circle of sound and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds," and that

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

would allow us to manipulate noises in ways that could not have been done with earlier instruments.

Future sounds

Russolo claims that music has reached a point that no longer has the power to excite or inspire. Even when it is new, he argues, it still sounds old and familiar, leaving the audience "waiting for the extraordinary sensation that never comes." He urges musicians to explore the city with "ears more sensitive than eyes," listening to the wide array of noises that are often taken for granted, yet (potentially) musical in nature. He feels this

can be given pitch and "regulated harmonically," while still preserving irregularity and character, even if it requires assigning multiple pitches to certain noises.

''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.''

Six Families of Noises for the Futurist Orchestra

Russolo sees the futurist orchestra drawing its sounds from "six families of noise": # Roars, Thunderings, Explosions, Hissing roars, Bangs, Booms # Whistling, Hissing, Puffing # Whispers, Murmurs, Mumbling, Muttering, Gurgling # Screeching, Creaking, Rustling, Buzzing, Crackling, Scraping # Noises obtained by beating on metals, woods, skins, stones, pottery, etc. # Voices of animals and people, Shouts, Screams, Shrieks, Wails, Hoots, Howls, Death rattles, Sobs Russolo asserts that these are the most basic and fundamental noises, and that all other noises are only associations and combinations of these. He built a family of instruments, the

Intonarumori Intonarumori are experimental musical instruments invented and built by the Italian futurist Luigi Russolo between roughly 1910 and 1930. There were 27 varieties of intonarumori built in total, with different names. Background Russolo built ...

, to imitate these six kinds of noises.

Conclusions

Russolo includes a list of conclusions: #Futurist composers should use their creativity and innovation to "enlarge and enrich the field of sound" by approaching the "noise-sound." #Futurist musicians should strive to replicate the infinite timbres in noises. #Futurist musicians should free themselves from the traditional and seek to explore the diverse rhythms of noise. #The complex tonalities of noise can be achieved by creating instruments that replicate that complexity. #The creation of instruments that replicate noise should not be a difficult task, since the manipulation of pitch will be simple once the mechanical principles that create the noise have been recreated. Pitch can be manipulated through simple changes in speed or tension. #The new orchestra will not evoke new and novel emotions by imitating the noises of life, but by finding new and unique combinations of timbres and rhythms in noise, to find a way to fully express the rhythm and sound that stretches beyond normal un-inebriated comprehension. #The variety of noise is infinite, and as man creates new machines the number of noises he can differentiate between continues to grow. #Therefore, he invites all talented musicians to pay attention to noises and their complexity, and once they discover the broadness of noise's palette of timbres, they will develop a passion for noise. He predicts that our "multiplied sensibility, having been conquered by futurist eyes, will finally have some futurist ears, and . . . every workshop will become an intoxicating orchestra of noise."

Gallery of Works

File:Intonarumori-concerto.jpg, photo of an

concert with noise-machines File:Intonarumori-interno.jpg, photo of an indoor

machine (must be rotated!) File:Intonarumori-schema.gif, instruction-schema for building an

noise-machine File:Risveglio di una citta.jpg, Russolo, 1913: score of en-harmonic notation; partitura for

File:Luigi Russolo and assistant Ugo Piatti in their Milan studio with Intonarumori, L’Arte dei rumori (The Art of Noises), 1913.jpg, Russolo, 1913 and his assistant Ugo Piatti in their Milan studio with the

(noise machines)

Musicians/Artists influenced by ''The Art of Noises''

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...

Pierre Schaeffer Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (English pronunciation: , ; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC). His innov ...

* Pierre Henry *

Art of Noise Art of Noise (also The Art of Noise) were an English avant-garde synth-pop group formed in early 1983 by engineer/producer Gary Langan and programmer J. J. Jeczalik, along with keyboardist/arranger Anne Dudley, producer Trevor Horn, and music ...

Adam Ant Stuart Leslie Goddard, better known as Adam Ant (born 3 November 1954), is an English singer, musician, and actor. He gained popularity as the lead singer of new wave group Adam and the Ants and later as a solo artist, scoring 10 UK top ten ...

Einstürzende Neubauten (, 'Collapsing New Buildings') is a German experimental music group, formed in West Berlin in 1980. The group is currently composed of founding members Blixa Bargeld (lead vocals; guitar; keyboard) and N.U. Unruh (custom-made instruments; perc ...

Test Dept Test Dept, sometimes credited as Test Department is a British industrial music group from London, England, that was one of the most important and influential early industrial music acts. Their approach was marked by the use of "found" material ...

Joseph Nechvatal Joseph Nechvatal (born January 15, 1951) is an American post-conceptual digital artist and Aesthetics, art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses. Life and work ...

DJ Spooky Paul Dennis Miller (born September 6, 1970), known professionally as DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is an American electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntabli ...

* Dywane Thomas, Jr. * Francisco López * R. Henry Nigl *

Material Material is a substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical and chemical properties, or on their geologi ...

Luciano Berio Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work ...

and

Bruno Maderna Bruno Maderna (21 April 1920 – 13 November 1973) was an Italian conductor and composer. Life Maderna was born Bruno Grossato in Venice but later decided to take the name of his mother, Caterina Carolina Maderna.Interview with Maderna‘s th ...

Bibliography

* Russolo, Luigi: ''L’Art des bruits''. Textes réunis et préfacés par

Giovanni Lista Giovanni Lista is an Italian art historian and art critic born in Italy on February 13, 1943, at Castiglione del Lago (Perugia) and resides in Paris. He is a specialist in the artistic cultural scene of the 1920s, particularly in Futurism. Biogra ...

, bibliographie établie par Giovanni Lista. L’Age d’Homme, Lausanne, 1975. * Chessa, Luciano: ''Luigi Russolo, Futurist: Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult.'' University of California Press, 2012. * Lista, Giovanni: ''Luigi Russolo e la musica futurista''. Mudima, Milan, 2009. * Lista, Giovanni: ''Journal des Futurismes''. Éditions Hazan, Paris, 2008. * Lista, Giovanni: ''Le Futurisme: Création et avant-garde''. Éditions L’Amateur, Paris, 2001.

External links

*
The Art of Noises

unknown.nu

Jessica Palmieri, ''The Art of Noises'' (manifesto excerpts), Luigi Russolo 11 March 1913, Futurist manifestos, italianfuturism.org
''Corale, Serenata'' by Antonio Russolo and Luigi Russolo (1924) were published on cassette in 1988 in the ''Audio By Visual Artists'' edition of ''

Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine Launched from the Lower East Side, Manhattan in 1983 as a subscription only bimonthly publication, the ''Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine'' utilized the audio cassette medium to distribute no wave downtown music and audio art and was in activity ...

'' #21 and are archived on the internet at

Ubuweb UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. Philosop ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Art of Noises, The 1916 in music Experimental music Futurist music 1916 non-fiction books 1913 essays Manifestos