Noise and Form
I have chosen to compare Russolo’s manifesto with the lectures by Varèse because they fall within an era of the visual arts that I find to have produced the most defining specimens of modernism and minimalism both of which I have a favored bias towards.
To understand Russolo and Varèse’s positions on new musical sounds, I thought contextualizing them would be a good start. No art is isolated from its cultural and political context and I feel this frame of analysis works well for the Futurists, and I have proceeded as planned in understanding Russolo’s aesthetic. However, it did not work as smoothly towards discussing the aesthetics of Varèse’s work. Dissonance, it appears, is more than just a favored quality in his work, but perhaps also prevalent in his social context.
Futurist Aesthetics
Russolo’s piece is a manifesto, one among 15 manifestos written by the Futurists, from their 1909 founding manifesto by Marinetti, to Boccioni’s for sculpture (1912), Sant’Elia’s for architecture (1914) and Balla and Depero’s for the Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe (1915). (MoMa recitals for 100th anniversary of Futurist manifesto.)
On 20 February 1909, Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, a poet, published the Futurist Manifesto in the French newspaper, Le Figaro. The defining moment for Marinetti was a car accident: The violent sounds and smell and feel of the accident were exhilarating. The ensuing manifesto is as violent as a head-on car crash, ejecting the reader into a revolutionary frenzy.
At this time the world is modernizing. Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States are advancing from the Industrial Revolution and there are many technological advancements going on: there are multi-storey steel and concrete buildings going up; the Wright brothers design and fly an aircraft with a 12hp engine, not just a kite or a glider —modernization is spreading, except in Italy, and with the manifesto, the Futurists want to establish Italy as also a forward, modern country.
We read quite often how Modernism was a “break” from the past; as an early modern movement, Futurism was not a break but a violent ripping away from the past and its traditions. To further implement this ripping, Marinetti formed the Futurist Political Party, which was later absorbed into Mussolini’s National Fascist Party (PNF). PNF was an assault on stagnant Italian traditions, going as far as extending it unto the everyday spoken language, for example replacing formal forms of addressing each other with egalitarian ones. (Heller, 82)
In the tradition of violent rips from tradition, Russolo writes his manifesto as a response to Balilla Pratella’s 1912 manifesto for music, which was as close to a call-to-arms a musician can issue. In it, Pratella does not detail the new music of Futurism, but urges for the founding of a new music through the rejection of conservatories, critics and competitions—elements that erroneously define and therefore limit the possibilities of music.
Just as Marinetti’s destruction of syntax in his words-in-freedom where he extends language—through destroying it—into (jarring) visual poetry, Russolo’s work destroys not only syntax, but also the base of the musical language from “pure sounds” to noise.
Source
For Russolo, noise is a broad term evolving from our desire for “bigger acoustical sensations” to incorporate and envelope everyday sounds with mechanization. The obsession with the mechanical is a running theme within Futurists. The factory aesthetic was a symbol of not only modernization, but the war machine, the ultimate hygienic solution to the world. Therefore it is no surprise that the musical sounds of Russolo’s intonarumori are a cleansing of pure noise with machine sounds (unique to his apparatus, not imitating actual machines).
Here, in voluptuousness, we see Russolo’s indication of a volumetric, and almost tangible and sensual characteristic of noise. This becomes more concrete in his conclusion, where the actual architecture and mechanics of the industrial city/factory (that most likely are designed by Sant’Elia) become the orchestra. The actual factories are the mechanical instruments:
This is significant in not just a liberation of music from its own syntactical bounds, but from the traditional and exclusive spaces it is experienced in. In essence one form breaks down (music), in order to break a greater one (space of music). Of course this leap into a grand musical noise environment is only possible from the Futurist naïveté and delusions of grandeur that they all express in their own unique ways in each manifesto (cf. Russolo’s opening paragraph on the silent quality of nature).
Form Follows Function
I will admit that on searching for Varèse’s context on form and noise, I ran into problems. Surely the greatest Modernist edict on form (1919) must have a place in Varèse’s beautiful analogy of the process creating form. That the perfection of the crystal form is not in its final form but in the play of forces of atoms and their process of crystallization, must have either come from or lead to the Bauhaus. But alas, minus a single correspondence dated 1956 between Marcel Breuer and Edgar Varèse while both in New York; and a self-taught musician, Stefan Wolpe, who was a student of Bauhaus in 1923 but who did not come into contact with Varèse until 1938 in New York (Clarkson), the trail is cold.
However, in 1917, Varèse did come in contact with Dada–in New York–and by the request of a friend, Francis Picabia, penned a brief article for the Dada periodical 391 (No.5) where he criticized Futurists for simply replacing notes with noise. He later regrets the piece and denounces any involvement with Dada maintaining he only did a favor for a friend by participating. His reasons for disassociation possibly stemmed from his pursuit of strict, organized sounds, which was in opposition to Dada’s deliberate lack of structure. (Beekman and von Graevenitz, 132)
Though Varèse dismissed Russolo and Futurist music, there are hints of similar concepts for new music—noise, electronic, or other. In his Music as an Art-Science, Varèse envisions a machine that liberates music from the arbitrary. This liberation from the arbitrary (if seen within the framework of the tuning of factories that Russolo imagines) becomes calculated and organized noise (of the factories), creating soundmasses throughout the city (vertical, horizontal and multi-directional spaces). As one traverses the city and navigates the spaces of the sounds, bodies intersect with the different planes and ranges of the soundmasses, literally creating a symphony of the city, and interestingly, a symphony dependent on each individual's experience either from location in space, speed of travel through space, etc. Is this an anticipation of interactivity?
Additionally, in the first Futurist manifesto on music, Balilla Pratella writes:
For Varèse, the electronic medium provided the possibility of “adding unbelievable variety of new timbres […]” meaning that the recognition of each sound in a mass was of importance, creating a “melodic totality” quite similar to Pratella’s proclamation of the end of a single hierarchical melody. So was Varèse’s later regret in participating in 391 more a regret of hastily dismissing a strong precedent for mere attention-value he needed in his career?
What I find most interesting is Varèse’s definition of electronics as additive, and that “new instruments have been constantly added to old ones.” Expanding the concept of the instrument allows him to expand the definition of music. He does this more eloquently than Russolo. He also grounds the new electronic music with the same vocabulary of traditional music, rhythm and form. What he refers to as rhythm is “the generator of form”, and form is “the result of a process.” However, not all beautiful processes necessarily result in beautiful form. Varèse, it appears, leaves form to chance, or accepts beauty of form in a broader sense.
This life-giving process surprisingly sounds less mechanical or electronic, but more organic, perhaps even personal. Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan once said in a lecture, that ancient Greeks believed homelessness was necessary for the philosopher. He added that once a body is placed in a zone of comfort and content, it loses its drive to create, becomes trapped. Perhaps Varèse’s ‘homelessness’ so to speak, the lack of access to create within a desired environment (equivalent to a home), was necessary for his output of spatializing and liberating sound.
Beekman, Klaus and Antje von Graevenitz. Marcel Duchamp. Rodopi. 1989.
Clarkson, Austin. On the Music of Stefan Wolpe: Essays and Recollectoins. Pendragon Press. 2003
Clarkson, Austin. Talk at Columbia University.
Heller, Steven. Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State. Phaidon Press. 2008.
To understand Russolo and Varèse’s positions on new musical sounds, I thought contextualizing them would be a good start. No art is isolated from its cultural and political context and I feel this frame of analysis works well for the Futurists, and I have proceeded as planned in understanding Russolo’s aesthetic. However, it did not work as smoothly towards discussing the aesthetics of Varèse’s work. Dissonance, it appears, is more than just a favored quality in his work, but perhaps also prevalent in his social context.
Futurist Aesthetics
Russolo’s piece is a manifesto, one among 15 manifestos written by the Futurists, from their 1909 founding manifesto by Marinetti, to Boccioni’s for sculpture (1912), Sant’Elia’s for architecture (1914) and Balla and Depero’s for the Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe (1915). (MoMa recitals for 100th anniversary of Futurist manifesto.)
On 20 February 1909, Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, a poet, published the Futurist Manifesto in the French newspaper, Le Figaro. The defining moment for Marinetti was a car accident: The violent sounds and smell and feel of the accident were exhilarating. The ensuing manifesto is as violent as a head-on car crash, ejecting the reader into a revolutionary frenzy.
At this time the world is modernizing. Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States are advancing from the Industrial Revolution and there are many technological advancements going on: there are multi-storey steel and concrete buildings going up; the Wright brothers design and fly an aircraft with a 12hp engine, not just a kite or a glider —modernization is spreading, except in Italy, and with the manifesto, the Futurists want to establish Italy as also a forward, modern country.
We read quite often how Modernism was a “break” from the past; as an early modern movement, Futurism was not a break but a violent ripping away from the past and its traditions. To further implement this ripping, Marinetti formed the Futurist Political Party, which was later absorbed into Mussolini’s National Fascist Party (PNF). PNF was an assault on stagnant Italian traditions, going as far as extending it unto the everyday spoken language, for example replacing formal forms of addressing each other with egalitarian ones. (Heller, 82)
In the tradition of violent rips from tradition, Russolo writes his manifesto as a response to Balilla Pratella’s 1912 manifesto for music, which was as close to a call-to-arms a musician can issue. In it, Pratella does not detail the new music of Futurism, but urges for the founding of a new music through the rejection of conservatories, critics and competitions—elements that erroneously define and therefore limit the possibilities of music.
Just as Marinetti’s destruction of syntax in his words-in-freedom where he extends language—through destroying it—into (jarring) visual poetry, Russolo’s work destroys not only syntax, but also the base of the musical language from “pure sounds” to noise.
SourceFor Russolo, noise is a broad term evolving from our desire for “bigger acoustical sensations” to incorporate and envelope everyday sounds with mechanization. The obsession with the mechanical is a running theme within Futurists. The factory aesthetic was a symbol of not only modernization, but the war machine, the ultimate hygienic solution to the world. Therefore it is no surprise that the musical sounds of Russolo’s intonarumori are a cleansing of pure noise with machine sounds (unique to his apparatus, not imitating actual machines).
♫ Russolo-Luigi_01_Risveglio.mp3
We feel certain that in selecting and coordinating all noises we will enrich men with a voluptuousness they did not suspect.
Here, in voluptuousness, we see Russolo’s indication of a volumetric, and almost tangible and sensual characteristic of noise. This becomes more concrete in his conclusion, where the actual architecture and mechanics of the industrial city/factory (that most likely are designed by Sant’Elia) become the orchestra. The actual factories are the mechanical instruments:
8- […] In a few years, the engines of our industrial cities will be skillfully tuned so that every factory is turned into an intoxicating orchestra of noises.
This is significant in not just a liberation of music from its own syntactical bounds, but from the traditional and exclusive spaces it is experienced in. In essence one form breaks down (music), in order to break a greater one (space of music). Of course this leap into a grand musical noise environment is only possible from the Futurist naïveté and delusions of grandeur that they all express in their own unique ways in each manifesto (cf. Russolo’s opening paragraph on the silent quality of nature).
Form Follows Function
I will admit that on searching for Varèse’s context on form and noise, I ran into problems. Surely the greatest Modernist edict on form (1919) must have a place in Varèse’s beautiful analogy of the process creating form. That the perfection of the crystal form is not in its final form but in the play of forces of atoms and their process of crystallization, must have either come from or lead to the Bauhaus. But alas, minus a single correspondence dated 1956 between Marcel Breuer and Edgar Varèse while both in New York; and a self-taught musician, Stefan Wolpe, who was a student of Bauhaus in 1923 but who did not come into contact with Varèse until 1938 in New York (Clarkson), the trail is cold.
However, in 1917, Varèse did come in contact with Dada–in New York–and by the request of a friend, Francis Picabia, penned a brief article for the Dada periodical 391 (No.5) where he criticized Futurists for simply replacing notes with noise. He later regrets the piece and denounces any involvement with Dada maintaining he only did a favor for a friend by participating. His reasons for disassociation possibly stemmed from his pursuit of strict, organized sounds, which was in opposition to Dada’s deliberate lack of structure. (Beekman and von Graevenitz, 132)
Though Varèse dismissed Russolo and Futurist music, there are hints of similar concepts for new music—noise, electronic, or other. In his Music as an Art-Science, Varèse envisions a machine that liberates music from the arbitrary. This liberation from the arbitrary (if seen within the framework of the tuning of factories that Russolo imagines) becomes calculated and organized noise (of the factories), creating soundmasses throughout the city (vertical, horizontal and multi-directional spaces). As one traverses the city and navigates the spaces of the sounds, bodies intersect with the different planes and ranges of the soundmasses, literally creating a symphony of the city, and interestingly, a symphony dependent on each individual's experience either from location in space, speed of travel through space, etc. Is this an anticipation of interactivity?
Additionally, in the first Futurist manifesto on music, Balilla Pratella writes:
7. To proclaim that the reign of the singer must end, and that the importance of the singer in relation to a work of art is the equivalent of the importance of an instrument in the orchestra.
For Varèse, the electronic medium provided the possibility of “adding unbelievable variety of new timbres […]” meaning that the recognition of each sound in a mass was of importance, creating a “melodic totality” quite similar to Pratella’s proclamation of the end of a single hierarchical melody. So was Varèse’s later regret in participating in 391 more a regret of hastily dismissing a strong precedent for mere attention-value he needed in his career?
What I find most interesting is Varèse’s definition of electronics as additive, and that “new instruments have been constantly added to old ones.” Expanding the concept of the instrument allows him to expand the definition of music. He does this more eloquently than Russolo. He also grounds the new electronic music with the same vocabulary of traditional music, rhythm and form. What he refers to as rhythm is “the generator of form”, and form is “the result of a process.” However, not all beautiful processes necessarily result in beautiful form. Varèse, it appears, leaves form to chance, or accepts beauty of form in a broader sense.
Like the computer, the machines we use for making music can only give back what we put into them.
This life-giving process surprisingly sounds less mechanical or electronic, but more organic, perhaps even personal. Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan once said in a lecture, that ancient Greeks believed homelessness was necessary for the philosopher. He added that once a body is placed in a zone of comfort and content, it loses its drive to create, becomes trapped. Perhaps Varèse’s ‘homelessness’ so to speak, the lack of access to create within a desired environment (equivalent to a home), was necessary for his output of spatializing and liberating sound.
Beekman, Klaus and Antje von Graevenitz. Marcel Duchamp. Rodopi. 1989.
Clarkson, Austin. On the Music of Stefan Wolpe: Essays and Recollectoins. Pendragon Press. 2003
Clarkson, Austin. Talk at Columbia University.
Heller, Steven. Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State. Phaidon Press. 2008.