"The Art of Noises" Luigi Russolo Life in ancient times was silent. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of machines, Noise was born. Today Noise is triumphant, and reigns supreme over the senses of men. The art of music at first sought and achieved purity and sweetness of sound; later it blended diverse sounds, but always with intent to caress the ear with suave harmonies. Today, growing ever more complicated, it seeks those combinations of sounds that fall most dissonantly, strangely, and harshly upon the ear. We thus approach nearer and nearer to the MUSIC OF NOISE. We must break out of this narrow circle of pure musical sounds, and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds. Everyone will recognize that every musical sound carries with it an incrustation of familiar and stale sense associations, which predispose the hearer to boredom, despite all the efforts of innovating musicians. We futurists have all deeply loved the music of the great composers. Beethoven and Wagner for many years wrung our hearts. But now we are sated with them and derive much greater pleasure from ideally combining the noises of streetcars, internal-combustion engines, automobiles, and busy crowds than from re-hearing, for example, the "Eroica" or the "Pastorale." We cannot see the immense apparatus of the modern orchestra without being profoundly disappointed by its feeble acoustic achievements. Is there anything more absurs than to see twenty men breaking their necks to multiply the meowing of a violin? All this will naturally infuriate the musicomaniacs and perhaps disturb the somnolent atmosphere of our concert halls. Let us enter, as futurists, into one of these institutions for musical anemia. The first measure assails your ear with the boredom of the already-heard and causes you to anticipate the boredom of the measure to come. Thus we sip, from measure to measure, two or three differnet sorts of boredom, while we await an unusual emotion that never arrives. Meanwhile we are revolted by the monotony of the sensations experienced, combined with the idiotic religious excitement of the listeners, Buddhistically intoxicated by the thousandth repetition of their hypocritical and artificial ecstasy. Away! Let us be gone since we shall not much longer succeed in restraining a desire to create a new musical realism by a generous distribution sonorous blows and slaps, leaping nimbly over violins, pianofortes, contrabasses, and groaning organs. Away! Let us wander through a great modern city with our ears more attentive than our eyes, and distinguish the sounds of water, air, or gas in metal pipes, the purring of motors (which breathe and pulsate with an indubitable animalism), the throbbing of valves, the pounding of pistons, the screeching of gears, the clatter of streetcars on their rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of awnings and flags. We shall amuse ourselves by orchestrating in our minds the noise of the metal shutters of store windows, the slamming of doors, the bustle and shuffle of crowds, the multitudinous uproar of railroad stations, forges, mills, printing presses, power stations, and underground railways. Nor should the new noises of modern warfare be forgotten. We must fix the pitch and regulate the harmonies and rhythms of these extraordinarily varied sounds. To fix the pitch of noises does not mean to take away from their irregularity of tempo and intensity that characterizes their vibrations, but rather to give definate gradiation or pitch to the stronger and more predominant of these vibrations. Indeed, noise is differentiated from musical sound merely in that the vibrations that produce it are confused and irregular, both in tempo and in intensity. Every, manifestation of life is accompanied by noise. Noise is therfore familiar to our ears and has the power to remind us immediately of life itself. Musical sound, a thing extraneous to life and independent of it, an occasional and unnecessary adjunct, has become for our ears what a too familiar face is to our eyes. Noise, on the other hand, which comes to us confused and irregular as life itself, never reveals itself wholly but reserves for us innumerable surprises. We are convinced, therefore, that by selecting, co-ordinating, and controlling noises we shall enrich mankind with a new and unsuspected source of pleasure. Despite the fact that it is characteristic of sound to remind us brutally of life, the ART OF NOISES must not limit itself to reprodictive imitation. It will reach its greatest emotional power through the purely acoustic enjoyment which the inspiration of the artist will contrive to evoke from combinations of noises. These are the futurist orchestra's six families of noises, which we shall soon produce mechanically: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 ---------------------------------------------------------- | Booms | Whistles | Whispers | Screams | | Thunderclaps | Hisses | Murmurs | Screeches | | Explosions | Snorts | Mutterings | Reustlings | | Crashes | | Bustling | Buzzes | | Splashes | | noises | Cracklings | | Roars | | Gurgles | Sounds | | | | | obtained | | | | | by friction | ---------------------------------------------------------- 5 | 6 ----------------------------------------------- | Noises obtained by | Voices of animals | | percussion on | and men: | | metals, wood, | Shouts | | stone, terracotta | Shrieks | | | Groans | | | Howls | | | Laughs | | | Wheezes | | | Sobs | ----------------------------------------------- I am not a professional musician; I have therefore no acoustic prejudices and and [sic] no works to defend. I am a futurist painter projecting into an art he loves and has studied his desire to renovate all things. Being therefor more audacious than a professional musician could be, caring nought for my seeming incompetence, and convinced that audacity makes all things lawful and all things possible, I have imagined a great renovation of music through the Art of Noises. -------------------------------------------- Nicolas Slonimsky (ed.), "Music since 1900", 4th ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), 1298-1302. Trans. Stephen Somervelle. Copyright 1971 Nicolas Slonimsky. --------------------------------------------