Futurism (music)

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Luigi Russolo, intonarumori, 1913 Russolointonorumori.jpg
Luigi Russolo, intonarumori, 1913

Futurism was an early 20th-century art movement which encompassed painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture, cinema and gastronomy. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti initiated the movement with his Manifesto of Futurism , published in February 1909. Futurist music rejected tradition and introduced experimental sounds inspired by machinery, and influenced several 20th-century composers. According to Rodney Payton, "early in the movement, the term ‘Futurism’ was misused to loosely define any sort of avant-garde effort; in English, the term was used to label a composer whose music was considered ‘difficult.’ [1] "

Contents

Pratella's Manifesto of Futurist Musicians

The musician Francesco Balilla Pratella joined the movement in 1910 and wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Musicians (1910), the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Music (1911) and The Destruction of Quadrature (Distruzione della quadratura), (1912). In The Manifesto of Futurist Musicians, Pratella appealed to the young, as had Marinetti, because only they could understand what he had to say. He boasted of the prize that he had won for his musical Futurist work, La Sina d’Vargöun, and the success of its first performance at the Teatro Comunale at Bologna in December 1909, which placed him in a position to judge the musical scene. According to Pratella, Italian music was inferior to music abroad. He praised the "sublime genius" of Wagner and saw some value in the work of Richard Strauss, Debussy, Elgar, Mussorgsky, Glazunov and Sibelius. By contrast, the Italian symphony was dominated by opera in an "absurd and anti-musical form". The conservatories encouraged backwardness and mediocrity. The publishers perpetuated mediocrity and the domination of music by the "rickety and vulgar" operas of Puccini and Umberto Giordano. The only Italian Pratella could praise was his teacher Pietro Mascagni, because he had rebelled against the publishers and attempted innovation in opera, but even Mascagni was too traditional for Pratella's tastes.

In the face of this mediocrity and conservatism, Pratella unfurled "the red flag of Futurism, calling to its flaming symbol such young composers as have hearts to love and fight, minds to conceive, and brows free of cowardice".

His musical programme was:

Russolo and the intonarumori

Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) was an Italian painter and self-taught musician. In 1913 he wrote The Art of Noises , [2] [3] Russolo and his brother Antonio used instruments they called "intonarumori", which were acoustic noise generators that permitted the performer to create and control the dynamics and pitch of several different types of noises. The Art of Noises classified "noise-sound" into six groups:

  1. Roars, Thunderings, Explosions, Hissing roars, Bangs, Booms
  2. Whistling, Hissing, Puffing
  3. Whispers, Murmurs, Mumbling, Muttering, Gurgling
  4. Screeching, Creaking, Rustling, Humming, Crackling, Rubbing
  5. Noises obtained by beating on metals, woods, skins, stones, pottery, etc.
  6. Voices of animals and people, Shouts, Screams, Shrieks, Wails, Hoots, Howls, Death rattles, Sobs

Russolo and Marinetti gave the first concert of Futurist music, complete with intonarumori, in April 1914 (causing a riot). [4] The program comprised four "networks of noises" with the following titles:

Further concerts around Europe were cancelled due to the outbreak of the First World War.

Composers influenced by Futurism

Futurism was one of several 20th century movements in art music that paid homage to, included or imitated machines. Ferruccio Busoni has been seen as anticipating some Futurist ideas, though he remained wedded to tradition. [5] Russolo's intonarumori influenced Stravinsky, Honegger, Antheil, and Edgar Varèse. [6]

The composer George Antheil is particularly notable in this respect. He expressed the artistic radicalism of the 1920s in music, causing him to be embraced by Dadaists, Futurists and modernists. His fascination with machinery is evident in his Airplane Sonata, Death of the Machines, and the 30-minute Ballet mécanique . The Ballet mécanique was originally intended to accompany an experimental film by Fernand Léger, but the musical score is twice the length of the film and now stands alone. The score calls for a percussion ensemble consisting of three xylophones, four bass drums, a tam-tam, three airplane propellers, seven electric bells, a siren, two "live pianists", and sixteen synchronized player pianos. Antheil's piece was the first to synchronize machines with human players and to exploit the difference between what machines and humans can play.

Russian Futurist composers included Arthur-Vincent Lourié, Mikhail Gnesin, Alexander Goedicke, Geog Kirkor (1910–1980), Julian Krein (1913–1996), and Alexander Mosolov.

See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cubo-Futurism</span> Russian art movement

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Futurist architecture</span> Early-20th-century Italian architectural style

Futurist architecture is an early-20th century form of architecture born in Italy, characterized by long dynamic lines, suggesting speed, motion, urgency and lyricism: it was a part of Futurism, an artistic movement founded by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who produced its first manifesto, the Manifesto of Futurism, in 1909. The movement attracted not only poets, musicians, and artists but also a number of architects. A cult of the Machine Age and even a glorification of war and violence were among the themes of the Futurists - several prominent futurists were killed after volunteering to fight in World War I. The latter group included the architect Antonio Sant'Elia, who, though building little, translated the futurist vision into an urban form.

Franco Casavola was a Futurist composer and theorist. He is noted as one of the authors of the Le Sintesi Visive della Musica, a manifesto that proposed the intrinsic visual counterparts of music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francesco Balilla Pratella</span> Italian composer

Francesco Balilla Pratella 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 obvious connection to the views espoused in the manifestos he authored.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ego-Futurism</span> Russian literary movement of the 1910s

Ego-Futurism was a Russian literary movement of the 1910s, developed within Russian Futurism by Igor Severyanin and his early followers. While part of the Russian Futurism movement, it was distinguished from the Moscow-based cubo-futurists as it was associated with poets and artists active in Saint Petersburg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luciano Chessa</span> Italian composer

Luciano Chessa is a musician, performance/visual/installation artist, and musicologist.

<i>The Art of Noises</i> Futurist music manifesto

The Art of Noises is a Futurist manifesto written by Luigi Russolo in a 1913 letter to friend and Futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella. In it, Russolo argues that the human ear has become accustomed to the speed, energy, and noise of the urban industrial soundscape; furthermore, this new sonic palette requires a new approach to musical instrumentation and composition. He proposes a number of conclusions about how electronics 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".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manifesto of Futurist Musicians</span> 1910 manifesto by Francesco Pratella

The Manifesto of Futurist Musicians is a manifesto written by Francesco Balilla Pratella on October 11, 1910. It was one of the earliest signs of Futurism's influence in fields outside of the visual arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intonarumori</span> Experimental musical instruments built by Luigi Russolo

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ugo Piatti</span> Italian painter

Ugo Piatti was an Italian painter and instrument maker, best known for collaborating on the construction of the intonarumori with Luigi Russolo.

References

  1. Payton, Rodney J. (1976). "The Music of Futurism: Concerts and Polemics" . The Musical Quarterly. 62 (1): 25–45. doi:10.1093/mq/LXII.1.25. ISSN   0027-4631. JSTOR   741598.
  2. The Art of Noises on Thereimin Vox Archived 2011-06-07 at the Wayback Machine
  3. The Art of Noises Archived September 29, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  4. Benjamin Thorn, "Luigi Russolo (1885–1947)", in Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook, edited by Larry Sitsky, foreword by Jonathan Kramer, 415–19 (Westport and London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002). ISBN   0-313-29689-8. Citation on page 415.
  5. Daniele Lonbardi, "Futurism and Musical Notes", translated by Meg Shore, Artforum 19 (January 1981): 43.
  6. Richard Humphreys, Futurism, Movements in Modern Art (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999) ISBN   0-521-64611-1. Citation on p. 44.

Further reading