Noise of Art

Luigi Russolo is celebrated as the founder of electronic music because he was the first to conceptualise electronic music and create the instruments that could play it.

As Karl Bartos of Kraftwerk, a student of Stockhausen, explains: “Schaeffer, (Henry), Stockhausen and Cage had this idea you can make music from the sound of technology and nature and they all referred back to Luigi Russolo, so he was the first.

“Pierre Schaffer referred to Russolo, and then Stockhausen took reference from Pierre Henry – this is the food chain.” (Karl Bartos, ex Kraftwerk)

Russolo made his prototype synthesisers between 1913-14 and toured his instruments around Europe in 1914, bringing them and his ideas to the attention of the leading artists and musicians of his time.  After being injured out of WW1, he lived in Paris where he electrified his instruments, added a mother keyboard and soundtracked films by early cinematographers. All of which brought him to the attention of the creators of Musique Concrete, creating a link that runs from Russolo to The Beatles, Kraftwerk and the electronic music of today.

“Russolo’s manifesto has become increasingly important, inspiring a host of musicians and composers, among them musique Concréte pioneers Schaeffer and Pierre Henri, 1980s dance pop outfit The Art of Noise, … Einsturzenda Neubauten and Test Dept., turntablist DJ Spooky and sound artist Francisco Lopez…” (Undercurrents, 20th anniversary of The Wire, 2002).

What links Russolo to today’s electronic music?

There are clear links from Russolo to contemporary electronic music: It is well known that John Cage and Edgard Varése cited Russolo as an early influence, that Varése and Cage were influential on the Beatles making electronic music and that the Beatles promulgated the spread of electronic music into rock. It is also well known that Russolo influenced Schaeffer, that Schaeffer influenced Stockhausen and Stockhausen influenced Kraftwerk. And everybody in electronic music today pays homage to Kraftwerk.

“Russolo was the first,” explains former Krafwerk member Karl Bartos. “Pierre Schaeffer followed in the Fourties in Paris, and then Stockhausen in Cologne in the Fifties.”

Why was Russolo so ground-breaking?

Early electronic instruments generally aimed to electrify existing instruments and create versions of things that could be played like orchestral instruments. These developments fitted in with accepted musical norms. They did not try to create a new form of music.

One celebrated example of an early electronic instrument is Thaddeus Cahill’s enormous Telharmonium, which was designed to be played over a telephone line. The Telharmonium was certainly an early electronic instrument, but it was intended to play classical and popular melodies down telephone lines into hotel lobbies – as an early form of piped music.

As such, Cahill can be celebrated as the forefather of Muzak. But the Telharmonium was not intended to play electronic music, any more than Duane Eddy’s plugged-in guitar was intended to play electronic music.

Russolo, by contrast, was all about making music out of sirens and the rhythm of the factory. Stuff we now know as electronic music would have been music to Russolo’s ears, but would probably have been considered a horrible din by Cahill.

Russolo’s contribution was not cutting-edge technically. As Stravinsky pointed out, his instruments were limited. His prototype synthesisers were mostly mechanical at first – although even his early versions involved electrical components and his post war models were electrified. Yet even in their most primitive form they did push musical boundaries and were created in order to play a new form of music.

“Since each instrument had a uniquely shaped sounding wheel, and some had added electrical components such as vibrating motors, the sonic gamut of Russolo’s orchestra was unprecedented… Russolo’s inspiration simply came too early. He tried to overcome the technical immaturity of his intonarumori, inventing a Russolophone, which allowed him to control multiple modified intonarumori from a keyboard.”

“Those [technical] problems would ultimately be addressed by industrialisation itself, which allowed composers to bring loop tapes and computers into the music hall…

“Stravinsky was certainly the better composer, yet Russolo was actually the greater innovator… Introducing machines into the music hall, he made mechanical noises into music.” (Jonathon Keats – The Rest is Noise, Arts and Antiques)

Theories describing a new music had also been published before Russolo wrote his contribution to the debate. In 1907 Ferruccio Busoni published ‘Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music’, which proposed the use of electrical and other new sounds in future music. This was followed by Francesco Balilla Pratella’s writings, including “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Music” (1911).

It was Pratella’s continued use of traditional orchestras to try and make futurist music that inspired Russolo to write ‘Manifesto For An Art of Noises’ in 1913.

In ‘Manifesto’ Russolo mapped out a new form of music for mass consumption in the industrial age. He described an urban music that would replace the pastoral music of the agricultural age, depicting something close to what we now recognise as electronic music. He then went on to make instruments to play these sounds – bringing theory and practice together for the first time in April 1914.

“When Russolo decided to apply his concepts to his compositions — while simultaneously creating new instruments to accommodate his vision — he single-handedly changed the course of music and art history. The adoption of everyday noise as an aesthetic choice in composition demarcates the clear line between the past and future of 20th century music”. (Oscar Paul Medina, Hydra Magazine).

His first concert in Milan in April 1914 was followed by an international tour of futurist music in June 1914 that spread Russolo’s influence across the European arts and music scene.

After he was injured out of the war, Russolo relocated to Paris, where he electrified his machines and used them to soundtrack films by avant-garde artists and film makers. Russolo died during WW2, but his lineage continued in Paris in the 1940s, where Schaeffer and Henry used magnetic tape and other recording techniques to create the sounds Russolo had imagined.

“Influenced by the Italian Futurist movement and the manifesto of… Luigi Russolo, Schaeffer began experimenting with various sound sources.” Culprit 1, Beatport.

One of Schaeffer and Henry’s pupils was a young Stockhausen, who took the music back to Cologne in Germany. It was here that Karl Bartos studied Stockhausen before joining Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk’s vision, like Russolo’s, was to create a totally new world of music, made up of electronic sounds.

At the same time John Cage was influenced by Russolo’s ideas while he toured Europe as a young man.

“There is no need to emphasise the obvious, that the young Cage of the 1930s and 40s was heavily influenced by Luigi Russolo.” (Volker Straebel, Audio Communication Group, Technical University Berlin, Paper at Emufest, Festival Internazionale di Musica Elettroacustica del Conservatorio, S. Cecilia, Rome 9. Nov. 2009)

Cage, who was also influenced by the post war compositions of Edgard Varése, would use these ideas to become a leading figure in electronic music. It is well known that Cage influenced The Beatles, who created such ground- breaking tracks as ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and brought electronic music into mass popular music.

Varése, who is considered another founding father of electronic music and was a major influence on Cage, became interested in what would become electronic music after he moved to New York during the first world war. After the war he returned to Paris and organised Russolo’s last concert in 1929 – the year Varése started working on his first important, electronic music track, ‘Ionisation’. Naturally he cites Russolo as an influence on this influential composition, which he wrote between 1929 and 1931. “Like Russolo he called for a new concept of music and new musical instruments.” (Undercurrents, 20th anniversary of The Wire, 2002)

After Paris, Russolo moved to Spain, where he studied spiritualism and the occult until 1933, after which he re-settled in Italy and returned to painting. He died just as Musicque Concréte was becoming an identifiable genre.

“As creator of the first systematic poetics of noise and inventor of what has been considered the first mechanical sound synthesizer, Russolo looms large in the development of twentieth-century music.” (cover notes for “Luigi Russolo, Futurist”, University of California Press, by Luciano Chessa, lecturer in music at St John’s, Oxford, Colombia University and Harvard).

There are later and earlier moments that can make a case for being the genesis of electronic music.

But it was Luigi Russolo who brought theory and practice together at his first concert, in April 1914.