Every manifestation of life is accompanied by noise. Noise is thus familiar to our ear and has the power of immediately recalling life itself. Sound, estranged from life, always musical, something in itself an occasional not a necessary element, has become for our ear what for the eye is a too familiar sight. Noise instead, arriving confused and irregular from the irregular confusion of life, is never revealed to us entirely and always holds innumerable surprises. We are certain, then, that by selecting, coordinating, and controlling all the noises, we will enrich mankind with a new and unsuspected pleasure of the senses. Although the characteristic of noise is that of reminding us brutally of life, the Art of Noises should not limit itself to an imitative reproduction. It will achieve its greatest emotional power in acoustical enjoyment itself, which the inspiration of the artist will know how to draw from the combining of noises.
Here are the 6 families of noises of the futurist orchestra that we will soon realize mechanically:
123456Roars Thunderings Explosions Hissing roars Bangs BoomsWhistling Hissing PuffingWhispers Murmurs Mumbling Muttering GurglingScreeching Creaking Rustling Humming Crackling RubbingNoises obtained by beating on metals woods skins stones pottery etc.Voices of animals and people Shouts Screams Shrieks Wails Hoots Howls Death rattles SobsIn this list we have included the most characteristic of the fundamental noises. The others are only associations and combinations of these.
The rhythmic motions of a noise are infinite. There always exists, as with a pitch, a predominant rhythm, but around this there can be heard numerous other, secondary rhythms.
Conclusions
Futurist composers should continue to enlarge and enrich the field of sound. This responds to a need of our sensibility. In fact, we notice in the talented composers of today a tendency toward the most complicated dissonances. Moving ever farther from pure sound, they have almost attained the noise-sound. This need and this tendency can be satisfied only with the addition and the substitution of noises for sounds.
Futurist musicians should substitute for the limited variety of timbres that the orchestra possesses today the infinite variety of timbres in noises, reproduced with appropriate mechanisms.
The sensibility of musicians, being freed from traditional and facile rhythms, must find in noise the means of expanding and renewing itself, given that every noise offers a union of the most diverse rhythms, in addition to that which predominates.
Every noise having in its irregular vibrations a predominant general pitch, a sufficiently extended variety of tones, semitones, and quartertones is easily attained in the construction of the instruments that imitate it. This variety of pitches will not deprive a single noise of the characteristics of its timbre but will only increase its tessitura or extension.
The practical difficulties involved in the construction of these instruments are not serious. Once the mechanical principle that produces a noise has been found, its pitch can be changed through the application of the same general laws of acoustics. It can be achieved, for example, through the decreasing or increasing of speed if the instrument has a rotary motion. If the instrument does not have a rotary motion, it can be achieved through differences of size or tension in the sounding parts.
It will not be through a succession of noises imitative of life but through a fantastic association of the different timbres and rhythms that the new orchestra will obtain the most complex and novel emotions of sound. Thus, every instrument will have to offer the possibility of changing pitches and will need a more or less extended range.
The variety of noises is infinite. If today, having perhaps a thousand different machines, we are able to distinguish a thousand different noises, tomorrow, with the multiplication of new machines, we will be able to distinguish ten, twenty, or thirty thousand different noises, not simply by imitation but by combining according to our fancy.
Therefore, we invite talented and audacious young musicians to observe all noises attentively, to understand the different rhythms that compose them, their principal pitch, and those which are secondary. Then, comparing the various timbres of noises to the timbres of sounds, they will be convinced that the first are much more numerous than the second. This will give them not only the understanding of but also the passion and the taste for noises. Our multiplied sensibility, having been conquered by futurist eyes, will finally have some futurist ears. Thus, the motors and machines of our industrial cities can one day be given pitches, so that every workshop will become an intoxicating orchestra of noises.
Dear Pratella, I submit to your futurist genius these propositions of mine, inviting your discussion. I am not a musician by profession and therefore, I have no acoustical prejudices, nor works to defend. I am a futurist painter who projects beyond himself, into an art much-beloved and studied, his desire to renew everything. Thus, bolder than a professional musician, not worried about my apparent incompetence, and convinced that audacity has all rights and all possibilities, I was able to divine the great renewal of music through the Art of Noises.
LUIGI RUSSOLO
Milan, March 11, 1913
Luigi Russolo is arguably the founder of noise-music.