Luigi Russolo Bücher

The slim volume of essays, presented here for the first time in English translation, is one of the significant documents of musical aesthetics of this century. If the book itself has remained the province of a mere handful of readers, its ideas, passed on through a variety of later musical and literary movements, became the inspiration for some of the most innovative artistic creations of modern times. Luigi Russolo anticipated-indeed, he may have precipitated-a whole range of musical and aesthetic notions that formed the basis of much of the avant-garde thought of the past several decades. His ideas were absorbed, modified, and eventually transmitted to later generations by a number of movements and individuals-among them the futurists, the Dadaists, and a number of composers and writers of the nineteen-twenties. The noise instruments he invented fascinated and infuriated his contemporaries, and he was among the earliest musicians to put the often-discussed microtone to regular practical use in Western music. Russolo's views looked forward to the time when composers would exercise an absolute choice and control of the sounds that their music employed. He was the precursor of electronic music before electronics had come of age.

The music and noise manifestos of the Italian Futurists formed a blueprint for sonic warfare waged against traditionalism, a radical new agenda played out with machines primed for maximal acoustic destruction and aimed at the negation of all existing value systems. THE ART OF NOISE collects together these and other writings for the first time in English, showing how the origins of modern noise music actually date from a century ago, forming an invaluable insight into Futurist thought and its most enduring and relevant legacies, and revealing how an understanding of noise-art is key to a complete comprehension of Futurist painting. THE ART OF NOISE collects five key Futurist manifestos: Luigi Russolo's The Art Of Noises and The Futurist Noise Machines, and Balilla Pratella's Manifesto Of Futurist Musicians, Technical Manifesto Of Futurist Music, and Destruction Of Quadrature; plus Carlo Carrà's related sensory manifesto The Painting Of Sounds, Noises And Smells; Bruno Corra's notes on Chromatic Music; Ferrucchio Busoni's visionary and influential Sketch For A New Aesthetic Of Sound Art; a historical introduction on Futurist music and its legacy; and a chronology of Futurist music and noise. This new expanded edition includes F.T. Marinetti's original 11-point Manifesto Of Futurism, first published in 1909. Marinetti, Russolo and Pratella are founding members of Italian Futurism, whose work has immense art-historical importance.