The Noise Instruments of Luigi Russolo
1981; Perspectives of New Music; Volume: 20; Issue: 1/2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/942398
ISSN2325-7180
Autores Tópico(s)Italian Literature and Culture
ResumoThe publication of Luigi Russolo's futurist manifesto, The Art of Noises, in March of 1913 marked the beginning of one of the strangest and most colorful musical careers of this century. Up to that time, Russolo's endeavors had been strictly limited to the graphic arts. Although he had studied the violin and organ with his father, an amateur church organist, and although his older brothers, Giovanni and Antonio, were graduates of the Milan conservatory, Russolo had remained essentially a novice in musical matters. Even his career in the visual arts had been spotty: he had been variously employed from time to time as a designer of theatrical costumes, a restorer of Renaissance paintings, and a free-lance engraver. In 1910, however, his professional activities had taken a more definite direction when he had joined with the Milanese artists Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carra in forming a painters' branch of the futurist literary movement created only the year before by the Italian poet, F.T. Marinetti. Russolo was the most enthusiastic, if not necessarily the most gifted, of the new group. The new freedom of choice and technique offered by the wild and woolly doctrines of futurism seem to have greatly spurred his imagination. Some of his paintings of the period, with their superimposed and freely-associated images, clearly look ahead to the surrealism of painters like Chagal. It is curious, then, that Russolo should have chosen this moment to launch a totally new career. The change in direction
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