(b Portogruaro, 30 April 1885; d Cerro di Laveno, Varese, 6 Feb 1947). Italian inventor, painter and composer. Although from a musical family, he joined the futurist movement in 1910 as a painter. Inspired by the violent reception of Pratella's Musica futurista, in 1913 he published the radical manifesto L'arte dei rumori. This advocated the creation of a music in which everyday sounds, including noise, are used in a non-imitative manner. With his assistant Ugo Piatti, he constructed intonarumori (noise intoners) between 1913 and 1921 with which he put his theories into practice (see illustration). These instruments were mostly based on the principle of the Hurdy gurdy; the instrument was housed in a brightly painted box and the performer turned a crank or pressed an electric button at the rear to operate it; pitch was controlled by a lever on the top. By the end of 1913, 15 such machines, bearing onomatopoeic names such as the scoppiatore (exploder) and the ululatore (howler), had been constructed and demonstrated in Modena. The following year saw performances in Milan (resulting in a riot), Genoa and at the Coliseum in London. Russolo's compositions for these concerts, none of which have survived, bore suitably futurist titles such as Risveglio di una città and Convegno di automobile e aeroplani, and were written in his specially devised graphic notation. During World War I Russolo served with the Lombard Volunteer Cyclist Battalion and was badly injured. In a book published in 1916, also entitled L'arte dei rumori, he further developed his ideas of noise music.
Three controversial concerts took place in Paris in 1921; music by Russolo, his brother Antonio and Nuccio Fiorda was performed by 27 intonarumori alongside a full orchestra. The performances had considerable impact on Casella, Falla, Honegger, Milhaud, Ravel and Stravinsky, all of whom attended. Diaghilev and Mondrian were also impressed by the machines: Diaghilev's enthusiasm for all aspects of futurist performance resulted in discussions with Ravel and Stravinsky about projects to include the intonarumori, which did not come to fruition, while Mondrian wrote a lengthy critique of futurist music. During the 1920s Russolo developed other new instruments: the arco enarmonico (enharmonic bow), which obtained unusual sonorities from conventional string instruments, and the rumorarmonio or russolofono, a rudimentary keyboard instrument equivalent to several combined intonarumori. Although the latter instrument was introduced to the public by Varèse in Paris in 1929 and was later used to accompany silent films in the cinema Studio 28, plans to mass-produce the rumorarmonio never came to fruition. Russolo was also involved in futurist cinema, providing music for the now lost Futuristi a Parigi, Montparnasse and La marche des machines. Between 1927 and 1932 Russolo lived in Paris as a refugee from fascism but returned to Italy after a few years spent in Spain. He was distanced from the later period of futurist activity by his anti-fascist politics; his interest turned to Eastern philosophies and the occult, and he resumed painting.
The loss of both the intonarumori and Russolo's compositions makes it difficult to judge the extent to which his theories were successfully realized. Ear-witness accounts are contradictory and the only extant recording, that of the arrangement of Antonio Russolo's Serenata and Corale (1924, Voce del Padrone R6919), for intonarumori and orchestra by A. Russolo) is very primitive. The initial enthusiasm of composers in the 1920s soon gave way to a lack of interest; only after World War II with the development of musique concrète and Cage's sonically inclusive aesthetic has the significance of Russolo's activities been fully understood.
all for intonarumori and all apparently lost
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Combattimento nell'oasi, 1913; Convegno d'automobili e d'aeroplani, 1913–14; Si pranza sulla terrazza dell'Hotel (Si pranza sulla terrazza del Kursaal), 1913–14; Il risveglio di una città (Il risveglio di una grande città), 1913–14, 7 bars pubd in Lacerba, ii (Florence, 1914), 72, repr. in L'arte dei rumori (1916), 72, and many secondary sources; incid music (F.T. Marinetti, etc.) |
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Adaptations of pieces for conventional insts by A. Russolo, incl.: Trio, vn, pf, intonarumori, perf. 1921; Corale, Serenata, intonarumori, insts, rec. 1924 |
L'arte dei rumori: manifesto futurista (Milan, 1913); repr. in I manifesti del futurismo (Florence, 1914), 123ff; Eng. trans. in Music since 1900, ed. N. Slonimsky (New York, 5/1993)
‘Conquista totale dell'enarmonismo’, Lacerba, i (1913), 242–5
L'arte dei rumori (Milan, 1916; Fr. trans., ed. G. Lista, 1975 [incl. full list of Russolo's writings]; Eng. trans., 1986)
‘L'arco enarmonico’, Fiamma, ii/1 (1926), 9
‘Il musicista futurista Franco Casavola’,Teatro, v/3 (1927), 37–9
‘L'enarmonismo’, Fiera letteraria, 1st ser., iii/12 (1927), 3; repr. in Futurismo 1932, ed. F. Depero (Rovereto, 1932)
Al di là della materia (Milan, 1938, 2/1961)
N.M. : ‘Futurismo “in querula”’, Nuova musica, xix (1914), 74
A. Coeuroy: ‘Les bruiteurs futuristes’, ReM, ii/9–11 (1921), 165 only
Montboron: ‘Au théâtre des Champs-Elysées: les bruiteurs futuristes’, Comoedia, no.3107 (1921), 2
P. Mondrian: ‘De “bruiteurs futuristes italiens” en het nieuwe in de musiek’, De stijl, iv/8–9 (1921), 95–118, 130–36; Fr. trans. as ‘Les manifestations du néoplasticisme dans la musique et les bruiteurs futuristes italiens’, La vie des lettres et des arts (1922)
L. Folgore: ‘La musica futurista’, ‘l'arte dei rumori’, Almanacco italiano, xxviii (1923), 225–7
F. Casavola: ‘Luigi Russolo’, Teatro, v/3 (1927), 39
F.B. Pratella: ‘L'arte dei rumori’, Scritti vari di pensiero, di arte, di storia musicale (Bologna, 1933)
M. Zanovello Russolo: Russolo: l'uomo, l'artista (Milan, 1958)
F.K. Prieberg: Musica ex machina: über das Verhältnis von Musik und Technik (Berlin,1960), 21–47
Discoteca alta fedeltà, no.107 (1971) [futurist-music issue]
R.J. Payton: The Futurist Musicians: Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo (diss., U. of Chicago, 1974)
R.J. Payton: ‘The Music of Futurism: Concerts and Polemics’, MQ, lxii (1976), 25–45
G.F. Maffina: Luigi Russolo e l'arte dei rumori (Turin, 1978)
B. Brown: ‘The Noise Instruments of Luigi Russolo’, PNM, xx (1981–2), 31–48
G.F. Maffina: ‘Russolo et Paris: épisodes musicaux futuristes’, Revue international de musique française, no.18 (1985), 93–100
H. Davies: ‘L'univers sonore, les instruments et la musique de Luigi Russolo’, Vitalité et contradictions de l'avant-garde: Italie-France 1909–1924, ed. S. Briosi and H. Hillenaar (Paris, 1988), 25–62; Eng. trans., rev., in Resonance, ii/2 (1994), 14–22
FLORA DENNIS