Background

My Research into Luigi Russolo began in 2012 when I was commissioned by MONA FOMA (The Museum of Old and New Art Festival of Music and Art) to write and perform a production celebrating the 100th anniversary of the publishing of Russolo’s most famous manifesto L’arte dei rumori (The art of noises). This celebratory work left me with the feeling that there was a lot more to Russolo’s art than simply the idea that noise should be the key aesthetic device in the writing of contemporary music. There seemed to be an almost spiritual quality to the music my ensemble created out of industrial material - power tools, plant equipment, sheet metal and recreated Intonarumori (the machines Russolo built to replace traditional orchestral instruments). This unanticipated response resulted in me questioning whether the documented history of Russolo and the Futurist movement had missed an important part of their mission. Since 2012 my research has led me to believe that far from simply being a movement that championed the modern industrial age the Futurists were deeply interested in the spiritual evolution of society. 

Luigi Russolo  -  Biography

Luigi Russolo was born in 1885 in Portogruaro, Italy, a small town about 60 kms north-east of Venice. His family was musical with his father being the town’s church organist and both brothers studying at the Conservatorium of Milano. At the age of 16 Russolo moved to Milano and gained employment working in at the Castello Sforzesco helping to restore Leonardo’s Last Supper.  Russolo embedded himself in the Milano art scene and became one of the first visual artists to join the Futurist movement in 1909. His paintings and print work of the time are rich with esoteric and occult symbolism as well attempts to express how sound could be visually represented. The first Futurist manifesto was a brazen rejection of Italian culture that advocated and celebrated the idea of speed, machinery, violence, youth and industry. It was a also a well designed polemic that would ensure attention and notoriety. A further examination of the artwork of some of Futurism’s key participants (including Russolo) reveals the manifesto was masking a deeper desire to revolutionise Italian culture through not just technology and industry but through spiritualisation and magic.  The occult and esoteric influence on the Futurist movement was ignored for many decades by historians, but recent studies have made it impossible to ignore and any true understanding of Russolo’s practice and writing is incomplete without acknowledging his deep interest in the spiritual world. Most of Russolo’s later years were dedicated to writing about spirituality, and his early paintings are full of rich esoteric symbolism.  In 1913 Russolo took a dramatic shift in his practice and re-focused his attention on music - or more accurately on Noise. He published L’arte dei rumori Russolo which proclaimed that the symphonic orchestra was incapable of musically reflecting the modern age -it lacked the timbre of industrialisation and the nuanced tonal range that could be heard in the cities of the new century. Music, for Russolo, had been hijacked by charlatans and used against the.people to keep them at bay from an existence more in tune with the world and with their souls. Music was full of rules that were challenged way too slowly and more than anything the art music of the early 20th century simply didn’t incorporate or reflect the aural atmosphere of times. Rather than simply criticise the status quo Russolo designed and produced his own instruments/machines which he called Intonarumori (noise-intoners). He devised a chart of noises he thought should be used to produce music that reflected the modern age and then built instruments to make the required sounds.  Reading L’arte dei rumori with an understanding of the influence esoteric writing had on the Futurists reveals an agenda beyond simply challenging the conventions of early 20th century music. Russolo connects noise with the very essence of life and seeks to use noise as a tool for occult investigations. Ultimately he believed noise could be a key to communicating with other planes of existence and even with the dead.  Russolo toured his orchestra of Intonarumori through Italy, often to hostile and violent crowds, as part of the Futurists mission to overturn the existing conservative culture of Italy. He also travelled across Europe and gained particular interest in London. The outbreak of WW1 saw a halt to his touring activities, and after being injured on the front he slowed his touring down and spent more time designing new instruments and seeking new avenues to show case his theories and practice. After spending more the 20 years travelling across the continent, often in desperate poverty, he settled again in Northern Italy and spent the last 10 years of life painting and writing about spirituality.