by Mike Telin & Daniel Hathaway

It’s common for people who don’t like contemporary music to describe it as “noise,” but in 1913, the Italian painter and forward-thinker Luigi Russolo proclaimed intentionally-created noise to be the concert music of the future. In his Futurist Manifesto, L’arte dei rumori (The Art of Noises), Russolo summarizes the evolution of Western music and arrives at a radical conclusion:

Ancient life was all silence. In the 19th Century, with the invention of machines, Noise was born. Today, Noise is triumphant and reigns sovereign over the sensibility of men…As it grows ever more complicated today, musical art seeks out combinations more dissonant, stranger, and harsher for the ear. Thus, it comes ever closer to the noise-sound…We must break out of the limited circle of sounds [of the orchestra] and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds. [Read more…]