Luigi Russolo

[Lah Ca]

Lovely bunch of fellows, the Futurists.

Indeed. And there is more sludge if you choose to dig.

Not all artists (painters, sculptors, musicians, composers, writers, etc) are nice people: they are/were often arrogant megalomaniacs--drawn to extremes of belief--contemptuous and dismissive of others --quite toxic and abusive.

So you/we have an awkward choice. Do you/we look at the art on its own terms, in isolation from its creator, or do you/we take the distasteful package as whole and then discard the art in the trash bin of history because of its creator.

Me? I don't believe that the distasteful nature of the artist should be ignored or whitewashed (or celebrated).

But neither am I in favour of the trash bin. If we all chose the trash bin? Well .... Museums and galleries would be a lot more empty. There would be a lot fewer books in libraries. There would be a lot less music to be played. We would have a lot fewer 78s and cylinders in our collections. I would probably have to dump all my Miles Davis records.

For many people, Russolo's music is so far outside the envelope of musical normality that the trash bin might be a very easy choice, one made by assessing the music solely on its own aesthetics. I must confess that I am not fond of it. For me it is an interesting historical curiosity, something tied to its time and place--you won't find me dancing to it any time soon. It was written for an audience that shared the composer's sense of aesthetics. It flopped spectacularly when attempts were made to expand the audience to the general public.

I once knew a very skilled and talented musician, classically trained, degrees in music, years of experience in performing a music in wide variety of genres. For a while he dabbled in computer generated electronic music. His work was well respected among his peer group in electronic music. However, the long suffering person who lived in the apartment next to him described the music as a dolphin porn movie soundtrack.

[Lah Ca]

There seems to be some confusion about Russolo's recordings, what existed and what still exists (or what is known to exist).

The confusion unravels if it is taken into account that Antonio Russolo is not the same chap as Luigi Russolo.

Again according to Daniele Lombardi, not only there is no recording and no instrument left by Luigi Russolo, but to our highest astonishment there is also no score left, excepting the front page of Il Risveglio Di Una Città with 7 bars in all, not in its original sheet but as an ilustration on a page of the literary newspaper Lacerba. By expanding these 7 bars, and by using reconstructed Intonarumori, Lombardi wrote and recorded a short development of the piece, that lasts 28 seconds in all and can be listened in his above mentioned records, that is what is possibly closer to what Luigi Russolo's piece might have sounded like.

Thank you for the clarification. The Internet abounds with confusion over this matter.

[Marco Gilardetti]

Yes indeed. I see the mp3 you linked to is uncorrectly attribed to Luigi Russolo, while instead the recording is by Antonio.

About this recording, Daniele Lombardi notes that it is part of a series of three futuristic records issued by La Voce Del Padrone (HMV's Italian branch) in 1924, that were sold for 18 lire apiece. The Corale and Serenata were issued on one of these three records. According to Lombardi "This recorded document was referred to for years, whenever intonarumori were mentioned. These two little pieces, however, are nothing but a banal grafting of these instruments into insignificant compositions for three or perhaps five instruments, a far cry from the use his brother Luigi made of them a few years earlier.