Ruidos y susurros de las vanguardias - Medialab Prado

Life before was all silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of
machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise prevails and reigns over the sensitivity of
men. For many centuries, life went by in silence or, at least, quietly. The hardest
noises that interrupted this silence were neither intense, nor prolonged, nor
varied. Since, except for the earthquakes, hurricanes, storms, avalanches and
cascades, nature is quiet.
In this scarcity of noises, the first sounds that men were able to draw from a
pierced reed or a taut string, were astonishing as new and marvelous things.
Among primitive peoples, Sound was attributed to the gods. It was considered
sacred and reserved for priests, who used it to enrich their rites with mystery.
Thus, sound was conceived as an artifact in itself, as different from and
independent of life, and music turned out to be a fantastic world beyond reality, an
unbreakable and sacred world. It is then easy to understand how such a concept
of music was necessarily directed to slow down progress, by comparison with the
other arts. The Greek, with their musical theory calculated mathematically by
Pythagoras, and on the basis of which only a few consonant intervals could be
used, limited to a large extent the field of music, making harmony almost
impossible, which they ignored.
The Middle Ages, with the developments and the modifications of the Greek
system of tetrachord, with Gregorian chant and popular songs, enriched musical
art, but they continued to regard sound in its development in time, a restricted
notion that lasted many centuries and that now we find again in the most
complicated polyphonies of the Flemish contrapuntalists. Chords did not exis ; the
development of the different parts was not subordinated to the chord that these
parts produced in their totality; the conception of these parts, in short, was
horizontal, not vertical. The desire, the search and the taste for the simultaneous
union of the different sounds, that is, for the chord (the complete sound) was
expressed gradually, moving from the perfect assonant chord and with few
dissonances to the complicated and persistent dissonances that characterize
contemporary music.
From the beginning, musical art sought out and obtained purity and gentleness of
sound, then amalgamated different sounds, though concerned to caress the ear
with smooth harmonies. Today the musical art, more and more complicated,
seeks out combinations of the most dissonant, rarer and rougher sounds for the
ear. Thus, we are closer and closer to the noise-sound.
This evolution of music is comparable with the multiplication of machines,
which collaborate man all over. Not only in the noisy atmospheres of the great
cities, but also in the country, which until yesterday was usually quiet, the machine
has created today such a variety and concurrence of noises, that the pure sound,
in its slightness and monotony, does no longer provokes emotions.
In order to stimulate and exalt our sensibility, music has been developing towards
the most complex polyphony and the greatest variety of instrumental or timbres
and colors, in search for the most complicated successions of dissonant chords
and preparing vaguely the creation of the MUSICAL NOISE. This evolution
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towards the "noise-sound" had not been possible until now. The ear of a 18thcentury
man would not have been able to withstand the inharmonious intensity of
chords produced by our orchestra (tripled in the number of performers with
respect to those of that time). However, our ear is pleased with them, because it is
already educated to modern life, so prodigal in different noises. Nevertheless, our
ear is not fully satisfied, and demands for greater acoustical emotions.
Musical sound is excessively limited in its variety of timbres. The most
complicated orchestras are reduced to four or five classes of instruments,
different in timbre of sound: string instruments with and without bow, wind (metals
and wood), percussion. In such a way that modern music struggles in this small
circle, striving in vain to create new varieties of timbre.
We must break this restricted circle of pure sounds and conquer the infinite
variety of the noise-sounds.
In any case, everybody will admit that each sound carries a tangle of sensations,
already known and exhausted, which predispose the listener to boredom, in spite
of the efforts of all innovating musicians. We futurist have deeply loved and
enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. Beethoven and Wagner have stirred
our the nerves and heart for many years. Now we have had enough of them and
we enjoy much more by ideally combining the noises of trains, engines,
floats and vociferous crowds, than hearing again, for example, the "Eroica"
or the "Pastorale".
We cannot see the enormous apparatus of forces that a modern orchestra
represents without feeling the deepest disappointment before its miserable
acoustical results. Do you happen to know a more ridiculous show than when
twenty men obstinate in redoubling the mewling of a violin? Naturally all this will
make scream music lovers and perhaps it will intensify the induced sleepy
atmosphere of concert halls. Let us enter together, like futurists, in one of these
hospitals for anemic sounds. The first beat immediately transmits to your ear the
boredom of something heard before and it makes you anticipate the boredom of
the following beat. We thus taste, from beat to beat, two or three qualities of
genuine tedium without waiting for the extraordinary sensation that never comes.
In the meantime, there is a repugnant mixture of monotony of the sensations and
the cretinous religious commotion of the audience inebriated by repeating for the
thousandth time their more or less snobbish and acquired ecstasy. Away! Let get
out, since we will not be able to restrain for much longer our desire to create finally
a new musical reality, with an large distribution of sonorous slaps, jumping with
both feet on violins, pianos, double basses and organs. Let's get out!
It cannot be objected that noise is only loud and disagreeable for your ears. It
seems useless to enumerate all the subtle and delicate noises, which cause
pleasing acoustic sensations.
To be convinced of the surprising variety of noises just think of the din of the
thunderclap, the whistles of the wind, the bubbling of a waterfall, the gurgling of a
brook, the leaves crackling, the trote of a horse that moves away, the vacillating
frights of a car on the pavement and in the deep solemn and white breathing of a
nocturnal city; of all the noises made by wild and domestic animals and all those