From: mclaren
Subject: "The Art of Noises"
--
Came across the book "The Art of Noises" by
Luigi Russolo. "Translated from the Italian
with an introduction by Barclay Brown." Pendragon
press, New York, 1986, Monographs in Music No. 6.
This book is a collection of short essays written
by the Italian futurist Russolo.
Creator of the orchestra of noise-makers known
as intonarumori, Russolo is one of the founts
from which springs modern music.
(Great names for the instruments: "Sobbers," "wailers,"
"shriekers." Sort of like the New Yorker music critic
at one of Johnny Reinhard's concepts.)
It is less well known that Russolo was a radical and
persistant microtonalist.
In the paper entitled "The Conquest of Enharmonicism,"
Russolo sets forth explicitly his dissatisfaction with
12-TET and his militant advocacy of UNtempered
harmonic series-based tunings.
"After the introduction of the tempered system
in music, only the word Enharmonicism remained
to indicate the values that no longer found corres-
pondence in musical reality. Indeed, the difference
between an E sharp and an F, and a B sharp and a C
are called enharmonic, while the tempered system,
in rendering the semitones equal, has removed this
difference and made the two notes into the same
sound.
"But unfortunately, the inconvenient result of the
tempered system does not lie only in the word.
Once that the octave was divided into only *twelve*
*equal* fractions and applied in the tempred scale,
there resulted a considerable limitation of the number
of practical sounds and a strange artificiality in
those that were adopted. The difference between
the scale of the tempered system and hte natural
one are well known. (..) With wind instruments,
which produce the harmonic series of the fundamental
note, the 7th, 11th, 13th and 14th harmonics are
likewise corrected in their intonation to produce what
we call closed sounds.
"In the tempered system, therefore, the difference
between the large and small whole tone (9/8:10/9 = 81/80)
has disapperaed. Similarly, the differences between the
diatonic semitone (16/15) and the chromatic ones (23/22
and 25/24) has also vanished. (..)
"A tempered harmonic system can be compared in a sense
to a system of painting that abolishes all the infinite
gradations of the seven colors (red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo and violet) and accepts only their type of
color, having only one yellow, one green and so on."
This is a remarkable passage. It almost exactly
parallels several passages from Harry Partch. In
"A Quarter-Saw Section of Motivations and Intonations,"
Partch talks in almost exactly the same way about
a rainbow of colors being collapsed down into dull
simplistic hues.
Moreover, it's clear that Russolo knew very well the
intricacies and advantages of just intonation, and that
he thought the so-called natural (read: harmonic series-
based) tuning superior to the tempered one.
It's interesting that when this debate between harmonic-
series-based and expanded equal-temperament (viz.,
48-TET, 41-TET, 72-TET, etc.) occurred in Russia between
1917-1928, the Russian expanded equal-temperament
faction won out. But when this debate occurred in Italy
between 1917-1928, the Italian futurists made the
fascinating choice of chucking tonality entirely in
favor of noise. During the same period in Germany,
Schoenberg resolved the debate by chucking tonality
in favor of an elaborate scheme of statistically
distributing the familiar 5-limit equal-tempered
12 pitches. In Mexico, Novaro and Carrillo resolved
this debate by choosing the Russian option but using
live acoustic instead of electronic instruments.
Thus the claim that "Schoenberg solved the dilemma
of the exhaustion of tonality" is untrue, insofar as
MANY solutions were implemented in various different
countries. The only solutions which survive to this
day are the Russian one (represented today by folks
who compose & perform microtonal music on synthesizers)
and the Mexican one (represented today by folks who
compose & perform microtonal music on acoustic
instruments.)
Needless to say, the German "solution" to the exhaustion of
12-TET tonality didn't last beyond 1978, and post-Webern
serial composition is now a dead art form with no attraction
for contemporary composers.
Clearly, someone should do a 1/1 article on Russolo
& his advocacy of ji as an Italian solution to this problem.
--mclaren
