Luigi Russolo, Futurist

by Luciano Chessa

  But above all Russolo draws extensively on Leadbeater’s final section, particularly in regard to the concept of a subjective synthesis/fusion of sounds into unity.55 In this section, Leadbeater concluded:

  There is a yet higher point of view from which all the sounds of nature blend themselves into one mighty tone—that which the Chinese authors have called the KUNG; and this also has its form—an inexpressible compound or synthesis of all forms, vast and changeful as the sea, and yet through it all upholding an average level, just as the sea does, all-penetrating yet all-embracing, the note which represents our earth in the music of the spheres—the form which is our petal when the solar system is regarded from the plane where it is seen all spread out like a lotus.56

  The vast sound-form created in the fusion of the sounds of the world into a unity, which is a sort of total tuning of the universe, had for Leadbeater a positive influence. The reaching of this form, of this stage, and the consequent influence on the auras of the attending audience, could have been one of the most ambitious goals of Russolo’s spirali di rumori.

  A DIFFERENT MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

  If it is true—as I believe it is—that Russolo knew the final passage of Leadbeater’s paragraph on noises, then it is easy to understand why he was not interested, as one might expect from a scholar of the occult arts and acoustic science, in constructing a finite musical system traditionally founded on the harmonic series. And in fact the occult musical tradition to which Leadbeater (and therefore Russolo) harked back was not based on the static order of the overtone series of the classical-Pythagorean system but rather on the “dynamic” dialectic of chaos versus cosmos.57

  In Leadbeater’s concluding passage cited above, he did not reach the so-called music of the spheres through a recursive application, at a cosmological level, of the highly rational structure of the overtones series, which would have led him to an eminently static conception (discontinuous, finite) of the universe. Rather, he believes that the “mighty tone” that represents the earth in the harmony of the spheres is the final product of a process (hence its dynamic nature) of a synthesis/reordering of a chaotic (infinite, continuous) simultaneity. This process is carried out by the subject who, transported by the divine to a privileged point of observation, can from there grasp the sense of the world (much like in Plato’s Phaedrus, or Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis). The subject—the inspired artist—can give a sense to the otherwise undecipherable codex of the world, thanks to metaphysical keys furnished by divine inspiration.

  The relationship between these two musical and cosmological conceptions is one of radical opposition: a musical system based on the harmonic series relies passively on an intrinsically ordered, discontinuous, finite cosmos, which is therefore possible to analyze objectively. A musical system based instead on the principles of simultaneity and dynamism relies actively on an infinite and chaotic universe awaiting reordering, re-creation and subjective synthesizing.

  Russolo’s musical conception was not linked to an “objective analysis,” a progressive addition of the first intervals (discontinuous, diatonic even) taken from the overtone series and representing the world by imitation through allegories or models, but to a “subjective synthesis” intended as spiritual/occult creation, fusion of multiplicity (continuous, enharmonic) and chaotic superimposition of all the noises of the world in the cosmological unity of a single “mighty tone.”58

  Enharmonic continuity, though conceptually the opposite of the harmonic series, is no less spiritual. This may have been the spiritual destination that Russolo sought to reach with the spirali di rumori. In line with the positions of the Milanese futurist group, this was obviously spirituality of action, not of meditation; and in fact, Russolo preferred the action of synthesis to the contemplation of analysis. After all, the young Russolo had never had much patience or sympathy for contemplative attitudes; in fact, he gives what he called a “Buddhistically drunk” attitude a resounding drubbing in his manifesto of the art of noises.59

  CHAPTER 9

  The Arte dei “Romori”

  Ed Egli è spento,

  l’amico leonardesco

  di tutte le arti

  —Paolo Buzzi, Ricordi e presagi

  SUPERNATURAL BUILDING SPEED

  Russolo scholars share a particular admiration for the speed with which the artist completed his instrument-building projects.1 Maffina, for instance, in his biography of Russolo, writes: “It is nothing less than surprising that in such a brief period—not just the crafting time needed for their construction (which was perhaps entrusted to various artisans) but also the study time for understanding the various mechanical principles that would lead to the desired results—Russolo was able to perfect fifteen instruments.”2

  The idea of building new musical instruments occurred to Russolo during the performance of Balilla Pratella’s Musica futurista at the Teatro Costanzi on March 9, 1913, and he announced his intention a few days later, on March 11, in the Art of Noises manifesto. It is well documented that Russolo fashioned the first series of intonarumori at breakneck speed during the next few months. As indicated in Russolo’s article “Gl’intonarumori futuristi,” he had by the end of May 1913 completed four instruments: the scoppiatore, crepitatore, ronzatore, and stropicciatore.3 On August 11, 1913, at the Casa Rossa in Milan, the general headquarters of the futurist movement, he presented a special press concert featuring the sixteen instruments that constituted the first complete intonarumori orchestra.4 Maffina observed: “Despite having grown up in a musical family, Russolo was at that time a painter with only basic music training, so one wonders how he could have acquired the knowledge of acoustics and mechanics necessary for the construction of the intonarumori.”5

  Maffina attributed Russolo’s engineering speed in large part to Ugo Piatti, Russolo’s acknowledged assistant at the time. Maffina’s thesis is contradicted, however, by the categorized lists of the futurist members in periodicals and books printed by Marinetti’s Edizioni futuriste di poesia, which serve as a useful barometer for the activities of the evolving movement. There Piatti’s name is not included under the rubric “Arte dei rumori” but only that of “intonarumori.” This is the rubric an assistant, or mechanic, would belong to; in fact, “docile mechanic” is how Cangiullo referred to him in connection with Russolo.6 In these lists Russolo incontrovertibly occupies the dominant position. His is the brain behind the project—a fact confirmed by the absence of Piatti’s name on all the patents.

  Maffina’s thesis appears all the more curious given that up to this point Piatti, like Russolo, was “only” a painter—and unlike Russolo, he does not seem to have had any interest or training in acoustics and mechanics (let alone a family musical heritage). Indeed, while overvaluing Piatti’s role, Maffina also undervalued the influence of Domenico Russolo. Russolo’s father had made and maintained watches and clocks and tuned organs and pianos for a living, and surely this instilled in his son some notion of mechanics and its application to acoustics.

  But the father’s influence alone could not have been sufficient inducement for Russolo’s undertaking so difficult a task and accomplishing it in so short a time. A spiritual guide came to Russolo’s help: the legacy and aura of Leonardo da Vinci.

  LEONARDO’S TOUCH

  Russolo’s fascination with occult traditions is demonstrated by his unwavering admiration for the work of Leonardo and for the metaphysical aims that guided his work. Russolo was aware of both Leonardo’s experiments with acoustics and his projects for building mechanical musical instruments. They formed the main inspiration for Russolo’s intonarumori; the rapidity with which he constructed them was the result of his capitalizing on Leonardo’s research.

  Russolo did not apply Leonardo’s principles blindly; rather, he extended them, integrating them into his own aesthetics of sound. His expansion of Leonardo’s ideas remained idiosyncratic, and the result was very much his own. But Leonardo’s theory of acoustics was unquestionably an important source
for Russolo’s revolutionary aesthetics. Leonardo’s support for the infinite division of the semitone influenced Russolo’s (and perhaps Busoni’s) enthusiasm for enarmonia, and Leonardo’s understanding of “noise” (seen in his differentiation between strepido and romore) was the germ for Russolo’s aesthetics of noises. They further shared an interest in the noises of war; the chapter on that topic in Russolo’s The Art of Noises likely depended at least as heavily on Leonardo’s writings on acoustics and ballistics as on Leadbeater’s.

  To what extent was Russolo aware of Leonardo’s work? Given the conflict between futurism and positivistic science, the figure of Leonardo (who to the layman commonly epitomized the triumph of the “thinking subject”) might, at first glance, seem out of place in Russolo’s pantheon. Further, the very notion that a futurist would take inspiration from the past might seem incongruent.

  In fact, Leonardo’s place in Russolo’s pantheon was entirely appropriate. Leonardo’s work was for the most part held in high esteem even in the most radical avant-garde circles of the early twentieth century, including those of the futurists.7 Leonardo’s spiritual side came to futurism through such late nineteenth-century progressive movements as the Decadents and symbolists; the young Russolo, traveling in these circles, was one of the conduits.8 Within Russolo’s set of cultural references, Leonardo was something of an initiate, a man who could sublimate technical knowledge by directing it toward a spiritual goal that was the essence of futurism.

  The hypothesis introduced here is primarily supported by circumstantial evidence, for Russolo never directly acknowledged his conscious and intentional borrowings. Proof of Leonardo’s influence on Russolo is unlikely to be found, given the nature of the futurist movement’s core aesthetics. Nevertheless, my hypothesis explains the coincidences and seemingly unrelated incidents, of which there are too many to ignore.

  LEONARDINE PRESENCES

  During the summer of 1913, Russolo, with Piatti’s help, worked furiously on his intonarumori, but he did not start from scratch. He harnessed Leonardo’s acoustical research and some of his specific designs as a starting point for constructing his instruments. It cannot be coincidental that Russolo lived most of his life in Milan, the city where Leonardo worked actively for many years and developed most of his designs for the construction of musical instruments.

  Young Italian artists of the beginning of the twentieth century grew up knowing about Leonardo’s association with Milan. Boccioni, inviting Gino Severini to Milan in October 1907, used Leonardo’s work as bait: “Prepare yourself to see a city that does honor to Italy or, better still, represents [Italy] all by herself. You will also see masterpieces including Leonardo’s The Last Supper and several of his other works.”9 In his posthumously published diary, La grande Milano tradizionale e futurista, Marinetti sees Leonardo’s presence everywhere in town, from the locks projected and constructed by Leonardo to “dynamize navigation” on the Naviglio Canal, to the titanic monument to Leonardo da Vinci in Piazza della Scala, where he seems to gaze paternally over the ceaseless intellectual—and sometimes physical—disputes around him.10

  Russolo’s relationship with Milan began in 1901, when he was sixteen. His parents had moved to the city earlier, so that his brothers, Giovanni and Antonio, could attend the conservatory, while Russolo was left with an aunt to finish the seminary in Portogruaro. After joining his family in Milan, he took advantage of the respected Accademia di Brera; though he was never regularly enrolled, he was able, with the aid of friends studying there, to keep up with the syllabi and sneak into some of the classes.11 It was probably through his contacts with Brera that Russolo’s passion for the work of Leonardo began.

  Russolo’s fervent interest is confirmed in a statement made by his sister, Anna Maria Russolo, in 1947, when she claimed that starting in 1905 Russolo “devoted his time to the study of Leonardo’s drawing and sketches.”12 The fact that Anna Maria Russolo mentions “drawing and sketches” instead of paintings or frescos tells us two things: that at this point Russolo was interested in studying Leonardo’s process more than its realization, and that he studied Leonardo’s process not in the paintings but in Leonardo’s codices, where most of the sketches are found.

  The interest in Leonardo’s process was perhaps first inspired by the young Russolo’s restoration work on The Last Supper. Typically mentioned in his biographies as a mere curiosity, this experience of restoring art became central to his artistic development. Russolo’s wife, Maria Zanovello, writes that he worked under a supervisor named Crivelli in a group that restored both The Last Supper and Leonardo’s decorations of the Stanze in the Sforza Castle. All later biographical essays echo Zanovello but without adding anything more.13 The name Crivelli seems to be a slip of the pen, for it does not appear in sources about the restoration of The Last Supper, and Russolo never mentioned it.14

  The work of restoration 1904–08 was led, infamously, by Luigi Cavenaghi, the first director of the Scuola Superiore di Arte Applicata all’Industria Annessa al Castello Sforzesco (Advanced School for Arts and Crafts at the Sforza Castle), where Russolo’s close friend Carrà had been a student in 1904–05, just before he enrolled at the Accademia di Brera.

  Although he never mentioned Crivelli in his writings, Russolo does refer to someone named Cavenaghi in a caustic bollettino medico (medical bulletin) written jointly with Carrà for Lacerba, where Cavenaghi is called a stercologo (stoolologist)—a scathingly scatological assessment of the profession of restorer.15 Marinetti, in La grande Milano, remembers having heard a lecture given by Russolo, probably before the bollettino medico, in which Russolo ironically praised Cavenaghi’s “creative” restoration project: “Leonardo’s The Last Supper is a gesticulating agony of colors drowned in the fog of the past. Luigi Russolo talks about that in a crowded lecture on the restorer Cavenaghi and on how a painter’s genius affords him the right, the duty, to scrape away and destroy the frescoes of others artists of genius and substitute his own if they demand the same wall. Meanwhile humidity has lifted flakes of color out of the fading, aging plaster.”16

  Russolo would have met Cavenaghi through Carrà in 1904, the year in which Carrà attended the Scuola Superiore and the year restoration work began. We can suppose that the experience of restoration, the only formal study of art Russolo ever had, marked him profoundly. Here Russolo developed a profound, privileged relationship with this famous Leonardo fresco: a relationship that was bound to continue through the years. As documented in his Al di là della materia, he returned to the crime scene when he was given a personal tour of the 1924 restoration of The Last Supper by the restoration supervisor, Oreste Silvestri.17

  During his early years in Milan, while engaged in fruitful conversation with art students at the Brera Academy and Sforza Castle School of applied arts, attending classes, and helping with the restoration of The Last Supper, Russolo gained familiarity with Leonardo’s artworks and became acquainted with his writings, in particular with the Trattato della pittura.18 But it was probably through Giorgio Vasari’s Le vite de più eccellenti pittori scultori e archittettori (translated as Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects), which Russolo cites frequently in his writings, that he first learned about Leonardo’s musical research.19 Vasari praised Leonardo’s performance abilities and specifically mentions the lyre in the form of a horse’s skull, fashioned as a gift for Ludovico il Moro.20 Vasari’s Le vite may have piqued Russolo’s curiosity and led him to examine Leonardo’s codices.

  Leonardo’s music-related speculations are primarily found in two famous manuscripts: the Codex Atlanticus and Arundel 263. The famous Codex Atlanticus is preserved in Milan’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana, to which Russolo had convenient access. A third, lesser-known, codex, the Codex Trivulzianus, which contains many of Leonardo’s writings on acoustics, is preserved in the library of the Sforza Castle, where Leonardo worked, Carrà studied, Cavenaghi taught, and Russolo lent his services as assistant restorer.

  Both the Codex Atlanticus
and the Codex Trivulzianus were available in facsimile, the former promoted by the Accademia dei Lincei and published in the Hoepli edition of 1894–1904, and the latter available in Hoepli’s edition since 1891. Three additional manuscripts containing Leonardo’s musical projects are preserved in Paris, London, and Madrid—curiously, the only places outside Italy where we know Russolo to have traveled.21

  The source that was most important for Russolo’s development was Arundel 263; folio 175r contains a number of projects for the construction of musical instruments—especially percussion and noise-producing instruments—and reveals mechanical principles that foreshadow the intonarumori (fig. 23). But Arundel 263, which reposed in the British Library, was not available in facsimile until 1923–30.22 Since Russolo did not visit London until June 1914, when he conducted twelve intonarumori concerts at the Coliseum Theater, how could he have known this codex?

  The prominent Leonardo scholar Carlo Pedretti has pointed out that folio 175r was one of several pages from Arundel 263 that Jean Paul Richter, the great pioneer of Leonardo studies, chose to reproduce in facsimile in his Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (London, 1883). Richter’s book was immensely popular, and not simply among Leonardo scholars or restorers: it was nothing short of a blockbuster. Russolo, given his interest in Leonardo’s work, would have known it.