Introduction

Futurism originated from Italy and as 20th century’s first wide-scale avant-garde art movement their influence went into all of the arts: literature, music, the visual arts, architecture, drama, photography, film, dance, fashion, advertisement and even cooking.

The Futurists wrote many manifestos in which they insisted bringing life back into the arts and art back into life.

The movement was launched in 1909 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, while Luigi Russolo, who was actually a painter and sculptor, wrote a manifesto on music called The Art of Noises (L’Arte dei Rumori) in 1913. For the purpose to put his ideas into action Russolo designed and built Noise-Intoners (Intonarumori) to form a small orchestra of instruments to imitate and play with all sorts of noise sounds. After some demonstrations a first concert was given in Milan on April 21, 1914, causing a raw in the audience. Only a few concerts were given with these instruments most notably in Paris and London. The original instruments were destroyed during WWII. Since not many composers or musicians were affiliated with the movement not many works were produced and even fewer have survived as some Futurists opted to destroy their own works with the advent of fascism.

Music

The Futurists took Ferrucio Busoni’s ideas on the renewal of music, added a rejection of past practices and went as far as to bring some of these ideas into practice with the technology that was at their disposal at that time. Where Charles Ives introduced a number of innovations without much ado and Busoni wrote about them without practice, it were the Futurists and especially Russolo that for the first time made an effort to combine both words and deeds.

We futurists have all deeply loved and enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. Beethoven and Wagner have stirred our nerves and hearts for many years. Now we have had enough of them, and we delight much more in combining in our thoughts the noise of trams, of automobile engines, of carriages and brawling crowds, than in hearing again the “Eroica” or the “Pastorale”.
~ Luigi Russolo – The Art of Noises: Futurist Manifesto

We must break this restricted circle of pure sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise sounds.
~ Luigi Russolo

Futurist ideas have been responsible for fundamental innovations in the field of music, but which most were only developed in numerous ways later during the course of the 20th century. The include:
– the introduction of noise sounds as a result of their tone research;
– micro-spacing, later adopted by composers as Xenakis and those working within electronic music;
– improvisation (other than jazz-related);
– alternate scales;
– simultaneity;
– interdisciplinary activity;
– mechanization.

Russolo first gave a demonstration with his Intonarumori in Modena, Italy in 1913, the first official concert was given in Milan, April 21, 1914, which caused a riot. Further concerts in 1914 were in Genoa and London and three concerts after the end of WWI in 1921 in Paris.

Young musicians, once and for all will stop being vile imitators of the past that no longer has a reason for existing.
~ Francesco Balilla Pratella

Unfortunately there weren’t too many Futurist composers at the time these ideas were proposed and even the instruments built by Russolo have been destroyed during WWII. As a result “Futurist” music only came into being when composers like Edgard Varese and John Cage started incorporating their ideas years some decades later.

Conclusion

Although the Futurist movement continued to attract followers and manifestos were being written well into the 1930-s, their most influential spell was from their start in 1909 until the Dada movement, after learning from Futurism first hand, took over the sceptre of being the new “avant-garde”, about ten years later. It was around that time that Futurism’s entanglement with Italy’s rising Fascism coincided with the timing of their own wish to get replaced:

The oldest of us is thirty: so we have at least a decade left to fulfil our task. When we are forty, others who are younger and stronger will throw us into the waste basket, like useless manuscripts. —We want it to happen!
~ The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism – Marinetti

When Marinetti still tried to breath new life into the movement with a lecture in Paris in 1921 it were the Dadaists Tristan Tzara and Francis Pacibia who were handing out leaflets stating that “Futurism has died, From what? From DADA.”