THE NOISE INSTRUMENTS OF LUIGI RUSSOLO

Barclay Brown

The publication of Luigi Russolo's futurist manifesto, 'The Art

of N.oises, in March of 1913 marked the beginning of one of the
strangest and most colorful musical careers of this century. Up
to that time, Russolo's endeavors had been strictly limited to
the graphic arts. Although he had studied the violin and organ
with his father, an amateur church organist, and although his
older brothers, Giovanni and Antonio, were graduates of the
Milan conservatory, Russolo had remained essentially a novice
in musical matters. Even his career in the visual arts had been
spotty: he had been variously employed from time to time as a
designer of theatrical costumes, a restorer of Renaissance paint..
ings, and a free.. lance engraver.
In 1910, however, his professional activities had taken a more
definite direction when he had joined with the Milanese artists
Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carra in forming a painters' branch
of the futurist literary movement created only the year before by
the Italian poet, F. T. Marinetti. Russolo was the most enthusi..
astic, if not necessarily the most gifted, of the new group. The
new freedom of choice and technique offered by the wild and
woolly doctrines of futurism seem to have greatly spurred his
imagination. Some of his paintings of the period, with their
superimposed and freely.. associated images, clearly look ahead to
the surrealism of painters like Chagal.
It is curious, then, that Russolo should have chosen this
moment to launch a totally new career. The change in direction

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can be explained, if it can be explained at all, only by the force of

his new idea. In 'The Art of N.oises Russolo had found a new
vision, one that lured him into an incredible foreshadowing of
music to come. Musician or not, he would pursue it. The last
sentence of the manifesto is charged with the defiant conviction
of a man with a cause: "Bolder than a professional musician
could be, not bothered by my apparent incompetence, and
convinced that audacity has all rights and all possibilities, I have
been able to devine the great renewal of music through 'The Art
of N.oises. "1
This conviction would last for the next twenty years. It would
carry Russolo through the First World War and the turbulent
cultural events of the 1920's. It would take him into the concert
halls of London and Paris. He and his strange instruments would
meet-and impress-some of the greatest musicians of his day,
Stravinsky, Ravel, Honegger and Varese among them. Only
later, after the collapse of his dream of manufacturing and mar..
keting his instruments world.. wide, would he turn away from
his vision to lead the life of a wandering mystic. Penniless now,
he would eke out a scant meal a day through palm readings and
seances, claiming to effect miraculous cures by his powers as a
magnetist.
In his manifesto, Russolo had presented a new musical es..
thetic, an esthetic so audacious for its time that his contem..
poraries (including even Igor Stravinsky) considered him merely
an amusing eccentric. Yet, his thesis was logical enough. If music
is sound, why must these sounds be limited in their variety of
timbre? Why not use sounds like those made by people and
animals, the sounds of nature, the sounds of a modern industrial
society? Thus, Russolo projected a music that would be com..

33

pounded of the innumerable sounds of human existence, " ... the

muttering of motors that breathe and pulse with an undeniable
animality, the throbbing of valves, the bustle of pistons, the
shrieks of power saws, the starting of a streetcar on the tracks,
the cracking of whips, the flapping of awnings and flags."2
Russolo's idea had found its source in the doctrines of
Marinetti, whose Manifesto of Futurism had erupted from the
front page of Le Figaro only a few years earlier. The manifesto
had proclaimed a total revision of esthetic values. Cries like
"Burn the museums!" and "Flood the libraries!" bristle from its
pages.
In his own words, Marinetti had "championed ... a lyricism
that was rapid, brutal, and immediate, a lyricism that must have
appeared antipoetic to all of our predecessors, a telegraphic
lyricism that had none of the taste of books, and as much as
possible the taste of life."3 His favorite themes were modernity
and technology. But while these themes had been used by others
before him, Marinetti was unique in evolving a poetic technique
that was especially suited to these subjects. The new poetical
technique, called free words (parole in liberta), was conceived
during his activities as a correspondent in the Libyan War. It
was essentially an attempt to liberate the sounds of poetry from
the restrictions of grammar and syntax. His primary tool for
achieving this end was the onomatopoeia-the freely.. invented
onomatopoeia. The noises of machine guns, bombs, and shrapnel
became new words in a complex poetical vocabulary. A breath..
less use of language injected new rhythms and variety into the
aural elements of poetry. Set in a poetical context that used
verbs only in the infinitive, that discarded most of the con..
ventions of syntax, that required nouns to fill the role of ad..

34

jectives, even Marinetti's earliest efforts in the new idiom managed

to portray vividly the turmoil, speed, and confusion of modern
warfare.
Marinetti, then, had already conceived and put into practice
the idea of"noise as poetry." There can be no doubt that his idea
helped to shape that of Russolo. For Marinetti, the realization of
the idea had been the evolution of a new poetic language. For
Russolo, it was the creation of a new model for musical soundand the construction of an entire orchestra of incredible instru..
ments to embody that model.
Thus, probably even before the publication of his manifesto,
Russolo abruptly abandoned the graphic arts and turned his
studio into a workshop. Together with another Milanese painter,
Ugo Piatti, he toiled literally night and day to create mechanical
instruments that could realize the music of noises envisioned by
the manifesto. Only a few weeks after the appearance of the
manifesto, the first of the new instruments was ready for a
public demonstration at Modena. The instrument, a burster
(scoppiatore) as Russolo named it, produced a noise similar to
that of an early automobile engine. The noise could be produced
throughout the pitch range of "ten whole.. tones," including all
intermediate microtones. The new instrument was greeted with
a mixture of serious consideration and raucous derision. Other
instruments followed quickly: a hummer (which sounded like an
electric motor), a rubber (with a metallic scraping sound), and a
crac~ler (somewhat like a cross between a mandolin and a
machine gun).
Barely two months later, an audience invited to Marinetti's
home in Milan could hear an orchestra of sixteen such instru..
ments in a performance of two compositions written by Russolo

35

himself, Awa~ening of a City, and 'The Meeting of Automobiles

and Airplanes.
Guests at the event included a number ofpress representatives,
among them an anonymous correspondent of the London Pall
Mall Gazette, who later published an account of the gathering.
His description of Russolo's first composition, Awa~ening of a
City, provides a glimpse of the strong impression that this
concert must have made upon its listeners:
At first a quiet even murmur was heard. The great city was
asleep. Now and again some giant hidden in one of those
queer boxes snored portentiously; and a new.. born child cried.
Then, the murmur was heard again, a faint noise like breakers
on the shore. Presently, a far.. away noise grew rapidly into a
mighty roar. I fancied it must have been the roar of the huge
printing machines of the newspapers.
I was right, as a few seconds later hundreds of vans and
motor lorries seemed to be hurrying towards the station,
summoned by the shrill whistling of the locomotives. Later,
the trains were heard, speeding boisterously away; then, a
flood of water seemed to wash the town, children crying and
girls laughing under the refreshing shower.
A multitude of doors was next heard to open and shut with
a bang, and a procession of receding footsteps intimated that
the great army of bread.. winners was going to work. Finally,
all the noises of the street and factory merged into a gigantic
roar, and the music ceased.
I awoke as though from a dream and applauded. 4
This first, private concert was seemingly the only occasion on
which Russolo allowed his listeners to view the interior of the

36

instruments. According to the reporter, the instruments con..

tained "drum skins, wooden disks, brass plates or bagpipes, all
set into motion by hand spikes."
Another clue to the nature of this composition is found in
two pages of the score that were later published in the Florentine
literary magazine Lacerba. (The rest of the score, as well as all of
Russolo's other scores have vanished.) These two pages display
the constant use of drones and glissandos. Although the in..
dividual entrances ofthe instruments and the presence ofcontrary
motion in the parts give the impression of polyphony, the music
has a clearly harmonic intent. The first of the two pages seems
to be loosely based on a chord intervallically constructed like a
dominant seventh with the root of G.
Unfortunately, none of this can recreate the actual sound of
the music. Not one of Russolo's instruments-and he built many
more than the original sixteen- has survived. Some are known
to have been destroyed during the Second World War; the rest
have simply disappeared. Russolo's own descriptions of the
sounds they produced are largely based on analogy, so that his
reader is required to make a mental composite of several different
qualities. Even the one surviving phonograph recording of the
instruments playing together with a conventional orchestra,
made in 1921, fails to give more than a tenuous idea of the sound
of the instruments. The two short pieces contained on the
recording, pieces written by Russolo's brother Antonio, both
use the instruments en masse, thus obscuring their individual
sounds. The primitive technology of the recording leaves even
their collective sound in doubt.
Barring the discovery of actual specimens of the instruments,
a prospect that seems extremely unlikely, the only hope of

37

recapturing their sounds is through reconstructing the instru.. .

ments on the same principles that they were originally built.
Russolo, looking forward to the possibility of marketing them,
was reluctant to reveal the details of their construction. Never.. .
theless, from his own early descriptions, from several patents
that he later made, and from a slight legacy of notes and photo.. .
graphs, it is possible to piece together not, only his general
methods but in a number of cases also the details of the instru.. .
ments.

Physically, the noise instruments were boxes of various colors

and sizes, each with an impressive horn protruding from its
front. In describing the interior of the instruments, the nameless
correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette several times mentions
the inclusion of "drums and drumskins." The inclusion is sig.. .
nificant. In an article published in Lacerba at the beginning of
July 1913, Russolo defined the importance of these drums. " ... A
single taut diaphragm," he wrote, "through the variation of its

tension produces a scale of ten whole'tones, with all the inter'

mediate semitones, quarter'tones, and smaller fractions of a tone.
The preparation of the material for this diaphragm, in special
chemical baths, varies according to the timbre of the noise
desired. By varying the means of exciting the diaphragm, other
noises can be obtained, with the same possibilities of varying the
pitch."s
Russolo's diaphragm, whatever its nature, was stretched upon
an ordinary drum frame (a detail known from photographs of the
interior of the instruments). The usual method of varying the

42

tension was by pulling on a wire connected to its center. This

pitch,defining mechanism, in other words, was a refined version
of the washtub bass.
By various means of exciting either the wire or the drumskin
itself, Russolo was able to produce a great variety of noises. The
hummer (or ronzatore), one of the instruments whose mechanism
is known from a photograph, vibrated a metal ball against the
drumskin through the action of a small electric motor. Although
the motor is not visible in the photograph, the mechanism was
more complex than might be expected, since the photograph
shows an additional mechanism to move the ball back from the
skin as the tension increased, thus allowing the ball to continue
to vibrate freely.
A second photograph shows a mechanism that excited the
wire attached to the skin rather than the skin iteslf. Shallow
grooves have been filed into the rotary blade that turns against
the wire. A system of gears and shafts transmits the motion
generated by turning a hand spike to the blade. In the back,
ground is the lever that tightens the skin. The photograph is not
labeled; but when the instrument was reconstructed by copying
the details of the photo, it produced a sound that matched fairly
closely the one that Russolo describes for the rubber, or strop--piciatore.
In at least one of the instruments, the whistler or sibilatore,
the vibration was apparently transmitted to the skin by means
of the air pressure within an air--tight drum. A patent made by
Russolo in 1921 may have represented a simplified version of this
instrument. Russolo specifies that the telescoping organ pipes
were tuned to the tones of a major triad. As the pipes were
telescoped a metal roller automatically changed the tension of
the skin. The windchest of the instrument may have been the

43

"bagpipes" observed by our correspondent.

Although Russolo avoided any description of the noise"'gener..
ating mechanisms of his creations, he left rather detailed descrip..
tions of the noises that they produced. In all, the instruments
generated twelve distinctive noises, and for the most part, each
of these noises was produced by three different sizes of the
instrument: large, medium, and small. Here is a complete list of
the twelve types:
1. The howler: a noise somewhere between that of a tra..
ditional string instrument and that of a siren
2. The roarer: a rumbling noise in the low.. pitched instruments
3. The crackler: a metallic crackling noise in the high.. pitched
instruments; a strident metallic clashing in
the low ones
4. The rubber: a metallic scraping sound
5. The hummer: a noise resembling the sound of an electric
motor
6. The gurgler: a noise like that of water running through the
rain gutters of a house
7. The hisser: a hissing or roaring noise like that produced by
heavy rain
8. The whistler: a noise like the whistling or howling of the
wind
9. The burster (1): a noise like that of an early automobile
engine
10. The burster (2): a noise like the falling and shattering of
dishes or pottery
11. The croaker: a noise like the croaking of frogs
12. The rustler: a noise resembling the rustling of l~aves or of
silk.

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Some of these instruments, like the hummer, the rubber, and

the whistler, have ready.. made descriptions. For others, such as
the howler, the crackler, and the roarer, the details of construc..
tion may be gathered from various comments made by Russolo.
The mechanisms of still others may be guessed at from scattered
observations of contemporaries. A few remain entirely prob..
lematical.
It seems likely that the first four instruments of the twelve,
the howler, the crackler, the roarer, and the rubber, formed a
group that shared a common means of sound production. In all
of these, a wooden or metal disk turned against the wire attached
to the center of the drumskin. Russolo stated in an unpublished
article 6 that the roarer and the crackler shared a common prin..
ciple of sound production with the enharmonic bow. The en..
harmonic bow, known from a patent, was a metal rod with
periodic grooves or indentations that was drawn across strings
of a conventional string instrument to produce a new timbre.
The photograph of the rubber actually shows a metal disk with
such indentations. The correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette
specifically mentions "brass plates." Russolo himself groups to'"
gether the howler and the roarer, the crackler and the rubber, as
pairs of instruments identical in range, which may well indicate
a similarity of construction. 7
Experiments in reconstructing the instruments show that a
wooden disk with an even but roughened rim, turning against
the wire that connects with the drumskin, produces a sound
much like that which Russolo describes for the howler. A
wooden disk with indentations produces a noise similarly matched
to the description ofthe roarer. A metal disk with teeth like those
of a ratchet makes a noise like that of the crackler. A metal disk
with shallow indentations produces a sound like the rubber.

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Efforts have been made to reconstruct three of the instruments

that fall in this group: the howler, the crackler, and the rubber.
Russolo has left two descriptions of the noise made by each of
these instruments, one in a book published in 1916,8 the other in
a letter written to Balilla Pratella in 1921. 9
According to Russolo the howler was the most musical of the
noise instruments. Its howling was almost human in character,
though it recalled the siren to some extent. It lent itselfespecially
well to legato passages, rather like the glissando of the violin. It
was doleful, velvety, and soft, a mysterious and suggestive
instrument.
The instrument was played, like the majority of the noise
instruments, by turning a crank with the right hand. The crank
set into motion a wooden disk that turned against the wire
leading to the drumskin. The left hand moved a lever that
regulated the tension of the wire. Attached to this lever was a
pointer that could indicate on a written scale the pitch that the
instrument was producing. Some of these details can be seen in
the photograph of the reconstruction. The pitch range of the
reconstructed instrument is smaller than that described by
Russolo-Iess than a tenth, in fact. The reduced range is probably
attributable to the material of the drumskin. Like all of Russolo's
instruments, it can be tuned. In addition, the position of the
wooden disk in relation to the wire can be adjusted.
The crackler Russolo described as a little like the mandolin. It
produced a metallic crackling, unlike the sound of any other
musical instrument. It was as loud as a trumpet, although it
could produce single tones of a tinkling delicacy.
In the crackler, the noise is produced by turning against the
'wire a metal disk with teeth rather like those of a ratchet.
Russolo's disk must have had fewer teeth than the one used in

46

the reconstructed instrument, since it is fairly difficult to produce

single tones (one tooth at a time) on the present instrument. In
this regard, it must be said that none of the reconstructed
instruments necessarily sounds exactly like the instruments of
Russolo. There are too many variables involved: the number of
teeth, the thickness and composition of the wire, the placement
of the bridge (which influences the overtones), the nature of the
drumskin. In terms of mathematical probability, it is unlikely
that they are exact duplicates of Russolo's instruments. But
they are undoubtedly similar in character, since they are con..
structed on the same principles.
.
Another reconstruction IS the gurgler, or gorgoliatore, one of
the most colorful of the noise instruments. The gurgler produced
a sound like that of rain running through the gutters of a house.
According to Russolo, the instrument produced a curiously
rhythmic metallic sound. Also, by depressing a stop a second
noise, like the hissing roar of heavy rain, could be added to the
first. This stop was another of Russolo's twelve basic timbres. It
was called the hisser, or scrosciatore.
The sound of the gurgler is created by a metal ball on a spring'"
like wire. The ball is caused to vibrate against the wire leading
to the drumskin. From time to time the ball rebounds from the
wire with different degrees of force, thus creating the curious
rhythm mentioned by Russolo. Depressing a lever brings a
number of spring.. like wires to rest lightly on the drumskin
itself. The wires are made to vibrate by the same motor as the
gurgler. Therefore, this mechanism, which produces the noise of
the hisser, cannot be made to sound independently of the gurgler.
The single, battery.. powered motor is activated by a button on
top of the instrument. The gurgler does not produce the sound

47

of running water but of water running through a rain gutter

(the difference is considerable). The hisser, on the other hand, is
remarkably similar to the sound of heavy rain. As Russolo
commented, despite its apparent weakness of sound the instru..
ment is very clearly audible.
Toward the end of 1921, Russolo began planning the construc..
tion of an instrument that could produce the noises of a number
of his previous instruments. The planning and construction of
the first of these instruments required several years. The in..
strument was completed only in the spring of 1924. The noise
harmonium, as he called it, had three short keyboards with keys
like those of the piano. The openings for the three drums that
the keyboards controlled are evident in the photograph. In the
summer of 1924 he constructed another such instrument; and in
November of the same year he presented a demonstration of the
two instruments at the First National Futurist Congress in
Milan in a lecture entitled "Unification of the Noise Instruments
in the Noise Harmoniums (5 Keyboards, 8 Timbres)."
In 1927 he finished the construction of a single noise har..
monium that produced all twelve basic noises. This instrument,
as he related in an article published in Melos,IO abandoned the
use of keys to return to the pitch"'controllevers of the original
instruments. Still another version of the instrument was pro..
duced in 1928. This last version was eventually lodged at Studio
28 in Paris, where it frequently accompanied silent movies. It
was through this instrument that the legend of Russolo lingered
on into the 1930's.
Although none of the reconstructed instruments are exactly
reproductions of those of Russolo, they may serve to give some
idea of the character of his instruments, and perhaps bring a

48

touch of reality to a colorful legend. In some respects Russolo

was far ahead of his time. He was probably not only the inventor
of the first mechanical synthesizer but the first major exponent
of musical synthesis itself. He seems to have been the first
individual of this century to set before himself the deliberate and
exclusive goal of creating a new music from artificially generated
sounds. If he failed to obtain the personal recognition that he so
greatly deserved, his efforts were not without result. His real
vindication lies in the course of musical thought in this century,
especially in the past several decades. He was unfortunately a
spirit too far ahead of his time.

NOTES
1. Luigi Russolo, "L'Arte Dei Rumori, Manifesto Futurista"
(Milan, 1913), p. 4.
2. Russolo, Ope cit., p. 2.
3. Quoted from Russolo, L'Arte Dei Rumori (Milan, 1916), p.
S3 f.
4. Pall Mall Gazette (London), Nov. 18, 1913.
S. Russolo, "GI'intonarumori futuristi," Lacerba (July 1, 1913),
p.140.
6. "L'archet enharmonique," now in possession of Russolo's
nephew, Bruno Boccato at Sesto Calende in Lombardy.
7. Russolo, L'Arte Dei Rumori, p. 77
8. L'Arte Dei Rumori.
9. The letter, dated August 19, 1921, is now in the possession
of Dr. Ala Pratella.
10. Melos (VII/I) January 1928, pp. 12.. 14.