by Sianne Suicide

Created on: December 30, 2006   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

Otherness: The search for new identities in contemporary composition

Before the age of Futurism and the Art of Noise, classical music and the techniques involved ruled the way popular music was written and performed to the public. At the turn of the Twentieth century classical music composition techniques had started to place boundaries for the emergent composers, who were looking for new and innovative ways to write music. The restricted aims of composers had almost turned full circle in what they could achieve with their given resources. They were on the verge of running out of ideas before they started repeating what the forefathers of classical music had invented. At the beginning of the Futurist age, composers looked at how they could use the small amount of resources they had to generate these sounds. It meant that all formality related to classical playing and composition had to be forgotten. This also meant that they would have to start finding new ways of creating sounds. Conventional instruments posed a problem as the new sounds they wanted to create were noises not a string rich in overtones or a horn that was shrill but pleasing. Francisco Balilla Pratella wanted to disregard harmony, melody and tone in their natural sense and create something new. The futurist's objective was to create a type of music that disregarded much of what the legendary classical composers had taught, and to create something that was totally shocking to the classical world. In 1912, Balilla Pratella wrote the Futurist Manifesto, also known as Musica Futurista making composers acknowledge what he was trying to achieve.

To present the musical soul of the masses, of the great factories, of the railways, of the transatlantic liners, of the battle ships, of the automobiles and aeroplanes. To add to the great central themes of the musical poem the domain of the machines and the victorious kingdom of Electricity. (Musica Futurista: 1912)

In a letter addressed to Balilla Pratella, Luigi Russolo explained how the world before machines was silent. Russolo wrote to Pratella telling him about a new idea of his, the idea of using the noises of the newly introduced machines which were now creating a new background sound to the world. Those new machines provided a huge palette for the upcoming composers to use in their compositions. His ideas expanded beyond the art of composition, towards the art of essentially creating the noises and sounds to be used within their compositions. Although

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