Page 270 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained
P. 270
268
SCIENCE ALONE CAN
INFUSE MUSIC WITH
YOUTHFUL VIGOR
IONISATION (1929–1931), EDGARD VARÈSE
he machine age of the Tides of Manaunaun included tone
IN CONTEXT early 20th century was an clusters to be played with the
T exciting time for avant- forearm, and he went one stage
FOCUS garde artists and thinkers. Their further in Aeolian Harp (1923),
The emancipation of noise
“Futurist” manifestos—most where the performer is required to
BEFORE famously, Italian painter and pluck and sweep the strings inside
1909 Marinetti publishes the composer Luigi Russolo’s Art of the piano rather than use the keys.
Futurist Manifesto, celebrating Noises (1913)—advocated making
a new era of speed, machinery, music out of noises that ranged City noise
and violence. from human shouts and screams Edgard Varèse was the first
to explosions and the sounds of composer to create a complete work
1923 Arthur Honegger’s machines in order to give music scored for a percussion ensemble,
Pacific 231 imitates the sounds a new dynamism. Although early in Ionisation (1931). He had studied
made by steam trains. Futurist events often ended up as at the Paris Conservatoire under
riots and there is little record of the the conservative Charles-Marie
1926 American composer music actually produced, their Widor, but after moving to New
George Antheil’s Ballet ideas influenced composers such York in 1915, he became fascinated
mécanique premieres in as Honegger, Prokofiev, and Antheil
Paris, containing airplane who variously composed music
propellors and a siren. depicting machine-made sounds.
1928 Léon Theremin patents
the first electronic musical The new piano
instrument, the Theremin. Although the 20th century was full Our musical alphabet must be
of experiments aiming to turn noise
AFTER into music, the most successful enriched. … Musicians should
1952 Étude, a work created early attempts came as composers take up this question in deep
from a single sound and its such as Prokofiev and Stravinsky earnest with the help of
manipulation on audio tape. started to treat the piano as a machinery specialists.
percussive instrument rather than Edgard Varèse
a melodic one. The American
composer Henry Cowell was
the first to understand the true
possibilities of unleashing the
“noise” of the piano. In 1917, his
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