Chapter 22, Futurism and Noise in Music

Chapter 22, Futurism and Noise in Music


A recreation of Italian Futurist performance, Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcHJySm7ZO0


In this section of the text by Dr. Hanning, there are real and genuine challenges to tonality that go beyond the serialism and so called “atonality” of Schoenberg. To understand this we must first come to a concrete (or at least semi-concrete) definition of what musical instruments really are and what musical sound really is. According to Peter Seabrook from London’s Open University: “what we really want from a musical instrument is to be able to use it to produce sounds in a controlled and predictable manner. Both our pitched instruments (violin, flute, trumpet) and our unpitched instruments (maracas, castanets) satisfy this criterion. A barking dog and breaking waves do not satisfy the criterion because neither produce sounds in a predictable manner nor can the production of the sounds be humanly controlled.” (Seabrook, OpenLearn) We should note; there is a distinction though, a snare drum does not produce a discernable pitch the way a cello or even a timpani does, that is because these are noise producing instruments (irregular sound waves) whereas melodic instruments produce pitch (regular sound waves). This is the reason why serialism cannot truly be called “atonal,” it is due to the fact that the 12 pitches that make up any row are still in essence tonal as our ear perceives the regular sound waves in order to discern pitch. Therefore; the futurist notion of combining noise with more traditional instruments is in no way new to western music, because some sort of percussion has traditionally been involved in music making.



A dance work by Jean Baptiste Lully, featured in the film All the Mornings of the World, hear the beating drum providing a rhythmic figure for the piece. Original URL:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grbq6AoquhI

There were also early attempts at including novel sounds into the orchestra, let us examine Leopold Mozart’s “Toy” Symphony:



Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDnrL46wY44


But where does it all end? Didn’t the futurist’s notion of noise-music die out after their machines were destroyed? Perhaps, but the effect of the challenge to tonality was being felt all around the world, and many things which we as music listeners take for granted are in use today because of the futurists and their ilk. Let us examine a piece by Varese titled “Ionization” for percussion ensemble and a fire siren:



Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TStutMsLX2s


A completely percussive piece is nothing novel at this point, however; surely “Ionization” won’t be topping the pop charts, though the effect of noise making music is still there. To show continuity, take for instance the sampled musical sounds in contemporary hip-hop, more and more these are non-pitched sounds which are either appreciated as is or fed through an electronic sampler to give it a semblance of pitch. Please listen to the song “Chicken Noodle Soup” (which also makes use of a siren) by Young B for an illustration:



Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwMIlGYUZ3g


Finally, we can look at one of the most ground-breaking artists of the 20th/21st century, Bjork. In the song “Declare Independence” there is virtually no melodic material, save for a distorted guitar that loops under the artist’s shouting. This is essentially the culmination of electronic experimentation coupled with punk-rock’s political and offensive edge to produce something that has been a long time in the works:



Original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igOWR_-BXJU


So it is clear to see that noise has always existed alongside tonal sounds in music, what is novel in the futurists and those who came after was the emphasis that noise sounds took. Now it seems just as valid to have entire songs or pieces of music centered around noise elements where pitch can be relegated to a singer or solo instrument, or (in the case of Bjork and Young B) not.

Works Cited

Hanning, Barbara R. 2006. Concise History of Western Music. New York: W.W. Norton

Seabrook, Peter.http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=289469.Retrieved Nov 2, 2009. Provided Quote on Musical Instruments.