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l: Music and lts Others:

Noise, Sound, Silence
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What is music? A century ago, the question was fairly easy to answer. But, over
the course of the twentieth century, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish
music from its others: noise, silence, and non-musical sound.
The reasons for this are many. Already at the turn of the nineteenth century,
the music of Debussy, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky challenged tonality on a number of fronts. Not long after, Cowell, Vardse, and Cage began to explore nonpitched sounds. Ethnomusicological research into the nature of music outside of
Europe began to suggest a need to expand the concept of music beyond the narrow and specialized domain it demarcated in the West.
The tape recorder played a crucial role in blurring the lines of distinction
between music and its others. Tape composition allowed the composer to bypass
musical notation, instruments, and perlormers in one step. Further, it gave composers access to what John Cage called "the entire field of sound," making conventional distinctions between "musical" and "non-musical" sounds increasingly
irrelevant.l ln 1948, Pierre Schaeffer broadcast over French radio a "Concert of
Noises," a set of pieces composed entirely from recordings of train whistles, spinning tops, pots and pans, canal boats, percussion instruments, and the occasional
piano. Schaeffer called his new music "musique concrdte," in contrast with tradilional "musique abstraite," which passed through the detours of notation, instrumentation, and performance. Trained as a radio-engineer rather than a musician,
Schaeffer's method of composition bore a closer resemblance to cinematic montage than it did to traditional musical composition. The major European avantgarde composers (Stockhausen, Boulez, etc.) flocked to his Paris studio; but, ultimately, the impact of Schaeffer's work was felt most strongly outside classical
music, for example, in the early tape experiments of Les Paul, the studio manipulations of Beatles producer George Martin, the concrdte pranks of Frank Zappa, the
live tape-loop systems of Terry Riley and the sampling and turntablism of HipHop
DJs from Grandmaster Flash to Q-Bert.
ln his 1913 manifesto, Russolo wrote that the traditional orchestra was no
longer capable of capturing the imagination of a culture immersed in noise, and
that the age of noise demanded new musical instruments he called "noise instruments" (intonarumori). Composer Edgard Vardse dismissed the conventional distinction between "music" and "noise," preferring to define music as "organized
sound." ln his writings of the 1930s, he described his own music as the "collision
of sound-masses," blocks of sound "moving at different speeds and at different
angles." Vardse's use of sirens in the groundbreaking percussion piece lonisation
(1929-31) gestured back to Russolo and forward to the development of electronic
instruments that could provide the "parabolic and hyperbolic trajectories of sound"

introduction

of whlch he dreaml. Two decades laler, in the early 1950s, the European avantgarde became captivated by the extraordinary powers of these electronic instrunrents, which extended the domain of music far beyond that of traditional instrurnental sonorities.
ln the decades that followed, commercial synthesizers tamed these unruly
powers and made tidy electronic instruments available to the general public. By
the 1970s, such instruments had become the norm in rock and dance music. Aiming to revive and celebrate the powers of noise, British and European "industrial"
bands merged punk rock attitudes, performance art sensibilities, and a Russolian
fascination with mechanical noise to forge a retro-futurist music made with found
objects: chains, tire irons, oil drums, and other industrial debris. "lndustrial music"
and the "noise bands" that followed highlighted certain cultural and political features of noise: noise as disturbance, distraction, and threat.
Noise has also functioned as a vehicle for ecstasy and transcendence, shaping tlre musical aesthetic of drone-based minimalists La Monte Young and Tony
Conrad as well as the free jazz players from Albert Ayler and John Coltrane
through David S. Ware and Sabir Mateen. And punk, HipHop, and Heavy Metal
have revalued the notion of noise, transforming it into a marker of power, resistance, and pleasure.
The rise of interest in "noise" in contemporary music has gone hand in hand
with a new interest in its conceptual opposite: silence. With his Zen embrace of
contradiciion, John Cage attempted to erase the distinction between silence and
music, while simultaneously noting that perfect silence is never more than a conceptual ideal, an aural vanishing point. ln the face o{ rising noise levels in urban
and rural environments, composer and acoustic ecologist R. Murray Schafer
called for "the recovery of positive silence" and a subtle attention to the endangered non-musical sounds of our environment. Microphones and headphones
brought the vanishing point of silence within aural reach, forever transforming the
relationship of silence to sound, giving them equal ontological status.
What is music? According to Jacques Attali, it is the constant effort to codify
and stratify noise and silence, which, for their part, always threaten it from without.
From Russolo through DJ Culture, experimental musical practices have inhabited
that borderland where noise and silence become music and vice versa.

i{i'r:liliir
1. John Cage, "Future of Music: Credo," chap. 6, below.

6 o introduction

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Noise and Politics

JACQUES ATTALI

During the 1980s, economic theorist Jacques Attali (1943- ) was Special
Counselor to French President Frangois Mitterand, He subsequently headed
the European Bank for Reconstruciion and Development and is currently
contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine. With the publication of Nolse
in 1977, Attali quickly became one of Europe's leading philosophers of
music. For Attali, music, like economics and politics, is fundamentally a matter of organizing dissonance and subversion-in a word, "noise." Yet Attali
argues that, an all-but-immaterial force, music moves faster than economics
and politics and, hence, prefigures new social relations.

l. . .l Listening to music is listening to all noise, realizing that its appropriation and
control is a reflection of power, that it is essentially political. More than colors and
forms, it is sounds and their arrangements that fashion societies. With noise is
born disorder and its opposite: the world. With music is born power and its opposite: subversion. ln noise can be read the codes of life, the relations among men.
Clamor, Melody, Dissonance, Harmony; when it is fashioned by man with specific
tools, when it invades man's time, when it becomes sound, noise is the source
of purpose and power, of the dream-Music. lt is at the heart of the progressive
rationalization of aesthetics, and it is a refuge for residual irrationality; it is a means
of power and a form of entertainment.
Everywhere codes analyze, mark, restrain, train, repress, and channel the
primitive sounds of language, of the body, of tools, of objects, of the relations to
self and others.
All music, any organization of sounds is then a tool for the creation or consolidation of a community, of a totality. lt is what links a power center to its subjects,
and thus, more generally, it is an attribute of power in all of its forms. Therefore,
any theory of power today must include a theory of the localization of noise and its
endowment with form. Among birds a tool for marking territorial boundaries, noise
is inscribed from the start within the panoply of power. Equivalent to the articulation
of a space, it indicates the limits of a territory and the way to make oneself heard

jacques attali

within it, how to survive by drawing one's sustenance from it.1 And since noise is
the source of power, power has always listened to it with fascination' ln an extraordinary and little known text, Leibniz describes in minute detail the ideal political
organization, tl-re "Palace of Marvels," a harmonious machine within which all of
tlrc sciences of time and every iool of power are deployed.
These buildings will be constructed in such a way that the master of the house
will be able to hear and see everything that is said and done without himself
being perceived, by means of mirrors and pipes, which will be a most important thing for the State, and a kind of political confessional'2

Eavesdropping, censorship, recording, and surveillance are weapons of

power. The technology of listening in on, ordering, transmitting, and recording

fication of musicians and the growth of a new industrial sector. Still, it is an activity
that is essential for knowledge and social relations.

i,i!i*'i'it:;
1. "Whether we inquire into the orlgin of the arts or observe the first criers, we find that
everything in its principle is related to the means of subsistence." Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Essai sur I'indgalit6.

2.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, "Dr6le de pens6e touchant une nouvelle sorte de repr6sen-

tation," ed. Yves Belaval, La Nouvelle Revue FrancaiseTO (1 958): 754-68. Quoted in Michel
Serres, "Don Juan ou le Palais des Merveilles," Les Eludes PhilosophiquesS (1966):389.
3. [A relerence to Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, b. 4, chap. 54.*trans.]

noise is at the heart of this apparatus. The symbolism of the Frozen Words,3 of the
Tables of the Law, of recorded noise and eavesdropping-these are the dreams of
political scientists and the fantasies of men in power: to listen, to memorize-this is
ihe ability to interpret and control history, to manipulate the culture of a people, to
channel its violence and hopes. Who among us is free of the feeling that this process, taken to an extreme, is turning the modern state into a gigantic, monopolizing
noise emitter, and at the same time, a generalized eavesdropping device. Eavesdropping on what? ln order to silence whom?
The answer, clear and implacable, is given by the theorists of totalitarianism.
They have all explained, indistinctly, that it is necessary to ban subversive noise
because it betokens demands for cultural autonomy, support for differences or
marginality: a concern for maintaining tonalism, the primacy of melody, a distrust
of new languages, codes, or instruments, a refusal of the abnormal-these characteristics are common to all regimes of that nature [ . . ]
The economic and political dynamics of the industrialized societies living
under parliamentary democracy also lead power to invest art, and to invest tn art,
without necessarily theorizing its control, as is done under dictatorship. Everywlrere we look, the monopolization of the broadcast of messages, the control of
noise, and the institutionalization of the silence of others assure the durability of
power. Here, this channelizatlon takes on a new, less violent, and more subtle
iorm: laws of the political economy take the place of censorship laws. Music and
the musician essentially become either objects of consumption like everything
else, recuperators of subversion, or meaningless noise.
Musical distribution techniques are today contributing to the establishment of
a system of eavesdropping and social surveillance. Muzak, the American corporation that sells standardized music, presents itself as the "security system of the
1970s" because it permits use of musical distribution channels forthe circulation
of orders. The monologue of standardized, stereotyped music accompanies and

lrems in a daily life in which in reality no one has the right to speak any more.

Except those among the exploited who can still use their music to shout their sut
fering, their dreams of the absolute and freedom. What is called music today is all
too often only a disguise for the monologue of power. However, and this is the
supreme irony of it all, never before have musicians tried so hard to communicate
with their audience, and never before has that communication been so deceiving.
Music now seems hardly more than a somewhat clumsy excuse for the self-glori-

8 o audio culture

jacques attali

"

sacred and reserved for priests, who used it to enrich their rites with mystery. Thus

was born the idea of sound as something in itself, as dlfferent from and indepen-

The Art

of

Noises.'

Futurist Manifesto
LUIGI RUSSOLO

Luigi Russolo (1S85-1947) was a prominent painter in the lialian Futurist

movement. Yet he is best known lor The Art of Noises, among the most
important and influential texts in 20th century musical aesthetics. Wriften in
1913 as a letterto his friend, the Futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pra'
tella, this manifesto sketches Russolo's radical alternative to the classical
musical tradition. Drawing inspiration from the urban and industrial sound'
scape, Russolo argues that traditional orchestral instruments and composi-

tion are no longer capable of capturing the spirit of modern life, with its
energy, speed, and noise. A year after composing ihis letter, Russolo introduced his intonarumori("noise instruments") in a series of concerts held in
London.
None of Russolo's music remains; and the intonarumori were destroyed
in a fire during World War ll. Yet, since the War, Russolo's manitesto has
become increasingly important, inspiring a host of musicians and composers, among them musique concrdte pioneers Pierre Schaeffer and Phrre
Henri, 1980s dance-pop outfit The Art of Noise, "industrial" bands such as
Einstiirzende Neubauten and Test Dept., turntablist DJ Spooky, and sound
artist Francisco L6pez.

1....1 Ancient life was all silence. ln the 19th Century, wlth the invention

of
machines, Noise was born. Today, Noise is triumphant and reigns sovereign over
the sensibility of men. Through many centuries life unfolded silently, or at least
quietly. The loudest of noises that interrupted this silence was neither intense, nor
prolonged, nor varied. After all, if we overlook the exceptional movements of the
earth's crust, hurricanes, storms, avalanches, and waterfalls, nature is silent.
ln this scarcity of noises, the first sounds that men were able to draw from a
pierced reed or a taut string were stupefying, something new and wonderful.
Among primitive peoples, sound was attributed to the gods. lt was considered

10 e

audio culture

dent of life. And from it resulted music, a fantastic world superimposed on the real
one, an inviolable and sacred world. The Greeks greatly restricted the field of
music. Their musical theory, mathematically systematized by Pythagoras, admitted only a few consonant intervals. Thus, they knew nothing of harmony, which
was impossible.
The Middle Ages, with the developments and modifications of the Greek tetrachord system, with Gregorian chant and popular songs, enriched the musical art.
But they continued to regard sound ln its unfolding in time, a narrow concept that
lasted several centuries, and which we find again in the very complicated polyphony of the Flemish contrapuntalists. The chord did not exist. The development of
the various parts was not subordinated to the chord thai these parts produced in
their totality. The conception of these parts, finally, was horizontal not vertical. The
desire, the search, and the taste for the simultaneous union of different sounds,
that is, for the chord (the complete sound) was manifested gradually, moving from
the consonant triad to the consistent and complicated dissonances that characterize contemporary music. From the beginning, musical art sought out and obtained
purity and sweetness of sound. Afterwards, it brought togeiher different sounds,
still preoccupying itself with caressing the ear with suave harmonies. As it grows
ever more complicated today, musical art seeks out combinations more dissonant,
stranger, and harsher for the ear. Thus, it comes ever closer to ihe noise-sound.
This evolution of music is comparable to the multiplication of machines, which
everywhere collaborate with man. Not only in the noisy atmosphere of the great
cities, bui even in the country, which until yesterday was normally silent. Today,
the machine has creaied such a variety and contention of noises that pure sound
in its slightness and monotony no longer provokes emotion.
ln order to excite and stir our sensibility, music has been developing toward
the most complicated polyphony and toward the greatest variety of instrumental
timbres and colors. lt has searched out the most complex successrons of dissonant chords, which have prepared in a vague way for the creation of MUSICAL
NOISE. The ear of the Eighteenth Century man would not have been able to withstand the inharmonious intensity of certain chords produced by our orchestra (with
three times as many performers as that of the orchestra of his time). But our ear
takes pleasure in it, since it is already educated to modern life, so prodigal in different noises. Nevertheless, our ear is not satisfied and calls for ever greater acoustical emotions.
Musical sound is too limited in its variety of timbres. The most complicated
orchestras can be reduced to four or five classes of instruments different in timbres
of sound: bowed instruments, metal winds, wood winds, and percussion. Thus,
modern music flounders within this tiny circle, vainly striving to create new varieties
of timbre.
We must break out of this limited circle of sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.
Everyone will recognize that each sound carries with it a tangle of sensations,
already well-known and exhausted, which predispose the listener to boredom, in
spite of the efforls of all musical innovators. We futurists have all deeply loved and
enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. Beethoven and Wagner have stirred
luigi russolo

1'l

ow nerues and hearts for many yeal-s. Now we have had enough of them' and we
detight nuch more in combining in our thoughts the noises of trarns, of automobile
engines, of cariages and bnwling crawds, than in hearing again the "Eroica" or
the "Pastorale."
We cannot see the enormous apparatus of forces that the modern orchestra
represents without feeling the most profound disillusionment before its paltry
acoustical results. Do you know of a more ridiculous sight than that of twenty rnen
striving to redouble the nrewling of a violin? Naturally, that statemeni will make the
nrusicomaniacs scream-and perhaps revive the sleepy atmosphere of the concfi halls. Let us go together, like futurists, into one of these hospitals for anemic
sounds. Tlrere-tlre first beat brings to your ear the weariness of something heard
before, and makes you anticipate the boredom of the beat that follows. So let us
drink in, from beat to beat, these few qualities of obvious tedium, always waiting
for that extraordinary sensation that never comes. Meanwhile, there is in progress
a repugnant medley of monotonous impressions and of the cretinous religious
ernotion of the Buddha-like listeners, drunk with repeating for the thousandth time
tfir more or less acquired and snobbish ecstasy. Away! Let us leave, since we
cannot for long restrain ourselves from the desire to create finally a new musical
reality by generously handing out some resounding slaps and stamping with both
@ on violins, pianos, contrabasses, and organs. Let us go!
It cannot be objected that noise is only loud and disagreeable to the ear. lt
seems to me useless to enumerate all the subtle and delicate noises that produce
pleasing sensations.
To be convinced oJ the surprising variety of noises, one need only think of the
rumbling of thunder, the whistling of the wind, the roaring of a waterfall, the gurglrng of a brook the rustlinE of leaves, the trotting of a horse into the distance, the
rattling jolt of a cart on the road, and of the full, solemn, and white breath of a city
at nighl. Think of all the noises made by wild and dornestic animals, and of all
those that a man can make, without either speaking or singing.
Let us cross a large modern capital with our ears more sensitive than our
eyes. We will delight in distinguishing the eddying of water, of air or gas in metal
pipes, the muttering of motors that breathe and pulse with an indisputable animality, the throbbing of valves, the bustle of pistons, the shrieks of mechanical saws,
the startinE of trams on the tracks, the cracking of whips, the flapping of awnings
and flags. We will amuse ourselves by orchestrating together in our imagination
the din of rolling shop shutters, the varied hubbub of train stations, iron works,
thread rnills, printing presses, electrical plants, and subways [. .. .]
We want to give pitches to these diverse noises, regulating them harmonically
and rhythmicaliy. Giving pitch to noises does not mean depriving them of all irregular movements and vibrations of time and intensity but rather assigning a degree
or pitch to the strongest and most prominent of these vibrations. Noise differs from
sound, in fact, only to the extent that the vibrations that produce it are confused
and inegular. Every noise has a pitch, some even a chord, which predominates
arnong the whole of its inegular vibrations. Now, from this predominant characteristic pitch derives the practical possibility of assigning pitches to the noise as a
whole. That is, there may be imparted to a given noise not only a single pitch but
even a variety of pitches without sacrificing its character, by which I mean the timbre that distinguishes it. Thus, some noises obtained through a rotary motion can

12 o audioculture

offer an entire chromatic scale ascending or descending, if the speed of the motion
is increased or decreased.
Every manifestation of life is accompanied by noise. Noise is thus familiar to
our ear and has the power of immediately recalling life itself. Sound, estranged
from life, always musical, something in itself, an occasional not a necessary element, has become for our ear what for the eye is a too familiar sight. Noise instead,
arriving confused and irregular from the irregular confusion of life, is never
revealed to us entirely and always holds innumerable surprises. We are certain,
then, that by selecting, coordinating, and controlling all the noises, we will enrich
mankind with a new and unsuspected pleasure of the senses. Although the characteristic of noise is that of reminding us brutally of life, the Art of Noises shoutd
not limit itself to an imitative reproduction. lt will achieve its greatest emotional
power in acoustical enjoyment itself, which the inspiration of the artist will know
how to draw from the combining of noises.
Here are the 6 families of noises of the futurist orchestra that we will soon
realize mechanically:

1. Roars, Thunderings, Explosions, Hissing roars, Bangs,

2. Whistling, Hissing, Puffing
3. Whispers, Murmurs, Mumbling, Muttering, Gurgling

Booms

4. Screeching, Creaking, Rustling, Humming, Crackling, Rubbing

5. Noises obtained by beaiing on metals, woods, skins, stones, pottery, etc.
6. Voices of animals and people, Shouts, Screams, Shrieks, Wails, Hoots,
Howls, Death rattles, Sobs
ln this list we have included the most characteristic of the fundamental noises.
The others are only associations and combinations of these.
The rhythmic motions of a noise are infinite. There always exists, as with a
pitch, a predominant rhythm, but around this there can be heard numerous other,
secondary rhythms.

Conclusions

. Futurist composers should continue to enlarge and enrich the field of

sound. This responds to a need of our sensibiliiy. ln fact, we notice in the talented
composers of today a tendency toward the most complicaied dissonances. Moving
ever farther from pure sound, they have almost attained lhe noise-sound. This
need and this tendency can be satisfied only with the addition and the substitution
of noises for sounds.
2. Futurist musicians should substitute for the limited variety of timbres that
the orchestra possesses today the infinite variety of timbres in noises, reproduced
with appropriate mechanisms.
'1

3. The sensibility of musicians, being freed from traditional and facile

rhythms, must find in noise the means of expanding and renewing itself, given that
every noise offers a union of the most diverse rhythms, in addition to that which
predominates.
4. Every noise having in its irregular vibrations a predominant generat pitch,
a sufficiently extended variety of tones, semitones, and quartertones is easily
luigi russolo

13

attained in the constructbn of tfie instrurnents that imitate it. This variety of pitches

will not deprive a sinEle noise of the characteristics of its timbre but will only
increase its tessitura or extension.
5. TFre practical difficul'ties irwolved in the construction of these instrurnents
are not serious. Once the mechanical principle that produces a noise has been
found, its pitch can be changed through the application of the same general laws
of acoustics. lt can be achieved, for example, through the decreasing or increasing
of speed, if the instrument has a rotary motion. li the instrument does not have a
rotary molion, it can be achieved through differences of size or tension in the
sounding parts.
6. lt will not be through a succession of noises imitative of life but through a
fantastic association of the different timbres and rhythms that the new orchestra
will obtain the most complex and novel emotions of sound. Thus, every instrument
will have to offer the possibility of changing pitches and will need a more or less
extended range.
7. The variety of noises is infinite. lf today, having perhaps a thousand different machines, we are able to distinguish a thousand different noises, tomorrow,
with the multiplicaiion of new machines, we will be able to distinguish ten, tvventy,
ot thirty thousand different noises, not simply by imitation but by combining according to our fancy.
8. Tlrerefore, we invite talented and audacious young musicians to observe
all noises attentively, to understand the different rhythms that compose them, their
principal pitch, and those which are secondary. Then, comparing the various timbres of noises to the timbres of sounds, they will be convinced that the first are
much more numerous than the second. This will give them not only the understanding of but also the passion and the taste for noises. Our multiplied sensibility,
having been conquered by futurist eyes, will finally have some futurist ears. Thus,
the motors and machines of our industrial cities can one day be given pitches, so
that every workshop will become an intoxicating orchestra of noises ;. . . .1

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audioculture