June 2003

Four Futurist Portraits:

Mercury Rising Before The Sun (Balla)

A painting – swift movement – a winged youth – penetrating sunrays – burnished surfaces.

Sea=Dancer (Severini)

A painting – swirls of brightly coloured shapes – curvature – waves and pirouettes – Severini paints onto the frame.

Unique Forms Of Continuity In Space (Boccioni)

A sculpture – half mammal, half machine – musculature – striding – headstrong – unstoppable.

The Art Of Noises (Russolo)

A manifesto – this portrait is both homage to, and critique of, Russolo and his companions. The homage is directed towards Russolo’s visionary and probing attitude to the possibilities of what music might be, the critique towards his destructive attitude to music of the past and the naïve glorification of the fast-moving and the mechanistic, a trait he shared with all the Futurists.

The melodic material here is drawn from two of Nemorino’s arias in Donizetti’s opera L’Elisir d’Amore. This ‘elixir of love’ could be interpreted ironically as the dynamism of the industrialised world, with which the Futurists were so infatuated. By using a music which Russolo wanted to overthrow (“one of these institutions of musical anaemia”) and by using the despised “groaning organ”, this piece is intended to counter Futurism’s bombast, aggression and exaltation of youthfulness.

Although, at times, Russolo’s ‘ghost’ does indeed use the organ as a ‘noise machine’, the piece is generally slow and monophonic, resisting highly charged movement and simultaneity, two of the elements of the modern world which most fascinated Russolo and his circle.

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