Electronic music might be the newest noise artform to storm mainstream America, but it's actually been around in some shape or form for exactly a hundred years. At first, synths were ridiculed, but now — as we all know — they absolutely rule. DJ Mag USA


charts a historical course through a century of synthetic music... Words:BEN OSBORNE


I


n March 1913, Luigi Russolo, the Italian futurist, stormed out of a classical concert in Milan and published an open letter demanding a new form of modern music. Known as 'The Manifesto For an Art of Noises', his letter described how this music might sound. It was to be made up of modern sounds and the noises of nature; the buzz of electricity cables, hissing of steam and rhythmic beat of the


factory floor. Russolo was an artist, not a musician, but he started making the new music himself and in April 1914 gave the first-ever electronic music performance, using his self-made precursor to the synthesiser — the intonorumori. To the modern ear, Russolo’s noises contain a discernible pre-echo of the synthesiser. But to the unprepared audiences of 100 years ago, it sounded like he was taking the piss. When the crowd couldn’t get their money back, they rioted. Nonetheless, the seed Russolo planted grew into an oak. As Karl Bartos, former Kraftwerk member, explains: “Russolo was the first in the chain of the development of electronic music, followed by Pierre Schaeffer in Paris in the '40s, and Stockhausen in Cologne in the '50s.” There’d been attempts to create electronic instruments before Russolo, but it was after him that electronic


032 djmag.com


instruments got onto a more serious footing. The Theremin was created in 1920 and the first electronic compositions started to be written soon after,


Karl Bartos


Luigi Russolo


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