The Intonarumori: A Symphony of the Machine Age

The Intonarumori (singular Intonarumore), or “noise-intoners,” were a family of acoustic musical instruments invented in 1913 by the Italian Futurist painter and composer Luigi Russolo. They were not designed to produce the harmonious tones of a traditional orchestra, but to generate and control the very sounds that defined the burgeoning 20th century: the roars, hisses, whispers, and clatters of the modern industrial city. Each instrument consisted of a large wooden sound box, often parallelepiped in shape, attached to a painted metal horn that amplified its sound. Inside, a hidden mechanism of gears, wheels, and stretched diaphragms, activated by a hand-crank, produced a specific type of “noise-sound.” A lever on top of the box allowed the performer to manipulate the pitch, creating a sliding scale of atonal melodies. The Intonarumori were the physical embodiment of Russolo's revolutionary manifesto, “The Art of Noises”, which argued that the Industrial Revolution had created a new sonic palette for humanity. Music, he declared, must break free from the “limited circle of pure sounds” and embrace the rich, complex acoustic life of machinery, crowds, and urban landscapes. They were, in essence, the world's first noise orchestra, a radical attempt to compose a symphony not of strings and woodwinds, but of the very soul of the Machine Age.

The story of the Intonarumori begins not in a workshop, but in the fevered intellectual climate of early 20th-century Italy. This was an era of profound transformation, a time when the rhythmic clang of the factory hammer and the whistle of the Steam Locomotive were overwriting the pastoral symphonies of the past. Society was accelerating, and at the vanguard of this cultural acceleration was a movement of artists and thinkers who called themselves Futurists. Led by the charismatic poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Futurism was a bombastic, aggressive, and intoxicating ideology that worshipped speed, technology, youth, and violence. It sought to demolish the museums, libraries, and academies of the old world and erect in their place a new culture forged in the crucible of the industrial city. Within this circle was a pensive painter named Luigi Russolo. Unlike many of his peers, who channeled their Futurist zeal onto the canvas, Russolo became obsessed with the dimension of sound. The catalyst for his epiphany was a concert by his friend and fellow Futurist composer, Francesco Balilla Pratella, in 1913. While the music was daring by contemporary standards, Russolo found it disappointingly timid. It still clung to the logic of the traditional orchestra, a relic of a bygone era. Walking out of the Roman theatre into the cacophony of the city, Russolo had a revelation. The real music of the 20th century wasn't happening in the concert hall; it was roaring, screaming, and humming all around him. The trundling of trams, the metallic shriek of workshop saws, the murmur of the crowd, the percussive slam of a closing steel door—these were the true sounds of modern life. On March 11, 1913, Russolo poured this revelation into a letter to Pratella, a document that would become one of the most influential texts in 20th-century music: the manifesto of “The Art of Noises” (L'Arte dei Rumori). “The art of music,” he wrote, “at first sought and achieved purity, limpidity and sweetness of sound. Then it amalgamated different sounds, intent on caressing the ear with suave harmonies.” But this, he argued, was no longer enough. The human ear had evolved. “Today,” he declared, “noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibility of men.” Life was no longer silent. The machine had been born, and with it, a new sonic universe. This manifesto was more than a mere provocation; it was a work of profound sociological and acoustic insight. Russolo was proposing a fundamental redefinition of music itself. He wasn't just suggesting that noise could be musical; he was arguing that it was the essential music of his time, and that to ignore it was to be deaf to the pulse of modernity. He systematically cataloged the sounds of his world, arranging them into six distinct “families of noises” that read like a poem of the factory floor:

• Group 1: Roars, Thunderings, Explosions, Hissing roars, Bangs, Booms
• Group 2: Whistling, Hissing, Puffing
• Group 3: Whispers, Murmurs, Mumbling, Muttering, Gurgling
• Group 4: Screeching, Creaking, Rustling, Buzzing, Crackling, Scraping
• Group 5: Noises obtained by beating on metals, woods, skins, stones, pottery, etc.
• Group 6: Voices of animals and men: Shouts, Screams, Shrieks, Wails, Hoots, Howls, Death rattles, Sobs

For each of these families, he envisioned a new instrument capable of mastering and “intoning” them—of giving them melodic and rhythmic form. The manifesto was a blueprint, a philosophical call to arms. The next step was to move from theory to reality, to build the machines that would give this new art its voice.

With the ink on his manifesto barely dry, Russolo, with the crucial assistance of his friend and fellow artist Ugo Piatti, retreated into his Milan workshop. The painter became an engineer, the theorist a craftsman. Their goal was audacious: to construct an entirely new type of orchestra from scratch, an ensemble of instruments that could harness the chaotic energy of noise and bend it to a composer's will. The result of their tireless experimentation was the Intonarumori. From the outside, each instrument was a starkly modern object. It was an angular, brightly painted wooden box, typically measuring around 80 cm high, with a large, conical horn of painted metal emerging from its front like a primitive loudspeaker. The visual effect was somewhere between a piece of Cubist sculpture and a piece of industrial equipment, a perfect fusion of art and the machine. But the true ingenuity lay within. The internal mechanism was a masterclass in acoustic bricolage. The sound's origin was a simple gut string, similar to one found on a Violin or Cello. This string was attached to a drum-like diaphragm, often made of treated animal skin. To produce a sound, the performer turned a crank on the side of the box. This crank operated a set of gears that spun a rosined wheel, which in turn rubbed against the gut string, causing it to vibrate. The vibrations were transferred to the diaphragm, which amplified them, and the resulting sound was projected powerfully out of the horn. The genius of the design, however, was in its control system. A large lever extended from the top of the box. By pushing or pulling this lever, the performer could precisely alter the tension of the gut string. Increasing the tension raised the pitch; decreasing it lowered the pitch. This allowed for a seamless glissando across a range of about one to two octaves, enabling the Intonarumori to play not just a single, static noise, but a fluid, atonal melody. It was, in a sense, a hurdy-gurdy redesigned to roar and screech rather than to sing. Russolo and Piatti did not build just one such machine; they built an entire family. By meticulously varying the size and shape of the sound boxes, the material of the diaphragms, and the speed of the rotating wheels, they created 27 distinct types of Intonarumori, each corresponding to the families of noises outlined in the manifesto. There was the Urlatore (Howler), the Rombatore (Rattler), the Crepitatore (Crackler), the Stroppicciatore (Rustler), and the Ronzatore (Buzzer), among others. Each came in different registers—soprano, alto, tenor, bass—allowing for the creation of complex, layered compositions. When assembled, they formed the Gran Ballo Futurista, an orchestra that looked and sounded like nothing the world had ever seen or heard before. It was a mechanical choir ready to sing its hymn to the new century.

The debut of this noise orchestra was not a quiet affair. After a preliminary demonstration in Modena in June 1913, the first grand public concert took place at the prestigious Teatro dal Verme in Milan on April 21, 1914. The air in the opulent, velvet-lined hall was thick with anticipation and hostility. The audience was a volatile mix of curious intellectuals, high-society patrons, and a large contingent of traditionalist music lovers who had come to defend the honor of Verdi and Puccini. On stage, arranged like a strange mechanical choir, stood the Intonarumori, their brightly colored horns aimed at the crowd like cannons. Marinetti himself gave a fiery introductory speech, priming the atmosphere for confrontation. When Russolo took to the podium and the performers began to turn the cranks of their machines, the theatre erupted. The sound that filled the hall was an unprecedented assault on the senses. It was not the dissonant but still recognizable language of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which had caused its own riot in Paris the year before. This was something else entirely: a structured, composed cacophony of groans, hisses, and mechanical screams that mimicked the urban soundscape with terrifying fidelity. The reaction was immediate and violent. The audience, feeling that their very culture was under attack, began to shout, jeer, and hurl projectiles at the stage. The Futurists in the crowd, ever ready for a brawl, fought back with gusto. The performance of Russolo's compositions, with titles like Risveglio di una città (Awakening of a City) and Convegno d'automobili e d'aeroplani (Meeting of Automobiles and Airplanes), was completely drowned out by the riot it had provoked. Fists flew, insults were exchanged, and the police had to intervene. For the Futurists, the evening was a spectacular success. The riot was proof that their art was potent, that it had struck a nerve and shaken the bourgeoisie from their complacent slumber. From a sociological perspective, the Milan riot was a pivotal moment in the history of the avant-garde. The visceral rejection of the Intonarumori was not merely an aesthetic judgment; it was a cultural battle. The noise produced by Russolo's machines was the sound of a future that many found terrifying. It symbolized the chaos of the city, the dehumanizing power of the factory, and the looming threat of mechanized warfare, all of which stood in stark opposition to the perceived order and civility of 19th-century culture. Despite, or perhaps because of, the scandal, the Intonarumori became an international sensation. In June 1914, the noise orchestra performed at the London Coliseum, one of the city's largest and most famous variety theatres. Here, the context was different. Presented on a bill between a troupe of acrobats and a comedy act, the Intonarumori were treated less as a serious musical revolution and more as an eccentric curiosity, an example of “Futurist foolishness.” Yet, they left a deep impression on the London artistic scene. Reports confirm that Igor Stravinsky was in the audience and was “enchanted” by the sounds. Other influential figures like the conductor Leopold Stokowski and the composer Maurice Ravel also expressed serious interest, recognizing the profound musical questions Russolo was asking. A planned tour of America was in the works. The Intonarumori were poised to spread their mechanical gospel across the globe.

Just as the Intonarumori were reaching the zenith of their fame and notoriety, history intervened. The outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914 shattered the cultural landscape of Europe. The Futurists, fervent nationalists and worshippers of war's “cleansing” power, eagerly enlisted. Luigi Russolo joined an alpine battalion and served on the front lines, where he suffered a severe head wound that would require multiple surgeries and years of recovery. The war that his movement had glorified effectively silenced his orchestra. The instruments were packed away, and the momentum was lost. After the war, a changed and wounded Russolo attempted to revive his project. The world, however, had also changed. The playful, provocative pre-war avant-garde had given way to a more somber, reflective modernism. Still, Russolo persisted. In the 1920s, he moved to Paris, the new capital of the art world, and continued to refine his ideas. He developed a new, more sophisticated instrument called the Russolo-phone, or Noise Harmonium. This was a keyboard-based instrument that consolidated the mechanisms of several different Intonarumori into a single console, allowing one performer to play multiple types of noises at once. It was a significant technological leap, a step toward making noise music more practical and accessible for a single composer-performer. He used this instrument to compose scores for early avant-garde films and held several concerts in Paris in 1921. But the cultural moment had passed. The art world was now captivated by Dadaism and Surrealism, and while Russolo was respected as a pioneer, his noise machines were seen as a relic of the pre-war Futurist explosion. Eventually, disillusioned with the music world, he abandoned his inventions and returned to his first love, painting, pursuing a mystical, theosophical style that was a world away from his aggressive Futurist beginnings. The fate of the original Intonarumori is one of the great tragedies of modern art history. The complete orchestra, which Russolo had managed to keep together through the war, was stored in his Paris studio. There, in the chaos and destruction of the Second World War, they vanished. The most likely account is that they were destroyed in a bombing raid, though it is also possible they were simply dismantled for scrap or left to rot in obscurity. Whatever their precise end, they were gone. All that remained were Russolo's patents, a handful of scratchy recordings, some photographs, and the incendiary power of his manifesto. The physical voice of the Machine Age had fallen silent, transforming the Intonarumori from a living orchestra into a lost artifact, a legendary ghost in the history of music.

Though the physical instruments were lost to the ravages of history, the conceptual revolution they unleashed has never ceased to reverberate. The Intonarumori may have been silenced, but their echo proved to be more influential than their original roar. The Art of Noises became a foundational text for virtually every subsequent movement that sought to expand the definition of music. The idea that any sound could be a valid artistic material was a Pandora's Box that, once opened, could never be closed again. The most direct conceptual descendants emerged in post-war Paris. In the late 1940s, the composer and radio engineer Pierre Schaeffer began experimenting with recorded sounds, manipulating them on turntables to create compositions he called Musique Concrète. Schaeffer's practice of taking “concrete” sounds from the real world—the whistle of a train, the drip of a tap—and organizing them into music was a direct fulfillment of Russolo's prophecy, albeit achieved through the new technology of the Magnetic Tape Recorder rather than acoustic machines. The quest for new sonic textures, pioneered by Russolo, also fueled the development of electronic music. Instruments like the Theremin and, later, the Synthesizer, were born from the same impulse: the desire to break free from the limitations of traditional acoustic instruments and generate sound from the ground up. John Cage, the great iconoclast of American post-war music, pushed Russolo's philosophy to its logical conclusion with his piece 4'33“, in which the “music” is composed of the ambient noises of the concert hall itself. It was the ultimate Futurist concert, where the audience and the environment become the orchestra. In the latter half of the 20th century, the spirit of the Intonarumori was resurrected in its rawest form by the pioneers of industrial and noise music. Bands like the German group Einstürzende Neubauten, who used power tools and scrap metal as instruments, and the British pioneers Throbbing Gristle, were creating a new, abrasive music that directly channeled the noise of the post-industrial landscape. They were, consciously or not, the grandchildren of Luigi Russolo, armed with electric guitars and amplifiers instead of hand-cranked boxes. The story, however, does not end with influence alone. In a remarkable final act, the Intonarumori have been physically reborn. Beginning in the late 20th century, a number of musicologists, artists, and instrument builders, working meticulously from Russolo's surviving patents and photographs, have managed to reconstruct these lost machines. Luciano Chessa, a composer and scholar, has led one of the most prominent reconstruction projects, building a full orchestra of 16 certified Intonarumori. These modern replicas are now used in concerts around the world, allowing contemporary audiences to finally experience the sound that so scandalized Milan over a century ago. Heard today, the noise of the Intonarumori may seem less shocking, our ears having been conditioned by a century of electronic and experimental music. Yet, to hear them live is to connect with a pivotal moment of artistic rupture—a moment when a visionary artist dared to declare that the clatter of the factory was as beautiful as a symphony, forever changing the way we listen to the world. The Intonarumori's journey—from manifesto to machine, from riot to ruin, and finally to resurrection—is a testament to the enduring power of a radical idea.