As a whole, the reading gave me a little insight into a different frame of mind. Although, society as well as music and sound have changed so much since this was written to me, if Russolo could hear music today he would be baffled. His assumptions in today's modern context are very well founded to me, especially;. "Is there any, thing more ridiculous in the world than twenty men slaving to increase the plaintive meeowing of violins? This plain talk will make all music maniacs jump in their seats, which will stir up a bit the somnolent atmosphere of concert halls. Shall we visit one of them together?" He is so right- and nowadays no one in orchestra is getting paid, and they could easily all be progressing with much more challenging and steady work if they stopped playing old things that barely anyone wants to listen to anyway.
Not saying orchestra's need to be entirely obliterated though as where would we have such beautiful film scores without them?
But what he's basically saying is that we society as a whole needs to break away from this constrained form of musical expression and into something new. Which we have obviously done, but almost too much now. Now there's no constraint in making music- no order or establishment, look at all the bands that don't have choruses in their songs or a specific order. Yet their music is still pretty good. Then there are other commercial acts that disregard artistic integrity as a whole and make stupid music that has no substance and is basically just the same order over and over- no change or anything. Really, the music and noise world to me are at polar opposites now.
One thing I really like about sound and music is that as Louis Armstrong has said "There are no mistakes" just different occurrences, avenues to go down. Even if you do make a mistake it's not something that will necessarily be bad just as in Serenata 1921- it's not like we can judge if he was acutally playing music or was just warming up to me.
Some good quotes:
"For years, Beeth"oven and Wagner have deliciously shaken our hearts. Now we are fed up with
them."
"Although the characteristic of noise is to brutally bring us back to life, the
art of noises must not be limited to a mere imitative reproduction."
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