Morgan-1994-A New Musical Reality- Futurism, Modernism and The ...

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prevalent idea that painting should become more like music, an autonomouspictorial language of pure colors and form, and that it should do so byrenouncing all ties to external reality and objective representation. As earlyas 1908 the German art historian Wilhelm Worringer argued "thepresupposition that the work of art, as an autonomous organism, standsbeside nature on equal terms and, in its deepest and innermost essence,devoid of any connection with it, insofar as by nature is understood thevisible surface of things." 30 The English critic and painter Roger Fry, writingtwo years later about Cézanne, mentioned "a new courage to attempt inpainting that direct expression of imagined states of consciousness whichhas for long been relegated to music and poetry," and a year afterwardsadded that Cézanne had "recovered for modern art a whole lost language ofform and color." 31 These views reflected the more general belief,fundamental to the whole modernist enterprise, that each art shoulddevelop its own immanent language, fashioned from its own intrinsicproperties and value--a belief that, paradoxically, as often as not was felt tomake these arts more like music.Many painters were consciously aware of their debt to music. Indeed, mostof those associated with abstractionism's earliest phase, whether in theGermanic, expressionistic line, like Wassily Kandinsky (then resident inMunich), or in the French cubist line, like Robert Delaunay and theParis-based Franti?sek Kupka, described their work in musical terms.Kandinsky, who often gave his paintings musical titles, such as Compositionor Improvisation, remarks in a letter written to Schoenberg in 1911: "I amcertain that our own modern harmony [i.e., that of painters] is not to befound in the 'geometric' way, but rather in the anti-geometric, anti-logicalway. This way is that of 'dissonances' in art...in painting, therefore, just asmuch as in music." A few months later he adds: "How immensely fortunate(though only relatively!) musicians are in their highly advanced art, truly anart which has already had the good fortune to forego completely all purelypractical aims. How long will painting have to wait for this?" 32 Delaunay,writing to Kandinsky in 1912, notes that his new "laws" were "based onstudies in the transparency of color, whose similarity to musical notes droveme to discover the 'movement of color.'" 33Kupka seems to be an exception, for in his Création dans les arts plastiques,completed in 1913 (not published until 1923), he remarks:It would be better to treat with greater circumspection thanhitherto the analogies ...between colors and sounds....The fact isthat a piece of music suggests different images to each of itslisteners....In other words, chromaticism in music and themusicality of colors are of value only as metaphors. Such ashame...yet another illusion goes up in smoke. 34But Kupka is referring here to specific analogies between sound and color(about which he is no doubt correct), not to a more general analogy
etween the formal languages of music and abstract art. Moreover, hehimself gave a musical title to the first purely abstract work he exhibited,Amorpha, Fugue in Two Color (1912); and shortly before its appearance, hewas, as he acknowledged, intensely preoccupied with the music of J. S.Bach.VI have taken this excursion to be in a better position to understand theparticular conception of music that developed within the Futurist camp.Consistent with the modernist tradition just sketched, Futurist painters alsowere prone to emphasize the "musicality" of their work. In the 1912catalogue essay for the Paris exhibition, the Futurist idea of "painting ofstates of mind" is explained through a comparison "drawn from theevolution of music":[we] suddenly and purposely intersect each motive with one ormore other motives of which we never give the full developmentbut merely the initial, central, or final notes.As you see, there is with us not merely variety, but chaos andclashing of rhythms, totally opposed to one another, which wenevertheless assemble into a new harmony. 35And there are references to prolongations of the rhythms, and to "spots,lines, zones of color...which, in accordance with a law of our interiormathematics, musically prepare and enhance the emotion of the spectator."36 By the time this essay appeared, however, music had already assumedan explicit role within the Futurist project. This is of considerable interest,since, despite the symbolic importance music enjoyed in the development ofboth literary and visual modernism, almost none of the major avant-gardemovements before Futurism had incorporated a specifically musicalcomponent. 37 Yet the Futurists, with their genius for defining ideas in termsequally applicable to all the arts, quickly accepted it as a central part of themovement's aesthetic platforms and artistic activities.The first indication was Balilla Pratella's 1910 "Manifesto of FuturistMusicians." 38 Pratella was a talented and relatively successful composer ofthirty, but by no means a progressive one measured within internationalmusical circles; and by Futurist standards his initial manifesto isdisappointing. It decries the "shame and filth" of Italy's musical past, and"the intellectual mediocrity, commercial baseness and misoneism" thatmake current Italian music inferior to that of other countries. But it providesonly generalities in response: the need "to proclaim the unique concept ofFuturist music, as absolutely different from music to date, and so to shapein Italy a Futurist musical taste, destroying doctrinaire, academic andsoporific values." 39Pratella's "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Music," issued the following year,offers a more concrete idea of how a Futurist music might be developed:
Page 7: the attributes of immateriality and
Page 11 and 12: technique much favored by Boccioni
Page 13 and 14: e designed and constructed by Russo
Page 15 and 16: seated in ordered arrangement.There
Page 17 and 18: Duchamp's career, three dating from
Page 19 and 20: Undertones of Insurrection: Music,
Page 21 and 22: hereafter abbreviated "EP." For the
Page 23 and 24: 35. "EP," 49; the originals read: "
Page 25 and 26: 47. AN, 27. The original reads:Into
Page 27: 105-38. Realizations by Duchamp of

Morgan-1994-A New Musical Reality- Futurism, Modernism and The ...

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