The Symphony of Mechanical Forces
Carol-Bérard and the organization of noise 1908-1928
In this article I want to turn to Paris and consider Carol-Bérard’s La Symphonie des forces mécaniques [The Symphony of Mechanical Forces], a work that has been sketchily mentioned in a number of studies on the history of experimental, electronic and/or noise music.* A few brief details are repeated, but it is often claimed little is known about the work (that was intended to be performed by orchestra and choir, with the addition of motors, electric bells, whistles and sirens) or the composer. There is even uncertainty about the date of composition - possibly 1908 or 1910 before Luigi Russolo and Ugo Piatti’s work on the Art of Noises and their intonarumori / ‘noise tuner’ instruments, or perhaps in the post-WW1 period, and therefore informed by the work of the Italian Futurists. Beyond this, I have found no evidence that the work was ever performed, and it is now generally viewed to be lost. But what is the significance of this work, and Carol-Bérard’s 1928 article ‘Recorded Noises - Tomorrow’s Instrumentation’, for my recent series of articles on John Cage’s The Future of Music: Credo and its sources? In November 2009, Volker Straebel, in a conference paper ‘John Cage’s Reception of Italian Futurism’, described Cage’s research process in 1940 in aid of his efforts to establish an Experimental Music Centre.
He would excerpt the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (July 1936 to July 1940), researched the “U.S. patents in the field of music” issued May through July 1940, and took notes from the magazine Modern Music, 1926-30. To the 1928 volume of the latter, Carol Berard contributed a short essay entitled Recorded Noises – Tomorrow’s Instrumentation, and Cage stated in his notes: “Quotes Russolo.”
As such we know Cage consulted Carol-Bérard’s 1928 Modern Music article (as well as many others in this journal) during his research process, and the aim of this study is to try and pin down what can be known about Carol-Bérard’s work in France, and what elements of his activities and thinking later attracted Cage’s research interest.
Louis Laloy, ‘La Musique de l’avenir’ (1908) and The Future of Music in regard to Composer, Conductor and Orchestra (1910)
Louis Laloy was a French musicologist and writer who was friends with, and wrote books on, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, and Paul Dukas. The subject matter of his 1908 article , ‘La Musique de l’avenir / The Music of the Future’ [Mercure de France, Vol. LXXVI, No. 275, 1 December, pp. 431-3], indicates that ideas concerning the future expansion of the timbral possibilities of music to encompass noise and sound materials were in the Parisian air over 30 years before Cage’s Credo. Laloy wrote
Music … differs from other arts only by particular difficulties, not by its starting point, which is nature itself. But the sound world that it wants to imitate is an unstable world, which one cannot study at leisure, like the painter his model … The musician who works with the notes of the scale is like a landscape painter who would have on his palette only seven or twelve colors, which he would be forbidden to mix. One would nevertheless recognize a tree, a river, a wheat field, but on condition of being aware of the process. This is our case; a day will come when our pastoral symphonies will seem as little nuanced as Byzantine icons; only on that day will music have reached the point where painting is today: the sensations it will give us will be, more or less, those that objects make us feel. It will be freed from these conventions: the scales, which retain, in the immense variety of vibratory movements, only a tiny number of arbitrarily chosen values, and the instruments, which each make us know only one way of combining these movements with each other. Its melodies will no longer be broken lines, in the form of a staircase, but slowly inflected curves; its harmonies will no longer be assemblages of spaced notes and fully formed timbres, but sonorities always varied and new. Then it will become like the caress of the wind on the leaves, or the changing rustling of unequal waves.
… The music of the future will have its symphonies; doubtless they will no longer be constructed according to the classical plan, since the major and minor scales will have been abandoned for a long time; but they will offer the mind harmonious balances, and a logic which, to be concrete and substantial, will only be more moving. And, as it will have its architects, this music will also have its poets, who will make, with the sounds and noises of the real world, an imaginary world, where, according to their fancy, the zephyr will be sweeter, and the hurricane stronger, where the sea will roll waves of light, and where one will hear the stars dancing. Magicians of the air, they will make it vibrate to the rhythms of their dream, and by them every vision will come to life.
Laloy’s book reached beyond French speaking audiences when later translated to English and was published as The Future of Music in regard to Composer, Conductor and Orchestra [London: William Reeves] in 1910. It was in this exact same period that Carol-Bérard later claimed his Symphonie des forces mécaniques was first formulated. It is hard to believe that Laloy’s ideas and Carol-Bérard’s compositional experiments were not shared by others considering the future of music in Paris and elsewhere at the time; in fact Laloy’s ideas seem to resonate with Ferruccio Busoni’s earlier 1907 Sketch for a New Esthetic of Music. However, Luigi Russolo in the development of his 1913 L'arte dei Rumori [Art of Noises] manifesto attempted to force the pace of change, making the future Laloy envisioned the present. The manifesto had wide exposure in translation in the press in France, the UK, USA and elsewhere, so its contents were quickly and internationally disseminated, even if it was not officially published (in Italian) until 1916. Furthermore, there was an English version that was made available in London in 1914 at the Art of Noises Coliseum concerts - this is many years before it is usually thought that such an English translation was available.
Futurist and ‘Comantic’ Music in Paris 1912-13
A brief diversion before moving on. Almost exactly a year before Russolo published his manifesto, I have found a story in a number of US newspapers concerning the Futurist’s interest in music that mentions information I haven’t found elsewhere. In a New York Times article [10 March 1912] titled ‘Futurists Turn to Music Reform’, ‘a [Futurist] leader who thinks it will be safer for the present to remain anonymous’ speaking in Paris stated that
Present and all past music … will no longer be subtle enough for modern ears … We no longer respond to the productions of the musicians of past centuries … and must create a new art, corresponding with the highly evolved senitiveness of the present, as well as that of the future … All traditional forms and scales of the past are, therefore, to be cast aside and the Futurists are composing in scales subdivided into ninths of a tone and having seventy-two notes to the octave … For the new notation which is called “comantic” special instruments are being made, and an exhibition will shortly be given of pianos, violins, and other stringed instruments, adjusted to the requirements of the first Futurist concert, which will be given in a few weeks’ time and is confidently expected to startle Paris.
The ‘leader’ may have been Futurist musician Francesco Balilla Pratella or Filippo Marinetti - or possibly even Russolo. The information relayed to the Paris correspondent of the New York Times doesn’t seem to fit easily with anything we know concerning Futurist music activities before Russolo’s March 1913 Art of Noises manifesto. Yes, there is the usual disdain for past music, but the Futurist instruments described are ‘adjusted’ traditional instruments, not completely new ones. Additionally, there is no evidence a concert of these instruments was given in Paris. But it does suggest Futurist music activities were taking place in the city in 1912.
In another anomalous newspaper article from the following year in the Toronto Sunday World [4th October], in a cable from Paris (copyrighted by the newspaper and the New York World) Russolo’s Art of Noises compositions are oddly attributed to Pratella, with Marinetti announcing
the organization of a new style of orchestra producing various kinds of noises for the purpose of interpreting futuristic music by the Futurist composer, Pratella. Fifteen new types of instruments have been invented which produce crashes, roars, whistles, screams, shrieks, thunderings, rappings and smashings that have an entirely new “acoustic vlouptuosness of effect”. … A sample program may be given as typical of the new musical art. It consists of four pieces, “Dawn in the Capital” (meaning Rome), Rendezvous of Automobiles and Aeroplanes,” “Dinner on the Terrace of the Casino” and “Skirmish in an Oasis".”
These instruments and the pieces identified actually formed the basis of Russolo’s Art of Noises concerts in Italy and at the London Coliseum in June 1914. However, this news item mystifyingly suggests that Pratella, not Russolo, is responsible for the musical compositions being developed for the Futurist orchestra, further stating
the composer is now working on a tone poem on locomotives in a railway yard. He is also engaged on several tone poems descriptive of compressed air riveters working on New York skyscrapers. This last effect is admired by the composer as among the grandest of earth’s noises, tho he confesses that he has never been in New York and has never heard riveters as they rivet at 7 a.m. But others of futurist musical tastes have told him all about them, and he understands they produce a noise so sublime as to be even superior to that made by a Dreadnought firing 13-inch guns at target practice on the open seas.
How far Carol-Bérard was aware of, or involved with, the Futurist musical activities taking place in Paris is not clear, though he would clearly have encountered the March-April 1913 newspaper stories concerning Russolo’s manifesto in the French press. I’ll now move on to try and outline what we do and/or can know about Carol-Bérard’s ideas as they developed and the Symphonie des forces mécaniques.
Carol-Bérard and the Organization of Noise
The most detailed and informative biographical overview of Carol-Bérard’s life and musical activities can be found at the Spanish National Archives. Here we find that (Louis) Carol-Bérard was a French composer, music critic, theorist and poet, who was born on 5th April 1881 in Marseille (France). He studied with the composer Isaac Albéniz and ‘maintained a certain proximity with Maurice Ravel’. He was active as an administrator and representative in a number of national roles related to music including:
secretary of the Union des compositeurs français [Union of French Composers]
founder of the Union syndicale des compositeurs de musique [Union syndicale des compositeurs de musique
founding member of the C.T.I; Bulletin de la confédération des travailleurs intellectuels [Bulletin of the Confederation of Intellectual Workers]
director of the journal Revue Internationale de Musique et Danse [International Review of Music and Dance]
French delegate to the permanent council for the Coopération internationale des compositeurs de Musique [International Cooperation of Music Composers]
French delegate to the permanent council of Les Archives Internationales de la Musique contemporaine [The International Archives of Contemporary Music], in 1939 he obtained a grant from the French Ministry of Education to locate the archives in Paris.
The biography notes that as a critic ‘he wrote for Paris Le Soir and La Revue Mondiale, and under the pseudonym Olivier Réaltor he wrote poetry’. He also wrote for L’Epoque, many review articles for L'Echo de Paris in the 1930s, and appeared regularly on Radio Paris from the mid-1930s until 1942 giving talks on a variety of musical topics (e.g. ‘Winter Songs and Snowfields’, ‘Hunting and Music’, ‘English Folklore’, ‘Songs of the Mediterranean’). He died unexpectedly on December 13, 1942 in Paris, with a Revue de Musicologie [January 1943] obituary noting he was by then director of the International Archives of Contemporary Music at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and was also known as a ‘composer through works of a modern tendency and often exotic inspiration’.
Far from being an ‘unknown composer’ as one writer on Carol-Bérard suggested, he was a well-known and active figure in contemporary French music from the early 1900s until his death, and became particularly prominent after WW1.
In terms of his musical compositions, I have attempted to create a detailed list from the Dictionnaire biographique des musiciens (1995 edition) and further details found in newspapers and journals from the first quarter of the 20th century - unfortunately without dates for most at present:
Symphonie dansée [Dance Symphony]
Symphonie des forces mécaniques (en 3 mouvements; Navire Perdu; Gare nocturne, L'Aéroplane sur la ville, utillisant des disques de bruitage)
[Symphony of Mechanical Forces (in 3 movements; Lost Ship; Night Station, The Aeroplane over the City, using sound discs)
L'Oiseau des îles, pièce lyrique en 2 actes (sur ses propres paroles)
[The Bird of the Islands, lyrical play in 2 acts (with Carol-Bérard's own text)]
Sémiramis, musique de scène pour la pièce de Joséphin Péladan (1904)
[Sémiramis, incidental music for Joséphin Péladan’s play]
Les Amants de Tong-Ho, ballet
[The Lovers of Tong-Ho, ballet]
3 suites pour piano: Égypte, D'une existence antérieure et Extrême-Asie
[3 piano suites: Egypt, From a previous existence and Far-Asia]
des pieces pour piano humoristiques: Les Heures civiles at militaires et L'Élegie à jouer dans un cave
[humorous piano pieces: Civil and Military Hours and The Elegy to be played in a cellar]
des mélodies sur des poèmes de Verlaine, Mallarmé, Camille Mauclair et Paul Fort
[melodies on poems by Verlaine, Mallarmé, Camille Mauclair and Paul Fort ]
other identified pieces include:
Feuillage à travers un vitrail, Promenade dans le forêt illuminee de hiboux and Soirs aux jardins d'Utopie, Idylle au bureau des reprieves, Marche héroïque des territorials retrouvés, La musique endort les infirmières, Danses sous la pluie devant le palais du roi de Siam, Quatuor à cordes à jouer sur les bords d'un lac italien, Vibrations mortuaires, Le Céphalopod est pensif sur le tombeau de la Méduse assassinée]
[Foliage through a stained glass window, Walk in the forest illuminated by owls and Evenings in the gardens of Utopia, Idyll at the Reception Desk, Heroic march of the recovered territorials, Music puts Nurses to sleep, Dances in the Rain in Front of the Palace of the King of Siam, String Quartet to be Played on the Banks of an Italian Lake, Deadly Vibrations, The Cephalopod sits pensively on the tomb of the murdered Medusa]
Before moving on to discuss the Symphonie des forces mécaniques, it’s worth noting that from what we know of his music, there is little else here immediately suggesting the sonic radicalism of the Futurists other than in this early work. However, there seems to be some affinity with Erik Satie with the playful titling of his pieces. Jean Bertrand in L'Homme libre [14th September 1920] provides a useful overview of Carol-Bérard’s work as a composer:
Dances in the rain in front of the palace of the King of Siam. What is it? Music? Yes, music! And the score has just been published recently. Its scorer is a modern composer, young, no doubt, with the youth that animates all those who seek through the harmonies of life something new. This effort, I assure you, whether it pleases or displeases, is much more interesting than that of writers whose genius lies in the imitation of Massenet or Gounod. Glory to Massenet, glory to Gounod, but peace to their work. It is not necessary to repeat what they have already done.
The author of Dances in the Rain calls himself M. Carol-Bérard. What I have just said of Massenet and Gounod, he thinks of Beethoven as of Wagner, without lacking respect for masters to whom he certainly owes a part of his musical initiation. But he believed like M. Erik Satie, although on a different level, that one could put fantasy into contemporary music, exactly as Messrs. André Salmon, Jacques Dyssord, P.-J. Toulet, Tristan Dereme or Francis Carco had dared to introduce fantasy into poetry as well.
The attempt is bolder than one might think, because it repels minds obstinate in the tradition of the already seen, and the novelty unpleasantly surprises by the effort it imposes on them. It is the history of symbolist attempts. It is the history of Rodin. It is the history of Debussy and Ravel and Stravinsky. To these three composers. M. Carol-Bérard doubtless owes more than he thinks. And they themselves had received from Wagner or Rameau revelations whose importance they had perhaps not always understood. But art is in the realization, not in the effort. The means do not matter. It is the result that counts.
In music, the result is harmonies, a procession of sonorities, evocations, poetry of the ear, surprise of the auditory sense, repercussion of sound on the soul and the mind. He knows how to give his compositions something to surprise and seduce us at the same time by seeking new combinations of sonorities to which, even in the extreme fantasy of his conceptions, it is appropriate to pay homage. I know such a series of musical poems on Provence which is of an astonishing power of evocation and of which he is the author, I know such another little piece gravely entitled Le Céphalopod est pensif sur le tombeau de la Méduse assassinée [The Cephalopod sits pensively on the tomb of the murdered Medusa], which is of a pleasant amiability. Carol-Bérard has innovated there more than some would have wished, but with tact, and in a way that will serve his art.
Because he has travelled a lot, he has included in his work extreme variety. After having put into verse lieder by Camille Mauclair and ballads by Paul Fort, he looked to Japanese Hai-Kai (Haiku), oriental splendors, Chinese mysteries and Spanish dances and mechanical forces for strange but curious inspirations and from which he has known how to draw the most graceful advantage.
While researching this article, I found numerous accounts of Carol-Bérard’s friendships and acquaintances with important French musicians and writers. For example, in an R. M. Smythe auction house catalogue from 2004, I came across a listing for a letter by Claude Debussy [dated 20th April 1903]. In this letter Debussy sends to an unknown recipient (though clearly a music publisher)
two melodies by the young [composer Carol-Bérard] about which I spoke to you recently. Receive him with that charming good will that is your custom … I forgot to tell you that these two melodies couldn’t hope to spoil the beauty of your catalogue and the hundred franc note will be a small fortune to M. Bérard.
Later in 1917, Le Rappel [9th March] announced a new society had been formed, called simply Musique, that aimed to disseminate the works of modern composers. The initiative was formed by Jane Bathori-Engel - a French mezzo-soprano who played an important role in the propagation of new music at the time, Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel, Erik Satie, Roland Manuel, Georges Auric, Maurice Delage, Ricardo Viñes and Carol-Bérard. This indicates something of his ‘visibility’ and status in Parisian modern music circles at the time.
In 1919, Fantasio [15th January] reported that at a recent event organized by the avant-garde society, Art at Liberté, Carlos Larronde announced a forthcoming Cubist season of events at the Odéon theatre. Included in the programme was an opportunity for regulars at the theatre to ‘hear the new music by the delightful Carol-Bérard and Erik Satie who wrote the score of the famous Russian ballet Parade. At the same time, paintings by G. de Chirico, Andre Derain, Picasso, etc. will be exhibited in the foyer.’ Clearly, then, Carol-Bérard was heavily involved in post-WW1 musical developments in Paris, worked and appeared alongside a number of notable French musicians and artists of the period, and was a friend (and photographer) of Erik Satie.
As outlined previously, Carol-Bérard’s Symphonie des forces mécaniques has been mentioned in a number of studies on the history of experimental, electronic and/or noise music, but with few details. One of the central issues is that though Carol-Bérard twice inferred or claimed in the 1920s that the composition is dated 1908, I’ve been unable so far to find any evidence of its existence before 1919, and no evidence it was ever performed between 1908 and 1928. It is usually suggested by writers and critics that the manuscript has been lost. However, in February 2008, Harold Schellinx in his SOUNDBLOG wrote that
On June 25th of last year (2007) there was an auction in Paris which included as its 222nd item a letter by the French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle [a student of Auguste Rodin and teacher of Giacometti and Henri Matisse], glued inside an album amicorum, which apart from the letter contains contributions and dedications by Jules Massenet, Sarah Bernhardt, Henri Bergson and many more poets, politicians, artists ... But what of course really caught my eye, was that as part of the description of all these celebrities' entries in the "book of friends", it reads: "Le compositeur Carol BERARD a exécuté en pleine page un important fragment de sa 'Symphonie des Forces Mécaniques' " ...
On 6th May 2008, the same item appears to have been sold again via the ALDE auction house specializing in books, autographs and coins in Paris - the listing description includes the text ‘Carol-Bérard (9 mesures de sa Symphonie des forces mécaniques)’. We at least know from this information that the Symphonie still exists somewhere, at least a fragment of it, in a private collection. As far as the date of origin is concerned, Giovanni Lista in the 1989 book La Scène Futuriste writes
After the war, [Carol-Bérard] claimed to have written his Symphonie des forces mécaniques in 1908. His widow, who carefully preserved his archives, gave the date as 1910, but it was actually around 1919, after the war, that the work was completed.
Although I am uncertain what information Lista had to hand to make this claim, it does make sense based on my findings so far. My understanding is that the first time the Symphonie des forces mécaniques was mentioned in print was in 1919 in an article on Carol-Bérard by the music writer and columnist Anita Berlioz. This article appeared in Le Carnet Critique in the March-April 1919 issue - unfortunately I have yet to access this article (still trying), but in Le Carnet de la semaine [4th May 1919] the article is discussed as follows.
A Musical Review
This Friday, May 2, there will be an audition of musical works at the Théâtre de l'Odéon. We will hear Mme Anita Berlioz. The young wife of the excellent critic and novelist M. Georges-Armand Masson is Berlioz's great-niece. She does not only compose and perform. She writes studies of musical criticism that are remarkable. In La Politique et les Lettres, she spoke of M. Erik-Satie. In Le Carnet-Critique she speaks of M. Carol-Bérard, this delightful and rare spirit, whose pieces have titles like poems. For example: Feuillage à travers un vitrail [Foliage through a stained glass window], Walk in the forest illuminated by owls [Walk in the forest illuminated by owls], Soirs aux jardins d'Utopie [Evenings in the gardens of Utopia].
And who wouldn't like Symphonie des forces mécaniques [Symphony of mechanical forces]?
It was Mr. Carol-Bérard who organized today's Odéonienne matinee.
Anita Berlioz was in fact a singer as well as a ‘remarkable’ music critic, who was born in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt in 1890. In February 1919 she performed Carol-Bérard’s songs, with his accompaniment, at the Chartres Theatre. On 7th March Le Gaulois reported that a new magazine Le Monde nouveau would soon be published in French and English, with Mme. Anita Berlioz and M. Florent Schmitt and Carol-Bérard covering musical matters. On 5th April La Lanterne announced a new publication, La Revue Intellectualiste, that was a collaboration between Paul Adam, Marcel Barrière, Maurice Beaubourg, Anita Berlioz, Louis Bertrand, Dominique Braga, Carol-Bérard, Fernand Divoire, Paul Fort and many others. On 2nd August Le XIXe siècle reported on the magazine Lutetia, Journal de Paris with arts and music coverage by Anita Berlioz and Marguy. One mystery concerning Anita Berlioz is that though she was described as Hector Berlioz’s grand-daughter or grand-niece at various times, a brief examination of Hector Berlioz’s family tree makes this difficult to believe. However, from 1919 until 1922 she was a prolific and well-respected writer, critic and singer who has been lost from history, probably due to her early death at 35 in 1925; and as indicated she was also the first person to write about the Symphonie des forces mécaniques.
On 1st June 1919 in Aux écoutes, there appears to be a further reference to Anita Berlioz’s Carol-Bérard article where the writer humorously observes
Carol-Bérard advocates the use of percussion instruments and even the phonograph and the siren. Like the satirist Erik Satie, he cultivates humor … In his Symphonie des forces mécaniques, he does not hesitate to play the low F of a 220 HP hispano... [a Spanish car engine]
The next time information about Carol-Bérard’s ‘noise symphony’ appears in print seems to be in 1922 when the Revue musicale [Vol. IV, no. 10, (1 August)] featured his article ‘La couleur en mouvement, décor rationnel de la musique / Color in motion, the rational decoration of music’ that discussed his work in what he called Chromophonie - or the artistic combination of music and colour in performance. He began his research in this field as early as 1912, and lectured on the subject in a number of European countries from 1912-1913. An article by George Armand Masson in the Revue mondiale [November-December 1920] provides a detailed overview of his Chromophonie activities. Carol-Bérard associated the fundamental vibrational characteristics of sound and music with light, and working with Valére Bernard and his son Casimir, they devised a color-music instrument called the chromogene that projected colors on a rotating globe. In the Revue musicale article Carol-Bérard also wrote about the use of noise in musical compositions in the past, and into the future;
There was already a machine to create the sound of a storm invented by the Czech Braha at the beginning of the 18th century. We remember the ticking of the typewriters that Erik Satie placed in Parade.
Personally, - I apologize for naming myself here, in a Symphony written in 1908, a symphony in which I sought to express the synthesis of mechanical forces, locomotive, steamship, aeroplane, conquerors of the elements: Earth, Water and Air, I used motors, electric bells, whistles and sirens in addition to the choirs and the orchestra. Since then, others have done better.
How many other timbres will emerge from unforeseen material!
Would not the active tumult of a factory, the hum of dynamos, the panting of machines as well as the very variable rhythm of a moving train form extraordinary foundations for a temple of sound erected in honor of human effort? Ah! the railway stations, those sound boxes!
In a future study I will deal with the rest of future instrumentation, of recorded noises used musically, being, of course, freed from all their initial concrete meaning; I have a theory on this which somewhat transforms the current conception of musical composition...
A news item in Bonsoir on 17th August 1922 references this article when remarking
M. Carol Bérard is, as we can see, a musician who is harassed by Physics and devoured by Arithmetic. Not content with writing symphonies in which he seeks to express the synthesis of mechanical forces by using motors, electric bells, whistles and sirens in addition to choirs and orchestra, his restless genius pushes him towards mechanics and its applications.
Carol Bérard’s ‘future study’ dealing with ‘future instrumentation’, mentioned in 1922, seems to have eventually emerged in English as his 1928 article for Modern Music [Vol. VI, No. 2, January to February] ‘Recorded Noises - Tomorrow’s Instrumentation’. It is here that he further developed his ideas on the ‘organization of noise’ while critiquing Russolo and the Futurists efforts, and in the process quotes from - as John Cage noted in 1940 - Russolo’s Art of Noises manifesto.
He begins by asking if the ‘destiny of new music’ is bound up in developing existing compositional methods to their breaking point, while gradually adding to the ‘present-day orchestra’s apparatus’. Stravinsky and Schönberg simply speak different dialects of the same language or rather the same kind of language’ from their predecessors as ‘paper is needed to inscribe their thoughts and instruments must be in the hands of performers to transmit these thoughts to the audience.’ Immediately, Carol-Bérard identifies the problems with and inadequacy of existing notational methods.
There follows a discussion of the Italian bruitistes and how the ‘Italian noisemakers have made no advances since their debut … [they] were dedicated in purpose to the music of the future, but their realization fell far short of the goal … No matter how new the acoustic effects they create, they are always in need of performers.’ Again the need for performers is viewed as a stumbling block for future music developments, where composers can or should disintermediate the instrumentalist to ‘speak’ directly to the listener. In any case, Carol-Bérard suggests that [other producers have succeeded the noisemakers through the jazz-band and ‘various new devices for the electrical production of music’ (the Theremin, and the French Givelet, Martenot and Bertrand instruments).
The article moves on to discuss the evolution of the spirit and expression of music, and Carol-Bérard states that if music is ‘the art of associating sounds in a manner agreeable to the ear’, then it is necessary to ‘turn to noise, which … holds the secret of the future’. He goes on to propose that ‘[i]f we take a definite noise, capture and associate it with other noises according to a definite design, an act of composition is performed and a work of art authentically created’. He then asks
Why, and I have been asking this for fifteen years [since 1913?], are phonograph records not taken of noises such as those of a city at work, at play, even asleep? Of forests, whose utterance varies according to their trees - a grove of pines in the Mediterranean mistral has a murmur unlike the rustle of poplars in a breeze from the Loire -? Of the tumult of the crowds, a factory in action, a moving train, a railway terminal, engines, showers, cries, rumblings?
If noises were registered, they could be grouped, associated and carefully combined as are the timbres of various instruments in the routine orchestra, although with a different technique.
We could then create symphonies of noise that would be grateful to the ear … Once registered, naturally no significance other than that of sound can attach to individual noises. They will cease to be the creaking of a bus axle … They will become merely noise factors, as saxophones, clarinets, violas and oboes are factors of musical sound…
And what security recorded noises will hold for the composer of the future … A work may be heard at any time exactly in the form of its creation, as a picture presents itself always just as the artist has made it. The exact, the definitive work will ever be at hand, for the time approaches when the recording and reproducing apparatus will be perfect … Then the composer will have a laboratory and not a study.
The future of music lies in the conquest, the subjugation and the organization of noise.
In a previous article discussing Cage’s adoption of the terms ‘organized sound’, I didn’t mention that we can draw direct lines of influence between Carol-Bérard’s ‘organization of noise’, and his other ideas, to Cage’s The Future of Music: Credo. Specifically, to Cage’s wish to be able to capture any sounds - those viewed previously as musical or non-musical - and control these in musical compositions, and his belief that composers should and would in future be able to create music directly onto recording technologies without intermediaries or interpreters is clearly central to Carol-Bérard 1928 article.
It is also more than possible that Carol-Bérard’s ideas influenced Carlos Chavez’s research for his book Towards a New Music (1932/1937) [which will be the subject of my next article] as well as Edgard Varèse’s … or did Varèse’s ideas feed into Carol-Bérard’s? I haven’t found a link between Varèse and Carol-Bérard in France before 1915 as yet, but it is possible they knew of or encountered each other. It is worth noting that later, when Varèse’s Amériques was performed at the Salle Gaveau in Paris on 30th May 1929, Carol-Bérard was one of those defending Varese’s composition that was heavily criticised by some French critics. In the Revue Internationale de Musique et Danse [15th June] he wrote ‘… it was a revelation. One felt that no orchestra has ever attained such a power of sonority …’ (Ouellette 1966).
Finally, despite the thought provoking and iconoclastic ideas Carol-Bérard promoted in his 1922 article (that owed a lot to Russolo - or contained ideas that were developed concurrently with Russolo’s from 1908 onwards), and his 1928 call to move beyond Russolo’s ‘past’ Futurist thinking, Carol-Bérard appears not to have put his radical compositional ideas into practice, leaving it to others in the 1930s to work towards ‘future music’. It isn’t clear that he carried on composing beyond the 1920s due to his writing, radio work and the various representative and administrative roles he undertook. And yet - ‘Recorded Noises - Tomorrow’s Instrumentation’ is as prophetic as Cage’s Credo, and, alongside Russolo’s work on noise, clearly influenced Cage’s thinking. Unfortunately, despite tantalising suggestions that a partial score still exists, it is doubtful we’ll ever know how prophetic Carol-Bérard’s Symphonie des forces mécaniques was, and how far it really preempted Luigi Russolo’s efforts in 1913-1914.
* As far as I can tell the Symphonie des forces mécaniques was largely forgotten until Fred K. Prieberg briefly wrote about Carol-Bérard and the Symphonie in his 1960 book Musica ex machina: über das Verhältnis von Musik und Technik [Musica ex machina: on the relationship between music and technology] (Berlin; Ullstein). Most coverage of Carol-Bérard after this date can be traced to Prieberg’s book where he states that, alongside the Symphonie and compositional experiments with noise, Carol-Bérard ‘devised a form of notation for noises’. I haven’t as yet found evidence of Carol-Bérard’s notational method, though it is also mentioned by some later writers commenting on his work. I assume this claim originated with Prieberg in 1960, though evidence may have been evident in the Symphonie’s lost score.