Arseny Avraamov

Arseny Avraamov, pseudonym of Arseny Mikhaylovich Krasnokutsky (b. Novocherkassk/Rostov 1886 - d. Moscow 1944), was a composer, music theorist, performance-instigator and commissar for the arts in Narkompros (the People's Commissariat for Education) just after the Revolution, and helped set up Proletkult - encouraging the development of a distinctly proletarian art and literature. As a musician, he was involved in the debates on microtonality and in the 1920s, proposed to the People's Commissar for Education (Lunacharsky) an order to burn all pianos, because he considered the piano to be symbolic of the well-tempered system of tuning (popularised by Bach), which mutilates people's and composers' musical sense. His later experiments with "drawn sound film" (or "synthetic sound") led, in the early 1930s, to the creation of the first synthesised sound recording on film. Some years before, Avraamov, in his article "Upcoming Science of Music and the New Era in the History of Music" (1916) had predicted synthesised music and outlined his point of view on the future of the Art of Music thus: "Knowing the way to record the most complex sound textures by means of a phonograph - after analysis of the curve structure of the sound groove directing the needle of the resonating membrane - one can create synthetically any, even the most fantastic sounds by forming a groove with the appropriate structure of shape and depth". He directed an International Musical Exhibition (Frankfurt) on the new technological advances in music, together with Leon Theremin and other exceptional musicians and researchers. He also investigated the poetic structures of Imaginists Sergei Yesenin and Anatoly Marienhof (book Imazhinisty, 1921). As part of his desire to remind the proletariat of their true role - their power to decide their own history - Avraamov conceived a monumental proletarian musical work for the creation of which he would use only sounds taken directly from factories and machines. To this end, he organised several monumental concerts, which he called Symphony of Sirens [Simfoniya gudkov, Гудковая симфония], inspired by the nocturnal spectacles of Petrograd (May 1918) and by the texts of Gastef and Mayakovsky. He eventually took these concerts to a number of Soviet cities celebrating the anniversaries of the October Revolution: Nizhny Novgorov (1919), Rostov (1921), Baku (1922) and finally Moscow (1923). The most impressive and elaborate of these concerts was held on 7 November 1922 in the harbour of Baku in Azerbaijan. For this, Avraamov worked with choirs thousands strong, foghorns from the entire Caspian flotilla, two artillery batteries, several full infantry regiments, hydroplanes, twenty-five steam locomotives and whistles and all the factory sirens in the city. He also invented a number of portable devices, which he called Steam Whistle Machines for this event, consisting of an ensemble of 20 to 25 sirens tuned to the notes of The Internationale. He conducted the symphony himself from a specially built tower, using signalling flags directed simultaneously toward the oil flotilla, the trains at the station, the shipyards, the transport vehicles and the workers' choirs . Avraamov did not want spectators, but intended the active participation of everybody in the development of the work through their exclamations and singing, all united with the same revolutionary will. Avraamov reflected on the potential of music, and the influence of the sounds that define our environment - their importance and the role they had to fulfil after the October Revolution - an aspect of his thinking which helps us to understand the ultimate meaning of the composition of the Symphony of Sirens:

"Music has, among all the arts, the highest power of social organisation. The most ancient myths prove that mankind is fully aware ofthat power (...) Collective work, from farming to the military, is inconceivable without songs and music. One may even think that the high degree of organisation in factory work under capitalism might have ended up creating a respectable form of music organisation. However, we had to arrive at the October Revolution to achieve the concept of the Symphony of Sirens. The Capitalist system gives rise to anarchic tendencies. Its fear of seeing workers marching in unity prevents its music being developed in freedom. Every morning, a chaotic industrial roar gags the people. (...) But then the revolution arrived. Suddenly, in the evening - an unforgettable evening - a Red Petersburg was filled with many thousands of sounds: sirens, whistles and alarms. In response, thousands of army lorries crossed the city loaded with soldiers firing their guns in the air. (... ) At that extraordinary moment, the happy chaos should have had the possibility of being redirected by a single power able to replace the songs of alarms with the victorious anthem of The Internationale. The Great October Revolution! - once again, sirens and work in the cannon whole of Russia without a single voice unifying their organisation".

Works

• A rare recording Symphony of sirens [1] reconstruction by Sergey Hismatov