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Manifesto of Futurist Musicians


The Manifesto of Futurist Musicians is a manifesto written by Francesco Balilla Pratella on October 11, 1910. It was one of the earliest signs of Futurism's influence in fields outside of the visual arts.

In the manifesto, Pratella appeals to the youth for only they can understand what he says and they are thirsty for 'the new, the actual, the lively.' He goes on to talk about the degeneration of Italian music to that of a vulgar melodrama which he realized through winning a prize for one of his musical Futurist work La Sina d'Vargoun based on one of Pratella's free verse poems. As part of his monetary prize, he was able to put on a performance of that work, which received mixed reviews. Through his entry into Italian musical society, he was able to experience firsthand the 'intellectual mediocrity' and 'commercial baseness' that makes Italian music inferior to the Futurist evolution of music in other countries.

He then goes on to list composers in other European countries who are making strides in the futurist evolution of music even when battling tradition. For example Pratella discusses the geniuses of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss and how they struggled to combat and overcome the past with innovatory talent. He expresses his admiration for Edward Elgar in England because he is destroying the past by resisting the will to amplify symphonic forms, and is finding new ways to combine instruments for different effects, which keeps in line with the Futurist aesthetic. Pratella also mentions Finland and Sweden, countries in which innovations are being made by means of nationalism and poeticism, citing the works of Sibelius.

After this list, he raises the question of musical innovation of Italian composers. He states that 'vegetating' schools, conservatories, and academies are likes snares on youths and that the impotency of professors and masters underline traditionalism while stifling efforts to be innovative. Pratella says that this results in the repression of free and daring tendencies, the prostitution of the glories of music's past, and the limitation of a study of forms of a dead culture, among other things.

Pratella then laments the young musical talents who fixate themselves on writing operas under the protection of publishing houses, only to see them fail to have their work realized because the operas are badly written (for lack of a strong ideological and technical foundation) and rarely staged. And the few who do get their works staged only experience ephemeral successes.


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