Pre-20th century , early 14th century (from the
Roman de Fauvel) During the 14th century, the
charivari, a European and North American folk custom designed to shame a member of the community, made use of a mock
parade aimed to make as much noise as possible by beating on pots and pans or anything that came to hand, these parades were often referred to as "rough music". By the 19th century, the
classical period led to one of the earliest examples of non-musical sounds being used in contemporary western music such as
Beethoven’s
Wellington’s Victory (1813), which included sounds of
muskets and
cannons to represent battle. Later,
Tchaikovsky’s
1812 Overture (1880) went further by writing real cannon fire directly into the score.
1910s–1930s: Early noise music c. 1916French composer Carol-Bérard born in 1885 was a pupil of
Isaac Albéniz. Bérard studied and was influenced by primitive music and instruments. During the late 1900s, he experimented with noises as music, developed a notation system for them, and wrote on the challenges of instrumenting noise music. In 1910, Bérard composed a
Symphony of Mechanical Force. His work made the connection between music and noise publicly visible years before
Futurism. By 1913,
Italian Futurist artist
Luigi Russolo wrote his manifesto, ''L'Arte dei Rumori
, translated as The Art of Noises'', stating that the industrial revolution had given modern men a greater capacity to appreciate more complex sounds: "We must break this restricted circle of pure sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds". A performance of his
Gran Concerto Futuristico (1917) was met with strong disapproval and violence from the audience, as Russolo himself had predicted. None of his intoning devices have survived, though recently some have been reconstructed and used in performances. Although Russolo's works bear little resemblance to contemporary noise music, his efforts helped to introduce noise as an intentional musical
aesthetic and broaden the perception of traditionally
unwanted sound as an artistic medium. and his assistant
Ugo Piatti in their Milan studio in 1913 with the Intonarumori (noise machines)
Antonio Russolo, Luigi's brother and fellow Italian
Futurist composer, produced a recording of two works featuring the original
intonarumori. The 1921 made
phonograph with works entitled
Corale and
Serenata, combined conventional orchestral music set against the famous noise machines and is the only surviving sound recording. The
Dada art movement's
Antisymphony concert performed on April 30, 1919, in Berlin would also be an early influence and progenitor of noise music. The Dada-related work from 1916 by
Marcel Duchamp also worked with noise, but in an almost silent way. One of the
found object Readymades of Marcel Duchamp,
A Bruit Secret (With Hidden Noise), was a collaborative work that created a noise instrument that Duchamp accomplished with
Walter Arensberg. What rattles inside when
A Bruit Secret is shaken remains a mystery.
Found sound In the same period the utilisation of
found sound as a musical resource was starting to be explored. In 1931,
Edgard Varèse's
Ionisation for 13 players featured 2 sirens, a
lion's roar, and used 37 percussion instruments to create a repertoire of unpitched sounds making it the first musical work to be organized solely on the basis of noise. In remarking on Varese's contributions the American composer
John Cage stated that Varese had "established the present nature of music" and that he had "moved into the field of sound itself while others were still discriminating 'musical tones' from noises". In an essay written in 1937, Cage expressed an interest in using extra-musical materials and came to distinguish between found sounds, which he called noise, and musical sounds, examples of which included: rain, static between radio channels, and "a truck at fifty miles per hour". Essentially, Cage made no distinction, in his view all sounds have the potential to be used creatively. His aim was to capture and control elements of the sonic environment and employ a method of sound organisation, a term borrowed from Varese, to bring meaning to the sound materials. Cage began in 1939 to create a series of works that explored his stated aims, the first being
Imaginary Landscape #1 for instruments including two variable speed turntables with frequency recordings.
1940s–1960s: Electroacoustic music and musique concrète During the late 1940s, French composer
Pierre Schaeffer theorized and coined a type of
electroacoustic music known as
musique concrète. Schaeffer's 1948 compositions
Cinq études de bruits (
Five Noise Studies), that began with (
Railway Study), which consisted of locomotive sounds made at the Paris train station Gare des Batignolles. This premiered via a radio broadcast on October 5, 1948, called (
Noise Concert). Music journalist Paul Hegarty retrospectively remarked that
Antonin Artaud's 1947 composition ''
(To Have Done with the Judgment of God
) as "a great example of how literal noise becomes a more interesting threat." In 1957, Edgard Varèse created on tape an extended piece of electronic music using noises created by scraping, thumping and blowing titled Poème électronique''. In 1960, John Cage completed his noise composition
Cartridge Music for phono cartridges with foreign objects replacing the stylus and small sounds amplified by contact microphones. That same year, Nam June Paik composed
Fluxusobjekt for fixed tape and hand-controlled tape playback head. On May 8, six young Japanese musicians, including
Takehisa Kosugi and
Yasunao Tone, who later joined the Japanese branch of the
Fluxus art movement, formed the early noise music collective
Group Ongaku, recording
Automatism and
Object. These recordings made use of a mixture of traditional musical instruments along with a vacuum cleaner, a radio, an oil drum, a doll, and a set of dishes. Moreover, the speed of the tape recording was manipulated, further distorting the sounds being recorded. Tone later became an early pioneer of "
glitch" music in the 1990s. In 1961,
James Tenney composed
Analogue #1: Noise Study (for tape) using computer synthesized noise and
Collage No.1 (Blue Suede) (for tape) by manipulating
Elvis Presley's recording of "
Blue Suede Shoes". By 1964, composer
Robert Ashley released the composition "The Wolfman", in a retrospective,
The Wire stated, "he [Robert Ashley] played his own vocals through loudspeakers simultaneously with a tape composition and controlled the feedback by putting his mouth up against the mic. The avalanche of noise was so overpowering to the listener that no one ever understands how the sound is made". In 1965, London
free improvisation group
AMM was founded by
Keith Rowe,
Lou Gare and
Eddie Prévost, their work has been considered as presaging noise music, with ''AllMusic's'' Brian Olewnick stating, "noise bands owe it to themselves to check out their primary source." In Canada,
Nihilist Spasm Band, the world's longest-running self-described "noise band", was formed that same year, they later worked with artists they influenced such as
Thurston Moore of
Sonic Youth and
Jojo Hiroshige of
Hijokaidan in the 1990s. In 1966, New York band
the Velvet Underground released its first recording, a track titled "Noise" that was originally recorded by
John Cale in 1964.
Lou Reed and John Cale later cited the
drone music of
La Monte Young as being a major influence, with Reed later drawing from Young on his solo album
Metal Machine Music. Cale later released early noise music recordings made with
Tony Conrad in the early to-mid 60s, such as
Inside the Dream Syndicate series. In 1967, composer
Pauline Oliveros released the composition "A Little Noise In The System", regarded as one of the earliest examples of contemporary noise music. Other contemporaneous developments include
underground and
psychedelic acts such as
Intersystems,
Musica Elettronica Viva,
the Mothers of Invention,
Red Krayola,
Michael Yonkers,
Cromagnon,
Pärson Sound,
the Godz,
the Ethix,
the Sperm and
Fifty Foot Hose. In 1968,
the Beatles'
The White Album incorporated influences from
musique concrète on track "
Revolution 9", alongside
George Harrison's
Electronic Sound and
John Lennon's
Two Virgins and
Life with the Lions albums with
Yoko Ono who had been a part of the
New York Fluxus scene.
1970s–1990s: Contemporary noise music In 1975,
Lou Reed released the double album
Metal Machine Music, which has been cited as containing the primary characteristics of contemporary noise music and inspiring artists such as
Merzbow. The album, recorded on a three speed
Uher machine and mastered/engineered by
Bob Ludwig, is an early, well-known example of commercial studio noise music that the music critic
Lester Bangs sarcastically called the "greatest album ever made in the history of the human
eardrum". It has also been cited as one of the "
worst albums of all time". At the time, RCA also released a
Quadrophonic version of the
Metal Machine Music recording that was produced by playing the master tape back both forward and backward, and by flipping the tape over. By the late 1970s to early 1980s, the emergence of
industrial music encouraged non-musicians to experiment with strictly noise oriented styles, leading to genres such as
power electronics, coined by English noise act
Whitehouse,
2000s–2010s: American noise underground, Brooklyn noise and Post-noise During the 2000s and 2010s, the
Brooklyn noise scene emerged as spearheaded by acts such as
Black Dice and
Wolf Eyes.
progressive electronic,
ambient,
drone and
new age, which led to the development of
post-noise psychedelia. Music critic
Simon Reynolds credited
the Skaters, a group formed by
James Ferraro and Spencer Clark in 2004, with catalyzing an "international post-noise network". Associated artists such as
Daniel Lopatin and
Emeralds, had been a part of the Brooklyn noise scene and initially described as "outcasts among outcasts" due to their rejection of then noise conventions and introduction of "'70s
cosmic trance music and '80s
new age" into their style of noise music.
Sun Araw,
Yellow Swans, Stellar Om Source,
Laurel Halo,
vaporwave,
hypnagogic pop,
nu-new age, and
glo-fi. In 2019,
Nashville, Tennessee artist River Everett's ambient and new age project New Mexican Stargazers drew heavy inspiration from the work of James Ferraro and Spencer Clark. Her work under the duo Bagel Fanclub alongside Caybee Calabash, has been characterized as spanning "post-noise
pastiches and dense
braindance."
2020s Additionally, the popularity of the harsh noise genre expanded with regional scenes emerging internationally in Japan, England, Canada, Indonesia and America. By the 2020s, some harsh noise artists would gain notoriety and attention on the
internet through
social media, due to their unconventional sound. == Legacy ==