Luigi Russolo
Luigi Carlo Filippo Russolo was born in Portogruaro in 1885. He was initiated into music by his father, thus following a certain family tradition. After grammar school, in 1901 he joined the family in Milan where in the day time he worked as an apprentice restorer and, in the evening, he followed classes at the Brera Academy of Art. Soon after that he started his first reflections upon non-melodic music as well as on “musical machines”, capable of reproducing the sounds of progress, of war, of piston-engines… (the famous “Noisemakers”). In those years he associated with Futurists like Boccioni and Marinetti and, in 1926, he took part in the Biennale of Venice with his work “Impressions of a bombing”. Shortly thereafter he retired, first to Spain, then to Cerro di Laveno on Lake Maggiore, where he died in 1947.