The intonarumori, or noise intoners, were acoustic instruments built by Luigi Russolo with his assistant Ugo Piatti from 1913 to realise the programme of The Art of Noises. Each was a box fitted with a horn: inside, a wheel turned by a crank rubbed or struck a string attached to a drum, while a lever altered the string’s tension, letting the player glide between pitches like a siren rather than step from note to note. Russolo built many varieties, with names such as howler, crackler, gurgler and burster.
The full orchestra gave its first public concert on 21 April 1914, and Futurist evenings of the period were notoriously rowdy. None of the originals survive; they are thought to have been destroyed during the Second World War, leaving only drawings, photographs and a few recordings. A set of replicas directed by the composer Luciano Chessa for the Performa festival in 2009 let modern audiences hear their grinding, sliding timbres, which sound strikingly close to later industrial and drone textures.