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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2020
This article aims to temper the myth of the sound and scale of Arsenii Avraamov's city-wide mass spectacle the “Symphony of Sirens”—a myth that has been largely unquestioned in English-language sound and urban studies scholarship on the symphony. Instead of focusing solely on the symphony's dreaded noise, I pay attention to the symphony's silence—to the limits of what can be known about its sounds. Drawing on Avraamov's untranslated writings and personal correspondences, I investigate how the symphony's ideal of proletarian unity collides with the geographic, social, and sonic reality of the cities it sought to compose. I then investigate the roots of this ideal in Avraamov's personal aesthetic philosophy, as well as his idiosyncratic views on mechanical reproduction. This article will be of interest to those who wish to explore the connections between urbanism, colonialism, sound technology, the mass spectacle, and mass media in the Soviet musical avant-garde.
I would like to thank Anne Eakin Moss, Meredith Ward, and Leonardo Lisi for reading and commenting on numerous drafts of this article. I would also like to thank Gabriella Safran, Anna Berman, and Jonathan Sterne for their comments.
1 Of these, only the Baku Worker score remains. See, Arsenii Avraamov, “Nakaz po ‘Gudkovoi simfonii,” Bakinskii rabochii, no. 250 (November 1922): 3. For a discussion of the discrepancies between the Gorn and Baku Worker instructions see Part II below.
2 On “Black Town” see Delia Duong Ba Wendel, “The 1922 ‘Symphony of Sirens’ in Baku, Azerbaijan,” in Journal of Urban Design 17, no. 4 (2012): 554.
3 Arsenii Avraamov, “The Symphony of Sirens,” trans. Mel Gordon, in Douglas Kahn and Gregory Whitehead, eds., Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avante-Garde (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), 252. For the original Russian: Arsenii Avraamov, “Simfoniia Gudkov,” Gorn, no. 9 (November 1923): 116. Modifications to Gordon’s translation will be noted in the footnotes.
4 René Fülöp-Miller, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism (New York, 1965), 184.
5 See: Amy Nelson, Music for the Revolution: Musicians and Power in Early Soviet Russia (University Park, PA, 2004), 27–29; Wendel, “The 1922 ‘Symphony of Sirens’ in Baku, Azerbaijan”; Andrei Smirnov, Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20 thCentury Russia (London, 2013), 147–50; Adrian Curtin, Avant-garde Theatre Sound: Staging Sonic Modernity (New York, 2014), 186–98; Marina Frolova-Walker and Jonathan Walker, Music and Soviet Power, 1917–1932 (Rochester, 2012), 81.
6 Sergei Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, ili Dela i prikliucheniia bezustal΄nogo kazaka Arseniia Avrramova (Moscow, 2007), 38–39. According to Rumiantsev, Krasnokutskii is in fact Avraamov’s original name—the rest are pseudonyms. The source of most biographical information about the composer, Rumiantsev’s monograph includes a number of Avraamov’s letters and articles in abridged and unabridged form. These include Avraamov’s 1943 letter to the Communist Party; his correspondence with his lover, Revecca Zhiv; and multiple articles on music theory that Avraamov published before and after the October Revolution (reproduced in their entirety). The letters and correspondences come from the private archives of Avraamov’s friends and relatives—especially his son, German Avraamov, and Revecca Zhiv. I have not been able to see these correspondences first hand. Throughout this article, I will be relying on materials from Rumiantsev’s book. If a passage is quoted as part of a discussion in Rumiantsev’s book, I will write “Quoted in Rumiantsev. . .;” if it is reproduced in its entirety or near entirety, I will write “Reproduced in Rumiantsev. . .” All translations of these materials are my own.
7 Nikolai Izvolov, “From the History of Graphic Sound in the Soviet Union; or, Media without a Medium,” in Lilya Kaganovsky and Masha Salazkina, eds., Sound, Speech, Music in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema, trans. Sergei Levchin (Bloomington, Ind., 2014): 34.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., 35.
10 Quoted in ibid., 32.
11 Quoted in ibid., 31.
12 Avraamov, “Symphony of Sirens,” 245 / “Simfoniia Gudkov,” 109. Translation modified.
13 The idea is a version of the “spontaneity-consciousness” paradigm—the idea that Bolshevik workers are, in the words of Anna Krylova, “conscious makers of history who have successfully overcome the spontaneous—that is, chaotic, misleading, and not fully comprehended—dissatisfaction with their condition under capitalism.” Anna Krylova, “Beyond the Spontaneity-Consciousness Paradigm: ‘Class Instinct’ as a Promising Category of Historical Analysis,” in Slavic Review 62, no. 1 (Spring, 2003): 1.
14 Quoted in Arsenii Avraamov, “Symphony of Sirens,” in Miguel Molina Alarcón, ed., Baku: Symphony of Sirens, Sound Experiments in the Russian Avant Garde (1908–1942), trans. Deirdre MacCloskey (London, 2008), 70. This article bears the same title as Avraamov’s 1923 article for Gorn. Alarcón’s document is a translation from Spanish of the Russian original, first published in 1924 in the journal Khudozhnik i zrtiel΄ (Artist and Viewer). I have verified the translation against Maiakovskii’s original: Vladimir Maiakovskii, “Prikaz po armii iskusstv,” Dlia Golosa (Berlin, 1923), 33. For Avraamov’s original article see Arsenii Avraamov, “Simfoniia Gudkov,” Khudozhnik i zritel΄, no. 1 (January 1924), 50. Modifications to Alarcón’s translation will be noted in the footnotes.
15 On Soviet festivals see: Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Visions and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (Oxford, 1989), 79–101; James von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917–1920 (Berkley, 1993); Katerina Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 100–43; Malte Rolf, Soviet Mass Festivals, 1917–1991 (Pittsburgh, 2013); Kristin Romberg, “Festival,” in Matthew S. Witovsky and Devin Fore, eds., Revoliutsiia! Demonstratsiia!: Soviet Art Put to the Test (New Haven, 2017), 250–80.
16 Quoted in Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 65.
17 Clark, Petersburg, 139.
18 Clark, Petersburg, 138.
19 Avraamov, “Symphony of Sirens,” Artist and Viewer, 70 / “Simfoniia Gudkov,” Khudozhnik i zritel΄, 50. Rumiantsev notes, however, that there is no independent verification of the performance of the “Symphony of Sirens” in Nizhnii Novgorod outside of Avraamov’s own account. Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 88.
20 As Wendel points out, the Congress was itself a kind of mass spectacle. Held in Baku during the first week of September 1920, the Congress combined solemn speeches, agitprop trains, negotiations and conferences, street parades, volunteer activities, and other types of pageantry to send a message of international proletarian solidarity. Fanfares of the “Internationale” played after dramatic pauses in almost every speech, effigies of David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson were burned in the streets, and people dressed in traditional garb and brandishing exotic weapons made overt displays of camaraderie in what H.G. Wells sarcastically described as a “quite wonderful accumulation of white, black, brown, and yellow people, Asiatic costumes and astonishing weapons.” Quoted in Stephen White, “Communism and the East: The Baku Congress, 1920,” in Slavic Review 33, No. 3 (September 1974), 492. For Wendel’s account see: Wendel, “The 1922 ‘Symphony of Sirens’ in Baku, Azerbaijan,” 556. On the proceedings of the Baku Congress see John Riddell, ed., To See the Dawn: Baku, 1920–First Congress of the Peoples of the East (New York, 1993).
21 See Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, The Great Challenge: Nationalities and the Bolshevik State, 1917–1930 (New York, 1992); Yuri Slezkine, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 414–52; Jeremy Smith, The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917–1923 (New York, 1999); Terry Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest Form of Imperialism,” in Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin, eds., A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford, 2001), 67–90; Benjamin Loring, “Colonizers with Party Cards: Soviet Internal Colonialism in Central Asia, 1917–39,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 15, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 77–102.
22 Terry Martin, “Affirmative Action Empire,” 77–78.
23 Vladimir I. Lenin, “Critical Remarks on the National Question” V.I. Lenin Collected Works vol. 20 (Moscow, [1913], 1977), 17–45; Lenin, “The Rights of Nations to Self-Determination,” Collected Works, 393–455; Lenin, “The Question of Nationalities or ‘Autonomisation’” (1922), at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/autonomy.htm (accessed February 11, 2020). Of course, Lenin was particularly concerned with appearances. In Azerbaijan, many of the Bolsheviks’ policies with respect to nationalities covered the pursuit of natural resources. See Audrey L. Altstadt, The Politics of Culture in Soviet Azerbaijan, 1920–1940 (London, 2016), 34–37.
24 The letter is reproduced in Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 10–37.
25 Reproduced in Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 23–24.
26 Ibid., 24.
27 Ibid., 25.
28 Ibid., 25.
29 The following argument is indebted to Wendel’s “The 1922 ‘Symphony of Sirens’ in Baku, Azerbaijan.”
30 Altstadt, The Politics of Culture in Soviet Azerbaijan, 4.
31 1901 was the peak year for Baku’s oil production. Audrey L. Altstadt, The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity Under Russian Rule (Stanford, 1992), 22.
32 Altstadt, Azerbaijani Turks, 21.
33 Ibid., 27.
34 Ibid., 32.
35 Ibid., 44.
36 Ibid., 44–45.
37 See Ronald Grigor Suny, The Baku Commune 1917–1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution (Princeton, 1972), 214–34. On ethnic conflict in Baku and Azerbaijan, see also Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russia and Azerbaijan: A Borderland in Transition (New York, 1995).
38 Wendel, “The 1922 ‘Symphony of Sirens’ in Baku, Azerbaijan,” 550.
39 For studies on noise that may have inspired scholars like Wendel and Curtin see Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, 1985); Douglas Kahn, Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (Cambridge, Mass., 1999); Craig Dworkin, “The Politics of Noise,” in Reading the Illegible (Evanston, 2003); Paul Hegarty. Noise/Music: A History (New York, 2007); Karin Bijsterveld, Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture, and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 2008); Salomé Voegelin, Listening to Noise and Silence: Toward a Philosophy of Sound Art (London, 2010); Hillel Schwartz, Making Noise: From Babel to the Big Bang and Beyond (New York, 2011); Greg Hainge, Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise (New York, 2013).
40 Frolova-Walker and Walker, Music and Soviet Power, 81. Frolova-Walker and Walker also mention that a “subsequent attempt to mount the event in Petrograd failed.” This is an error. Avraamov’s subsequent and final attempt to mount the “Symphony of Sirens” occurred in Moscow in 1923. The authors may be thinking, here, of an initial attempt to stage the performance in Petrograd in 1918. Avraamov briefly mentions this performance in a 1924 article for the journal Artist and Viewer.
41 Wendel, “The 1922 ‘Symphony of Sirens,’” 551–56.
42 One of the reasons for the recent popularity of the “Symphony of Sirens” is the publication of Miguel Molina Alarcón, Baku: Symphony of Sirens, Sound Experiments and the Radio Avant-Garde (2003) and Andrei Smirnov’s Sound in Z (2013). These two publications have brought Avraamov’s mass spectacle into the mainstream, at least as far as musique concrete and noise art are concerned. Indeed, Alarcón’s reconstruction of the symphony using live recording and audio samples masquerades on YouTube as a recording of the actual performance. Meanwhile, Smirnov’s book, as well as his article for the RedBull music academy website, has inspired noise lovers and musicians to take an interest in Avraamov’s work and ideas on subjects ranging from the mass spectacle to microtonal composition and sound synthesis. To be sure, this interest is very much welcome. One of its drawbacks, however, is that it tends to magnify the scale of the symphony beyond what can be reasonably inferred from Avraamov’s text and limited biography. See “Arseny Avraamov—Symphony of Factory Sirens (Public Event, Baku 1922),” YouTube video, uploaded by Miguel Negrón Oyarzo, May 27, 2011, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq_7w9RHvpQ&t=1s (accessed February 11, 2020); Andrei Smirnov and Sasha Kloptsov, “Revolutionary Arseny Avraamov,” RedBull Music Academy Daily, July 28, 2017, http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/07/revolutionary-arseny-avraamov (accessed February 11, 2020).
43 Wendel, “The 1922 ‘Symphony of Sirens’ in Baku, Azerbaijan,” 550. Relying on Wendel’s analysis, the sound studies scholar Adrian Curtin has speculated as to how the symphony’s overpowering noises may have affected the ears and bodies of Baku’s listeners and performers. In his estimation, the symphony is a manifestation of soundscape design avant la lettre. Curtin, Avant-garde Theatre Sound, 191–95.
44 In his monograph, Rumiantsev provides facing reproductions of both instructions for comparison. These are too long to reproduce here (Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 81–84). For the original Baku Worker instruction, see “Nakaz po ‘Gudkovoi simfonii,” Bakinskii rabochii, November 1922, no. 250, 3. Like those printed in Gorn, the Baku Worker instructions provide limited information. It is doubtful that the instructions were enough to mobilize and inform a massive crowd of listener-performers, particularly since they were published the day before the performance. Rather, it is more likely the case that, in Baku, the instructions served to inform residents and crowds of the day’s events. Indeed, such “instructions” as “the noon cannon is canceled” read like elements of a concert program.
45 Reproduced in Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 123.
46 The mandate was most likely secured with the help of Pyotr Ivanovich Chagin, then secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party and editor of the Baku Worker. Chagin is mentioned in the reproduction of the Baku Worker instruction in Gorn. Avraamov, “Symphony of Sirens,” Wireless Imagination, 252; “Simfoniya Gudkov,” Gorn, 116.
47 Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 123. Rumiantsev also mentions two articles about the Baku Symphony that had been published in the Baku Worker, though both were written in November of 1923, after the performance of the Moscow Symphony (Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 86–87). Neither suggest events occurring at anywhere near the scale of the Symphony, though they do mention the wailing of sirens.
48 Lydia Ivanova, Vospominaniia. Kniga ob ottse (Moscow, 1992), 113–14, at http://www.v-ivanov.it/lv_ivanova/01text/02.htm#h2_5 (accessed February 13, 2020). Quoted in Sergei Khismatov, “Simfoniia Gudkov,” Opera Musicologia 6, no. 4 (2010): 109–10. Translation Mine.
49 Arsenii Avraamov, “Symphony of Sirens,” Wireless Imagination, 246; “Simfoniia Gudkov, Gorn, 110.
50 “Я таки не ошибся в моем пророчестве (начало ‘Симфонии гудков”)—Мировой Октябрь вот он уж у порога. . .и знаешь, есть слухи, что сигналом к восстанию будет во всех городах Германии—Гудковая симфония.” Reproduced in Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 100.
51 Wendel also places the “Symphony of Sirens” in the context of the city symphony film (Wendel, “The 1922 ‘Symphony of Sirens’ in Baku, Azerbaijan,” 556). For a thorough overview of the city symphony movement see Steven Jacobs, Eva Hielscher, & Anthony Kinik, eds., The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity between the Wars (New York, 2019). As I argue elsewhere, Avraamov’s mass spectacle is an overlooked part of the emergence of this phenomenon: Daniel Schwartz, “Sounding the Inaudible: Rethinking the Musical Analogy in the City Symphonies of Walter Ruttmann and Dziga Vertov,” in Music, Sound and the Moving Image 12, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 1–31.
52 This is not to say that staging such a city symphony is impossible, but only that it requires a great deal more reflection on the artifice of the composition and the heterogeneity of the space.
53 “Simfoniia gudkov,” Pravda, November 14, 1923, 5. Quoted in Khismatov, “Simfoniia Gudkov,” 107. Translation mine. At the same time, the reporter suggests, Gnesin cautiously encouraged the mass spectacle’s experimental project. “With regard to harmony, Gnesin found the results very interesting. He recommends the continuation of work in this area: the music of factory sirens may replace the sound of church bells as a means of collective organization” (Ibid). This speaks to the religious quality of mass spectacles, what Clark calls their “thirst for the sacred.” Katerina Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution, 2. For more critical responses see “Simfoniia Gudkov, Izvestiia VTsIKa, November 9, 1923, 6; A. Uglov, “Zvuki Moskvy v Oktiabr΄skuiu godovshchinu” Izvestiиa VTsIKa, November 11, 1923, 5; “Simfoniia Gudkov,” Rabochaia gazeta, November 9, 1923, 4.
54 A. Uglov, “Zvuki Moskvy v Oktiabr΄skuiu godovshchinu” Izvestiиa VTsIKa, November 11, 1923, 5. Quoted in Khismatov, “Simfoniia Gudkov,” 108. Ellipses Khismatov’s; translation mine. As Khismatov points out in his remarks, Uglov appears unaware of the existence of the Baku Symphony.
55 Avraamov, “Symphony of Sirens,” Artist and Viewer, 71; “Simfoniia Gudkov,” Khudozhnik i zritel΄, 51.
56 Reproduced in Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 133.
57 “Obrashchenie Moskovskogo Prolekul΄ta k fabrichno-zavodskim komitetam Moskvy o simfonii gudkov vo vremia prasdnovaniia VI godovshchiny Oktiabria.” Reproduced in Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 126. As Rumiantsev points out, this appeal was most-likely written by Avraamov himself. In it, Avraamov refers readers to his article in Gorn. The Gorn article, however, did not appear until after the Moscow performance. This supports the idea that Avraamov understood the Gorn article as helping to facilitate the Moscow performance. The appeal also shows that the scale of the Moscow performance was quite a bit smaller than that of the Baku Symphony.
58 Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 128–29.
59 Reproduced in Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 131. There was no repeat performance. Avraamov writes “ReveccA” in Latin script with the last letter capitalized on purpose as if to echo the resonance of her name. Ellipses Rumiantsev’s.
60 Reproduced in Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 137–39. Avraamov does not give Eva’s family name.
61 The letter was in fact written on August 19, 1923. Reproduced in Rumianstev, Ars Novyi, 58–62.
62 Ibid., 60.
63 Clark, Petersburg, 140.
64 Reproduced in Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 61
65 Ibid.
66 Smirov, Sound in Z, 31–32.
67 Quoted in Izvolov, “From the History of Graphic Sound in the Soviet Union,” 36.
68 Quoted in Smirnov, Sound in Z, 152.
69 Reproduced in Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 196.
70 Ibid., 195–6.
71 Ibid.
72 Reproduced in Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 195. I would like to thank one of the anonymous reviewers at Slavic Review for this translation.
73 Avraamov, “Symphony of Sirens,” Artist and Viewer, 70; Avraamov, Khudozhnik i zritel΄, 50.
74 As such, the symphony anticipates Soviet radio practices of the late 1920s, especially public broadcasts via wired loudspeakers. See Stephen Lovell, “How Russia Learned to Listen: Radio and the Making of Soviet Culture,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, no. 3 (November 2011): 591–615.
75 “У нас еще так недавно был Танеев и Скрябин. . .У кого? Где это ‘у нас’? В Москве? В Петрограде? Ведь даже первопрестольный Киев знает Скрябина лишь по нескольким гастролям, а крупнейшие произведения Танеева там—даже в Киеве—никогда не исполнялись.” Reproduced in Rumiantsev, Ars Novyi, 194.
76 Ibid., 196.
77 Quoted in E. Kann-Novikova, Sobiratel΄nitsa Russkikh Narodnykh Pesen, Evgeniia Lineva (Moscow, 1952), 46. Translation mine. For more on Lineva and her collection of folk music see James Bailey and Mikhail Lobanov, “A Collection of Translations of Russian Folk Songs: E.E. Lineva’s Visit to America (1892–1896),” Folklorica: Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association 4, no. 1 (1999): 24–34.
78 Evgenia Lineva, Folk Songs of the Ukraine: An Experiment in Recording Ukrainian Folk Songs by Phonograph During a Musical Ethnological Excursion to Poltova in 1903, trans. Maria Safonoff (Godfrey, Ill., 1958). This songbook would in turn inspire the great works of Russian composers like Igor Stravinskii, as well as go on to inform performances and revivals of Russian and Ukrainian folk music around the world. For Lineva’s influence on Stravinskii see Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions (Berkley, 1996), 727–35.
79 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, eds. Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, Mass, 2008), 23.
80 In the west European and North-American context of The Audible Past, Jonathan Sterne traces the origins of this faith in recording technology in terms of a discourse on sound fidelity. This discourse, Sterne argues, “is much more about faith in the social function and organization of machines than it is about the relation of a sound to its ‘source.’” It is a kind of story told to “staple separate pieces of sonic reality together.” Lineva and Avraamov’s conception of the power of the copy works in a similar fashion. Their faith in the phonograph serves a distinct social function. It staples separate pieces of sonic reality together in accordance with a desire to create an ideal community of artists and listeners. This community takes the form of an unbroken chain that stretches from the sonic and spiritual sources of music (the peasantry; the mouth of the people; great Russian composers) to present and future generations of listeners. Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham, NC, 2003), 219.
81 Kittler, Friedrich A., “The City Is a Medium,” New Literary History 27, no. 4 (Autumn 1996): 719Google Scholar.