Sean's Russia Blog

What does it mean for the city to be a symphony? True, city symphonies are a silent film genre best represented by Dziga Vertov and Walter Ruttmann. These early silent films tried to capture the “sound” of the city by editing images symphonically–to give the viewer a sense of the urban soundscape. But, as Daniel Schwartz explains, early 20th century avant-garde artists broadened the city symphony beyond the “silent” and into a full-fledged multimedia experiment. Some, like Luigi Russolo, pushed the boundaries between music and noise by incorporating new technology into music performance. Others, like Arseny Avraamov, reimagined the city as a giant living orchestra where its inhabitants were both producers and consumers of sound. While others, like Vertov, valorized the city into the natural habitat of a New Soviet Person and their labor. But what did a city symphony sound like? Especially when its composers left so few written instructions for conductors to recreate them? How does the city symphony speak to m