99% Invisible - 79- The Symphony of Sirens plus Soviet Design

Episode Date: May 9, 2013

For the ancient Greeks, sirens were mythical creatures who sang out to passing sailors from rocks in the sea. Their music was so beautiful, it was said, that the sailors were powerless against it–they would turn their ships towards these … Continue reading →

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. For the ancient Greeks, sirens were mythical creatures who sang out to passing sailors from rocks in the sea. Their music was so beautiful it was said that sailors were powerless against it. They would turn their ships towards these sea nymphs and crash into the reefs around them. In Homer's Odyssey, there's a story where Odysseus and his men are traveling near an area that sirens are known to inhabit. In Odysseus knows that if he hears the siren song, his ship is going to sink, but he still wants to hear what they sound like, so he comes up with a plan.

Odysseus has his men tie him to the mast so that he can't take control of the ship. Then Odysseus has his men fill their own ears with beeswax so they can't hear anything. The plan works. Odysseus gets to hear the sirens call, his men don't, and they sail on to safety, with Odysseus pleading with his crew to crash the boat the whole way. And for over 2,000 years or so, that's what a siren was, a creature that made a beautiful sound. That all changed in 1819, when a French engineer named Charles Cagnard de la Tour decided

to call the artificial noise maker he was working on. The siren. And this new mechanical siren became one of the signature sounds of the modern world. Sirens warn people about eminent bombing raids during World War I, sirens announce incoming fire engines and ambulances and police. Thanks in part to the siren, the world of the early 20th century had become a lot louder than any time in human history. And we can probably assume that these sirens that people heard in cities all over the world sounded nothing like the siren songs of Greek myth.

At least to most people, one man, a composer, named Arseniy Avramov, heard music in the cacophony of the modern world, and he tried to create a composition of symphony from the clatter of the newly formed Soviet Union. In this little bit of a departure from the typical 99% invisible program, Moscow-based producer Charles Mainz investigated the legend of Avramov and his forgotten masterpiece. And then we're going to follow that up with a classic 99% invisible about Soviet design. But first, this is the symphony of sirens, revisited.

But first, this is the symphony of sirens, revisited. So here's what I know. November of 1923, a man named Arsenio Vramov will climb onto a rooftop in Central Moscow. You will be holding two flags. But the day will be November 7th, and the Soviet Union, the USSR, will be celebrating its sixth anniversary. The birthday of the one and only Bolshevik revolution. This man of Ramavira is a communist. He's also a composer of music, and there on this roof, near the Kremlin,

he will link the two with what might sound like a strange idea. He will conduct a symphony made up of an entire city. He will call this symphony, the symphony of Cyruns. Let's be clear, this isn't his first time. But it will be his most important attempt so far. So be it Big League, so to speak. So this is what I know about a rumble. This is all I know, and I know what I know from a different man.

The man I'm going to see now. His name is Andre Smirnov. He is a man who studies these things, a man who writes about these things. He is a man who can answer what have clearly now become our common questions. Orm so I thought, even Smyrnosa it was impossible the class of Ayavramov. He told me Ayavramov was from a Kassak family and it worked for the circus. He was a fountain of ideas, a lady's man, and if he couldn't be pinned down in his personal life, it was even more so with his work. In one sense they call him a composer. в этом жизни, и он был даже более с ним в его жизни. В принципе, его на зверткомпозитором, да он был композитором.

В one sense, they call him a composer. Yes, he was a composer. He studied music for a few years. На самом деле, я как, наверно, но я, like most people interested in Abraham, know very little about his music, because almost none of it survived. So you could say there wasхе between his experiments.

His ideas about the future of music, music that was never written down, and the music he made to survive, the music he made to make money. So, to talk about what kind of music he wrote or would have written, if that music would have survived, well, we've just done now. So, yes, he's a composer, but he's a composer based on myth.

The myth in part was based on a flair for the dramatic. Rion Hietnik named himself Réve Ars Avra, the revolution of Arsenio Ramov. в Ассенеи Ромов. Кид Френс, Ту. По-Лец, инженер, мюзи-шин, синоматографер. В первый раз в 20-е сент. Они дремят свои идеи о фьючер,

с революшем, с ромовом и сцетом, в твое, сребенем, с революшем, с новым миром, с новым, с новым, с новым, He had very strong support from one high. He had support from Trotsky. And as far as I know, Lening supported him. Poor at least he tolerated it all. He tolerated this culture of praises as part of creating this new future. These artists, avant-gardeants and poets would teach the peasants and workers about the future of art.

Along the way of Ramavud developed far-reaching theories that would sketch out the concepts of electronic music, biomechanics, early use of sound and cinema. And then there was the symphony and sirens of Rama's music of the future. The reason I'd come. The Archival footage of parades from Red Square that day in November 1923 showed clear skies a cold fall day It was the first time apparently the Kremlin had been filmed from an airplane Going through the tape I couldn't find any evidence of a ram of, but the irony, Smirnov told me, was that the pilot may have been the only one who could make sense of a ram's performance below.

The performance of the symphony went largely unnoticed, because demonstrations were going I don't hear a thing. And nobody had even the slightest understanding of what was going on. I'd learned one other detail that day. Although no recordings of the 1923 performance existed, a young composer in St. Petersburg had staged over almost symphony just a few years back. I bought a ticket and caught the first train out of town. I tracked down Sergei Histmodov on the Peter Paul Fortress, where he played a recording of the sirens to an unsuspecting public. His mod have told me that a ram of believed every city had its own symphony.

For St. Petersburg, Sergei had constructed his version according to Rama's own notes from the 1923 score. Symphonic Goodkov was preserved in a gas, we can read it in a gas, we can imagine it in a certain way, even in the most famous language in the world. With the symphony of sirens, a detailed description remains. So we can read it and hear what it might have sound like in our heads. It tells us the order of everything. When to turn on the sirens, when the cannons should fire, what should go afterwards? Which is this, a business which I am a jasmine choker.

It all spelled out and written down clearly, and it's obvious why a Vrama did it this way, so that the symphony could be played not only by musicians, but by any person who knew how to read. Kismat of Splice together sounds beginning with a Vrama so-called magistral, a set of steam whistle sirens constructed to play the workers' hymn, the international. Then he added revolutionary choirs and planes, horns, whistles, machine guns, more horns, soldiers, you get the idea. Collectively, they formed a sort of industrial hymn to Soviet achievement,

with the city united as audience, performer, and stage. In Ovramov's telling, the siren called to work, once so oppressive, had become something to celebrate in the workers' state. It was the music of the future, signaled by the cannon's roar. During the performance of the sirens, Avrama was up on the rooftop of the flags, telling each siren a little different in tone. And then this triumphant sonar was during out for another three minutes accompanying by bells. It was loud, his mouth was conceited, and the sirens scared the tourists. And the sirens scared the tourists. We continued our walk around pure Portrace when unexpectedly we came across an exhibit for the American composer John Cage.

And I'm on guard artist who'd heard music in the sounds of the environment around him. To my mind, Cage was a Vramov, born a few years later and with a different passport. The coincidence was odd. We entered. Let's go. And found Elena Nikolaevna. It doesn't move me, she said. In her view, Cage's biggest offense was his most famous work, four minutes and 33 seconds,

in which no notes are played for that duration. The song consists of whatever sounds around you at that moment. Elen and Kalaim had lasted four minutes before she gave up. Better they pay me 150 rubles, she said. I suggest there might be other American composers more pleasing to her tastes. No, thank you, she said. Not if that meant more the likes of John Cage. But Cage's ideas weren't new, I mentioned. The Russian avant-garde had explored these same ideas in the 20s.

Avant-garde and Soviet? Kiss-mod of told her about Ogramma's idea. About the symphony of sirens. The symphony for every city. That is the symphony of pravelle symphonic. Besterburg, which is... Yes, she said. Petersburg sings. Our city is a symphony.

That's right. As if it was the most obvious thing. She'd ever heard. Back in Moscow, I found myself reviewing the archival tapes from Red Square again. I still couldn't find a Vramov, but this time I was struck by something else, a simple idea really. You can never go back to the beginning. The faces on Red Square that day were full of excitement for a new country. There were literally boys on bicycles, but soon they would grow up, go to war,

and I couldn't help but think that many wouldn't return. For Avramov, November 1923 was the last time he would attempt his symphony of sirens. He didn't fall victim to the Soviet repressions and he didn't die fighting the Nazis. According to Andrei Smirnov, Avramov and others from the avant-garde, they were just forgotten. The country grew up, and the wild ambitions of the 1920s gave way to Soviet officialdom, stagnation, and ultimately cynicism. The problem is that more than half of the public

just doesn't know. It's not just about the existence of the state, but the most important part of the existence of something that's similar. Но проблема в том, что больше часть публики просто не знает. Даже не только осозчитывания, но а самую вообще возможности осозчитывания, вот чего-то подобного. не было, что все хорошо было в вести, и все это было было, что мы могли сделать, но это не так. Но это не так. И эта история в 20-30-е, это очень важно. Но это значит, что люди, которые в них в них

могут быть в большом случае, это как мы встали, hopefully someday it will change. Они themselves, они очень много. Это как мы срочно встали. В общем, someday это будет что-то все-таки. Хоть когда-нибудь, но из инфинитса. That night fireworks rang out over cities all across Russia. It was a holiday. I'd almost forgotten. A Vrama thought music was the ultimate communal experience,

and it was hard not to agree. Here we all were looking skyward at the drums. But if I close my eyes and listen carefully, I could hear a car alarm steps on pavement, laughter. Then I imagined other parts of the city chiming in, crowds gathered in protests, trains racing in the tunnels, moscos never ending traffic, just the home and din of an average day in the city. You didn't have to like it when I was music of the future

to know it was happening. And if I couldn't find the man, well, it was comforting to know that music had never left. That was the symphony of sirens revisited by producer Charles Meads. That story was part of the global story project presented by PRX with support from the Open Society Foundations. In that piece, there was a mention of Soviet design, and it brought to mind this early episode of 99% of visible that I'm sure many of you haven't heard.

So we thought we'd just tack it on here for fun. The question you have to ask yourself is this, are you ready to bow down before the glory of Kroogazor? This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. My friend Julia Barton, that's me, is in a New York City apartment with Michael Idol. My name is Michael Adev, and I'm the editor of Maiden Russia, Unsung icons of Soviet design. And Lawrence, a parrot that sounds exactly like the building's door buzzer. And no matter how hard we try,

to cut out Lawrence. His door buzzer imitation cannot be denied. But maybe that's okay, because Adolf's new book on Soviet design is an homage to the stuff of ordinary Soviet life. Cigarettes, drinking glasses, subway token machines, and it might be hard for outsiders to see what this seemingly random collection

of Soviet consumer goods have in common. But Idov believes there's something that unites them all. To define this aesthetic, you first need to realize that most of these items were rip offs of Western sources of varying qualities. They are imitations. Like the way Lawrence the parrot is imitating the door buzzer. Shut up, Lawrence.

One look at the items in this book, even though they are shameless imitations, you'll see that the Soviet stuff is unmistakably Soviet. Take your Soviet soda machine. In those, carbonated drinks came not in bottles, but straight into a communal drinking glass, something chained to the machine. And the excruciating Soviet arcade games were designed by the Committee on Amusement. Most Americans haven't even seen these artifacts, but in a way, we're responsible for them.

Basically it all goes back to the kitchen debates. In 1959 there was this wildly successful American exhibit in Moscow. It's the official opening of the American Exposition, counterpart of the Soviet trade show in New York, and dedicated to showcasing the highest standard of life in our country. Vice President Nixon showed Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev around the exhibit, and they stopped in front of a model suburban home to address an audience before new American color TV cameras. There are some instances where you may be ahead of us. For example, in the development of your, of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation

about our space. There may be some instances, for example, color television, where we're ahead of you. But in order for both of us, for both of us, you, for both of us, you never could see it any better. Michael Aydov says that despite Khrushchev's bombast and the recent success of Sputnik, the Soviets were humiliated by all of America's stuff. Chrisch have decided the Soviet people needed stuff too. But it was a huge struggle for the Communist Party to switch Soviet factories from producing tanks and rockets to cassette decks and hair dryers.

Usually the way it worked was some party guy would come back from a foreign trip and bring in a German radio and give it to the engineers and say make one like it and then they would just reverse engineer it and then they would look around for you know the guy who draws well and they're like all right well can you draw okay you do the logo and that would be the logo that would last for the next 40 years. The system produced a lot of strange stuff, but sometimes the Soviets did better than the original. Take the unbelievably cool magazine, Krugazor.

No, everybody should just bow down to further glory of Krugazor. It was supposedly based on something Kruschev saw while in the United States, a magazine with a record in it. I love calls it the original podcast. It actually sounds like public radio. There would be an article in the magazine and then the contents of the vinyl desk would somehow illustrate the article, you know, there would be the sounds of the forest or something like that, or folk songs of some far-flung tribe. Or this. We, the fight for the ride, to be free, and we,

build out of it. What started happening over time was, you know, since the people who made this magazine had access to something, you know, undilulably awesome for the Soviet Union, So the people who made this magazine had access to something, you know, unbelievably awesome for the Soviet Union, which is, you know, a vinyl of a press. They started slipping in a little pop music in there. It was the round tearout discs in Krukazor that gave Russians their first non-bootleg recordings

of everyone from Barbra Streisand to Pink Floyd to Michael Jackson. The main thing that unites the designs in Made in Russia is that they're often the only designs. Michael I'd often pick from shelf loads of, say, different cassette recorders. Most Soviets had one, the Visna. In the BK Electronic Up Personal Computer, probably made Russian speaking hackers the best in the world through its sheer awfulness. Nobody had any other choice.

Farbeid from me to suggest that this is actually a good thing, but it certainly simplifies getting to know one another because if you grew up in the Soviet Union and you're my age or older, I already know so much about you. Including the song that put you to bed at night. If you grew up in the Soviet Union, it's just seared into your brain. I can sing it for you if you want. How does it go?

I think it goes. This theme from a children's puppet show aired every night at 815 on Soviet television. You can't really call the crude animal puppets, icons of Soviet design, but I don't put them in his book anyway. Because with their bright eyes and worn out for,ruysha the Pig and Stepashka the Bunny represent a lost universe. 11 time zones closed off from the rest of the world, making their own stuff in their own way.

The tired toys are sleeping now. That's how the song goes. Good night, Roman. 99% invisible is Sam Greenspan and me Roman Mars. The symphony of sirens revisited was produced by Charles Mainz and the unsung icons of Soviet design was produced by Julia Barton. We're a project 91.7 local public radio KALW in San Francisco and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. So it's up to 99% invisible. You must go to 99pi.org.

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