Symphony of Sirens, Revisited

Roman Mars:
This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars.

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. And 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 and 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 Cagniard de la Tour decided to call the artificial noisemaker he was working on, the Siren.

[SIREN SOUND]

Roman Mars:
And this new mechanical siren became one of the signature sounds of the modern world. Sirens warned people about imminent 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, name Arseny Avraamov heard music and the cacophony of the modern world and he tried to create a composition at 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 Maynes investigated the legend of Avraamov 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.”

Charles Maynes:
Here’s what I know. November of 1923, a man named Arseny Avraamov would climb onto a rooftop in central Moscow. He will be holding two flags. But the day will be November 7 and the Soviet Union, the USSR, will be celebrating its sixth anniversary, the birthday of the one and only, Bolshevik Revolution. This man Avraamov 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’ll conduct a symphony made up of an entire city. He will call this symphony the Symphony of Sirens. Let’s be clear, this isn’t his first time, but it will be his most important attempt so far. Soviet big leagues, so to speak. So this is what I know about Avraamov. 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 Andrey Smirnoff. 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. Or so I thought. Even Smirnoff said it was impossible to classify Avraamov. He told me Avraamov was from a Catholic family and had worked for the circus. He was a fountain of ideas, a ladies’ man and if he couldn’t be pinned down in his personal life, it was even more so with this work.

Andrey Smirnoff:
[SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

Translator:
In one sense, they call him a composer. Yes, he was a composer. He studied music for a few years. But I, like most people interested in Avraamov, know very little about his music because almost none of it survives. So you could say there was this split 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 just don’t know. So yes, he’s a composer, but he’s a composer based on myth.

Charles Maynes:
The myth in part was based on a flair for the dramatic. Early on he nicknamed himself Rev Ars Avra, the Revolution of Arseny Avraamov. He had friends too — poets, engineers, musicians, cinematographers. In the first decades of the 20th century, they dreamed up ideas about the future. With the arrival of the revolution, Avraamov and the other setup to turn them into reality – new art for a new world – with support, Smirnoff told me, from the Soviet elite.

Andrey Smirnoff:
[SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

Translator:
He had very strong support from on high. He had support from Trotsky and as far as I know, Lenin supported him, or at least he tolerated it all. He tolerated this culture of praises as far as creating this new future. These artists — avant-gard artists and poets — would teach the peasants and workers about the future of art.

Charles Maynes:
Along the way, Avraamov would develop a far reach of theories that would sketch out the concepts of electronic music, biomechanics, early use of sound in cinema. And then there was “The Symphony of Sirens,” Avraamov’s music of the future — the reason I’d come.

[SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

Charles Maynes:
Archival footage of parades from Red Square that day, November 1923, showed clear skies, 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 Avraamov, but the irony, Smirnoff told me, was that the pilot may have been the only one who could make sense of Avraamov’s performance below.

Andrey Smirnoff:
[SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

Translator:
This performance of the symphony went largely unnoticed because demonstrations were going on at the same time on Red Square. Airplanes were flying overhead and most people probably didn’t realize the sirens were their own event. Moscow is a big city but even for the people who were there, the song was so loud, it blew them off their feet. So the performers didn’t understand those who are there to listen, couldn’t hear a thing and nobody had even the slightest understanding of what was going on.

Charles Maynes:
I’d learned one other detail that day. Although new recordings of the 1923 performance existed, a young composer in St. Petersburg had staged Avraamov’s symphony just a few years back. I bought a ticket and caught to first train out of town.

[TRAIN ENGINE]

Charles Maynes:
I tracked down Sergei Chmutov on the Peter-Paul fortress where he played a recording of the sirens to an unsuspecting public. Chmutov told me that Avraamov believed every city has its own symphony. For St. Petersburg, Sergei had constructed his version according to Avraamov’s own notes from the 1923 score.

Sergei:
[SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

Translator:
With a Symphony of Sirens, a detailed description remains. So we can read it and hear what it might have sound like now it is. It tells us the order of everything — when to turn on the sirens, when the cannons should fire, what should go after to what.

Sergei:
[SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

Translator:
It’s all spelled out and written down clearly, and it’s obvious why Avraamov did it this way. So that the symphony could be played not only by musicians but by any person who knew how to read.

Charles Maynes:
Chmutov spliced together sounds beginning with Avraamov’s so-called Magistral, a set of steam whistle sirens constructed to play the worker’s hymn, “The Internationale.” 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 Avraamov’s telling, the siren call 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.

Sergei:
[SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

Translator:
During the performance of the Sirens. Avraamov was up on the rooftop with the flags telling the cannons when to fire. 1, 2, 3 siren horns were sound off after the firing of the first cannon, each siren a little different in tune. And then this triumphant siren sound was to ring out for another three minutes accompanied by bells.

Charles Maynes:
It was loud, Chmutov conceited, and the siren scared the tourists. We continued our walk around Peter-Paul fortress when unexpectedly we came across an exhibit for the American composer John Cage. An avant-garde artist who’d heard music in the sounds with the environment around him, to my mind Cage was Avraamov born a few years later and with a different passport. The coincidence was odd. We entered and found Elena Nicolaevna.

Elena:
[SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

Charles Maynes:
“It doesn’t move me,” she said. In her view, Cage’s biggest defense was his most famous work — four minutes and 33 seconds, in which no notes to play for that duration. The song consistent of whatever sounds around you at that moment.

Elena:
[SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

Charles Maynes:
Elena Nikcolaevna had lasted four minutes before she gave up. “Better they pay me 150 rubles,” she said. I suggested 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 explored the same ideas in the 20s.

Elena:
[SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

Charles Maynes:
Chmutov told her about Avraamov’s idea, about the Symphony of Sirens, the symphony for every city.

Elena:
[SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

Charles Maynes:
“Yes,” she said, “Petersburg sings, our city is a symphony,” as if it was the most obvious thing she’d ever heard it.

[background music]

Charles Maynes:
Back in Moscow, I found myself reviewing the archival tapes from Red Square again. I still couldn’t find Avraamov, 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 Avraamov, 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 Andrey Smirnoff, Avraamov 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.

Andrey Smirnoff:
[SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN]

Translator:
The problem isn’t just that the majority of the public doesn’t know about it. He said they don’t know that it even could exist. Russians were convinced long ago that the Soviet Union could not produce anything, that everything good was in the West and all we could do was make bad copies of everything. But it’s not like that, and the history of the 20s and 30s really proves it. But this doubt that Russians have in themselves loom large. That’s how we were raised. Hopefully, someday it will change.

[background music]

Charles Maynes:
That night fireworks rang out over cities all across Russia. It was a holiday, I’d almost forgotten. Avraamov thought music was the ultimate communal experience and it was hard not to agree. Here we all were looking skyward at the dramas. But if I closed my eyes and listen carefully, I could hear a car alarm, steps on the pavement, laughter. Then I imagined other parts of the city chiming in, crowds gathered in protests, trains racing in the tunnels, Moscow’s never-ending traffic, just the hum and din of an average day in the city. You didn’t have to like Avraamov’s music of the future to know it was happening. And if I couldn’t find the man, well, it was comforting to know the music that never left.

Roman Mars:
That was “The Symphony of Sirens Revisited” by producer Charles Maynes. 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% Invisible that I’m sure many of you haven’t heard, so we thought we 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 Krugozor?

———

Roman Mars:
This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars.

Roman Mars:
My friend, Julia Barton-

Julia Barton:
That’s me!

Roman Mars:
Is in a New York City apartment with Michael Idov-

Michael Idov:
My name is Michael Idov and I’m the editor of “Made In Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design.”

Roman Mars:
And Lawrence (Lawrence squawks). A parrot that sounds exactly like the building’s door buzzer. And no matter how hard we tried to cut out Lawrence-

Julia Barton:
His door buzzer imitation cannot be denied.

Roman Mars:
But maybe that’s okay. Because Idov’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 has in common.

Julia Barton:
But Idov believes there’s something that unites them all.

Michael Idov:
To define this aesthetic you first need to realize that most of these items were rip-offs of western sources of varying qualities.

Roman Mars:
They are imitations. Like the way Lawrence the parrot is imitating the door buzzer. (Lawrence squawks)

Julia Barton:
Shut up, Lawrence.

Roman Mars:
One look at the items in the book, even though they are shameless imitations, you’ll see that the Soviet’s stuff is unmistakeably Soviet.

Julia Barton:
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.

Michael Idov:
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.”]

Julia Barton:
Vice President Nixon showed Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev around the exhibit, and they stopped in front of a model suburban home to address an audience before new American color TV cameras.

Richard Nixon (archival tape):
“There are so many instances where you may be ahead of us, for example, in the development of the thrust of your rocket for the investigation of outer space. There may be some instances, for example, color television, where we’re ahead of you. But! In order for both of us to benefit (crosstalk)… You see? You never concede anything!”

Roman Mars:
Michael Idov says that despite Kruschev’s bombast and the recent success of Sputnik, the Soviets were humiliated by all of America’s stuff.

Julia Barton:
Khrushchev decided that 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 hairdryers.

Michael Idov:
Usually, the way it worked was, you know, some Party guy would come back from a foreign trip and bring in, you know, 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 the guy who draws well and would say, “Alright, well, can you draw? Okay, you do the logo.” And that would be the logo that would last for the next forty years.

Roman Mars:
This system produced a lot of strange stuff. But sometimes the Soviets did better than the original.

Julia Barton:
Take the unbelievably cool magazine, Krugozor.

Michael Idov:
Everyone should just bow down before the glory of Krugozor.

Julia Barton:
It was supposedly based on something Khrushchev saw while in the United States — a magazine with a record in it. Idov calls it the original podcast.

[Audio clip of Krugozor record]

Julia Barton:
It actually sounds like public radio.

Michael Idov:
There would be an article in the magazine and then the contents of the vinyl disc would somehow illustrate the article. There would be the sounds of the forest or something like that. Or folk songs of some far-flung tribe.

Julia Barton:
Or this-

[Audio clip of UB40’s “Sing Our Own Song”]

Michael Idov:
What started happening over time was, you know, since the people who made this magazine had access to something unbelievably awesome for the Soviet Union which is a vinyl press, they started slipping in a little pop music in there.

Roman Mars:
It was the round tear-out discs in Krugozor that gave Russians their first non-bootleg recordings of everyone from Barbra Streisand to Pink Floyd to Michael Jackson.

Julia Barton:
The main thing that unites the designs in Made In Russia is that they’re often the only designs. Michael Idov didn’t pick from shelf-loads of, say, different cassette recorders. Most Soviets had one — the Vesna. And the BK Electronica personal computer probably made Russian-speaking hackers the best in the world, through its sheer awfulness. Nobody had any other choice.

Michael Idov:
Far be it for 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, you know, my age or older, I already know so much about you.

Julia Barton:
Including the song that put you to bed at night.

Michael Idov:
You know, if you grew up in the Soviet Union, it’s just seared into your brain. I can sing it for you, if you want.

Julia Barton:
Yeah, how does it go?

Michael Idov:
(sings closing theme from Soviet TV’s “Good Night, Little Ones”)

Julia Barton:
This theme from a children’s puppet show aired every night at 8:15 on Soviet television. You can’t really call the crude animal puppets icons of Soviet design, but Idov put them in his book anyway.

[Audio clip of “Good Night, Little Ones”]

Julia Barton:
Because with their bright eyes and worn out fur, Khrusha the pig and Stepashka the bunny represent a lost universe. Eleven 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.

Julia Barton:
Goodnight, Roman!

Roman Mars:
99% Invisible is Sam Greenspan and me, Roman Mars. “The Symphony of Sirens Revisited” was produced by Charles Maynes, and “The Unsung Icons of Soviet Design” was produced by Julia Barton. We’re Project 91.7 local public radio KALW in San Francisco and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco.

You can find the show and like the show on Facebook. I tweet at @romanmars but you can find a picture of Avraamov with his arms outstretched conducting “The Symphony of Sirens” at 99percentinvisible.org.

 

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