# Arseny Avraamov [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arseny_Avraamov) · [BBC: "The man who conducted a city"](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20221103-arseny-avraamov-the-man-who-conducted-a-city) ( 1886 – 1944 ) ## Description Soviet musical theorist and composer best known for the *Symphony of Factory Sirens* (1922) — an open-air composition performed on factory whistles, foghorns, and artillery in Baku and Moscow — and for pioneering "ornamental" graphic/drawn sound, synthesizing sound directly from hand-drawn waveforms on the optical soundtrack. ## Key Tags #visual-music #russian-avant-garde #drawn-sound #sound ## Essential Works - *Symphony of Factory Sirens* (1922) - mass open-air composition for factory whistles, foghorns, ship horns, and artillery, performed in Baku (1922) and Moscow (1923) - Ornamental/graphic sound experiments (Multzvuk group, 1930–34) - hand-drawn synthetic soundtracks, including the films *Ornamental Animation*, *Marusia Otravilas*, and *Organ Chords* ## Details Rejected conventional musical instruments as limited by "past material culture," arguing instead for synthesizing sound directly through graphic/ornamental means on the filmstrip's optical soundtrack — a position that anticipated later synthesizer and computer-music practice: "we simply consider that our method gives us enough means to turn the sound development and dynamics in any desired direction any moment, since we are not limited by the tools of past material culture — musical instruments" (Avraamov, quoted in Zakharine and Meise, 2013, p. 168). Led the Multzvuk ("animated sound") group from 1930–34, whose archive was destroyed in 1937. ### Concepts and Theories - [[Media Archaeology]] - recovers an early Soviet lineage of graphic-sound synthesis largely lost outside specialist scholarship ### Creative and Technical Practices - [[Drawn Sound]] - pioneer of drawing synthetic sound waveforms directly onto the optical soundtrack ### Collaborators - [[Boris Yankovsky]] - member of Avraamov's Multzvuk group before separating in 1932 to develop his own spectral-synthesis method ### Institutional Affiliations and Associated Movements %% none yet %% ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography %% none yet %% ### Secondary Sources Bibliography - [[Sound in Z - Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia|Sound in Z]] - Smirnov, Andrey, and Matt Price. *Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia*. Koenig Books, 2013. - [[Electrified voices - medial, socio-historical and cultural aspects of voice transfer|Electrified Voices]] - Zakharine, Dmitri, and Nils Meise, eds. *Electrified Voices: Medial, Socio-Historical and Cultural Aspects of Voice Transfer*. V&R unipress GmbH, 2013. "Since we are real hosts of the soundtrack in each portion of the frame, we simply consider that our method gives us enough means to turn the sound development and dynamics in any desired direction any moment..." (Avraamov 1932: 48–51, quoted p. 168).