Origins of musical performance art in the avant-garde practices of the beginning of the 20th century

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to identify the origins of musical performance art, tracing its roots in the avant-garde practices of the beginning of the 20th century — futurism and dadaism. Based on the synthetic nature of performance art, the author shows that already in the first avant-garde experiments, so called protoperformances, sound and music played an important role. Special treatment of texts’ phonetics, invention of noise-generating music instruments, involvement of chance element in the process of creation of musical compositions as a forerunner of aleatoric music and consequential non-traditional sound of the works by dadaists and futurists, — all of it violated the boundaries of familiar, had suggestive effect, triggered shock reaction and protests. Examination of the most illustrative examples of the musical pieces allowed us to consider them the origin of the musical performance art of the end of the 20th century.