Intonanumori musings. The Scoppiatori Exploder/ Burster

This is the well known image of Russolo and his assistant Piatti. It's the instrument Piatti is playing that I'm interested in making next.

The instrument Russolo is playing looks like the typical intonarumori design with a string attached to a drum membrane and he is turning a handle which will activate a disc against the string with the lever on top moving a bridge to alter the pitch as I've shown earlier in my blog. However Piatti's intonarumori is very different. He is pushing down a lever with his right hand resting on top. He could be pressing a button to activate the sound.

I had thought this was a bass instrument but, the size of it's resonator is small and were it to have a string it would be very short, so the space above must be there for some mechanical reason?

Russolo was very secretive about the mechanism inside his intonaumori. On the one occasion the press in London were allowed to look inside they reported bellows,wooden discs and brass plates, could these be used here?

Any mechanism designed should try to replicate the sounds Russolo described his machines as producing. For example a version of the Burster (Scoppiatori ).produced 'noises like the bursting of objects that break and shatter'.

I think the lever could be lifting up on strings a number of metal plates like a Venetian blind to crash it down on to a suitable resonating material. The machine being raised on legs to further help the resonating sound. This would explain the reason for an upright structure to help a gravitational effect.

The Scoppiatori Exploder was an instrument Russolo deemed not suitable for a reduced orchestra, could this be an Exploder/ Burster?

Russolo describes there being a 'variety of Bursters', there was a low and medium version of one type. These might have been the typical intonarumori with lever and crank to produce the sound of  motor car engine, but the other type of which there were two, produced 'noises like the bursting of objects that break and shatter'. These could be the machines which are described as being different from each other and the preceding two in Russolo's list of constructed machines!

Replicas of these large upright standing intonarumoris were made for the performance of "Music For 16 Futurist Noise Intoners" in New York 2009. These machines were made under the supervision of Lucca Chessa. I do wonder if they are correct. The levers on these machines are at rest down at an angle and a You Tube video of Mike Patton playing a machines show him pulling the lever  up to affect the noise. In contrast the machines in Russolo's workshop show the levers at rest being horizontal and Piatti is pushing down the lever of the intonarumori he is playing.