Foundry

A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal in a mold, and removing the mold material or casting after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals processed are aluminium and cast iron. However, other metals, such as bronze, brass, steel, magnesium, and zinc, are also used to produce castings in foundries. In this process, parts of desired shapes and sizes can be formed.

Process

In metalworking, casting involves pouring liquid metal into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowing it to cool and solidify. The solidified part is also known as a casting, which is ejected or broken out of the mold to complete the process. Casting is most often used for making complex shapes that would be difficult or uneconomical to make by other methods.

Melting

Melting is performed in a furnace. Virgin material, external scrap, internal scrap, and alloying elements are used to charge the furnace. Virgin material refers to commercially pure forms of the primary metal used to form a particular alloy. Alloying elements are either pure forms of an alloying element, like electrolytic nickel, or alloys of limited composition, such as ferroalloys or master alloys. External scrap is material from other forming processes such as punching, forging, or machining. Internal scrap consists of gates, risers, defective castings, and other extraneous metal oddments produced within the facility.

Iron Foundry

Factory: machine-music (Russian: Завод: музыка машин, Zavod: muzyka mashin), Op. 19, commonly referred to as the Iron Foundry, is the most well-known work by Soviet composer Alexander Mosolov and a prime example of Soviet futurist music. It was composed between 1926 and 1927 as the first movement of the ballet suite Stal ("Steel"). The remaining movements of Steel, "In Prison," "At the Ball," and "On the Square" have been lost, and Iron Foundry is performed today as a standalone orchestral episode.

History

Iron Foundry was a product of its time. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, romantic music—though not banned—fell from prominence as it was a remnant of the deposed ruling class, and experimental and revolutionary ideas flourished. In 1923, the Association for Contemporary Music was founded for avant-garde composers. Mosolov, his teacher Nikolai Myaskovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, and other composers joined. Iron Foundry was originally composed for the ballet Stal with a scenario by Inna Chernetskaya, which was ultimately never staged; instead it was presented as the first movement of an orchestral suite from the ballet that premiered in Moscow on December 4, 1927, in a concert by the Association for Contemporary Music commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The same concert featured Shostakovich's Second Symphony, Nikolai Roslavets' cantata October, and Leonid Polovinkin's Prologue. Mosolov's composition was performed at the International Society for Contemporary Music's eighth festival in Liège on September 6, 1930, where it was met with critical acclaim. "We have ... a kind of lyrical theme, the song of steel, or possible of man, the ironmaster. ... [I]t is an essentially musical idea carried out with convincing skill, and as a concluding piece to an orchestral programme it deserves to become popular," one critic said of the piece.