aworks :: "new" american classical music

In a Lonely Place (1950). George Antheil /actually, today is in a *happy* place/

Some expected and unexpected surprises this Christmas:

• The local seven-year-old was wired last night and didn't get to sleep until 11:30pm. This meant I had to hurry to get things done and get to sleep before Santa Claus arrived.
• This morning, the local seven-year-old asked why Santa's handwriting looked suspiciously similar to the spouse's and then asked for another signature sample to compare more closely.
• Said child also thought it odd the CD from Santa still had a Rasputin Music tag on it.
• 
• On the CD front, I received a 12-CD set of the late Pavarotti. The local seven-year-old asked I play the remaining 11 CDs some other time.
• I got some choice books as presents. Those relevant to this blog, expected and unexpected: The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross and Ten Great American Composers by Carmen Bredeson & Ralph Thibodeau.
• Finally, I received a requested DVD of Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place with Humphrey Bogart. I discovered the musical score was by George Antheil. Who knew he wrote film scores?

Alex Ross on George Antheil:

Antheil ended up making a living in Hollywood, writing scores for, among other films, Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman and The Buccaneer.

---

george antheil on imdb.
now playing: nels cline. dedication. new monastery: a view into the music of andrew hill.

A Dirge - 8 Fragments from Shelley (1951). George Antheil

I recently read two books on World War II bombing, one of England bombing Germany and the other of Germany bombing London. Assessing the morality of area- bombing Germany combined with learning the personal impact of the Blitz on Londoners makes for compelling if sometimes scary reading. But these books didn't prepare me for hearing A Dirge by George Antheil for the first time. The choral text is from Shelley:

Deep caves and dreary main,
Wail! for the world's wrong.

But the piano accompaniment is even darker.

Kyle Gann just commented on another work I, at least, find distressing -- Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima:

And was his Threnody, penned at 26, anything more than a frisson of novel sounds?

napster: threnody for the victims of hiroshima aol: a dirge (clip)

20 preludi da la femme 100 têtes - after Max Ernst (1932-3). George Antheil

I've been listening to music via the Royal Scottish National Orchestra website. The site has paid downloads at .99 a track and free one minute clips. As a collector, I don't find this particularly enticing. I doubt the selection is all that good for my interests and the free part of it isn't yet compelling, compared to say free Napster which I do revisit every week or so. There are a couple of Paul Lansky pieces though, in the 21st century section in what looks to be the catalog of Bridge Records. Actually, an interesting feature would be the ability to stream all the clips, rather than having to individually play them.

By the way, I never knew Antheil's full name was, as Paul Griffith's Classical Music Companion reports it, Georg Carl Johann Antheil -- a good German name for the New Jersey-born composer.

Little Shimmy (1923). George Antheil

In Alex Ross' list of 20th-century musical examples, he includes Conlon Nancarrow's Study No. 3a  from the "Boogie-Woogie Suite." This is as wild as American expatriate player piano gets, I suppose.

Earlier today, I was listening to George Antheil's blues parody Little Shimmy from 1923 and a couple of measures reminded me of the repeated notes of Jerry Lee Lewis. And how did Jerry Lee's marriage to his 13-year-old second cousin work out, anyway?

Frank Oteri from his 100 Reasons to Play This Century's Music also comments on Little Shimmy:

A extra-ordinarily short jazzy piano piece to brighten up the afternoon.

Ballet mécanique (1924). George Antheil /career/

Robert Reilly's article on George Antheil in Crisis: Politics, Culture, & the Church includes some quotes from the composer...

re: Ballet mécanique:

I had no idea of copying a machine directly down into music, so to speak. My idea,    rather, was to warn the age in which I was living of the simultaneous beauty and danger of its own unconscious mechanistic philosophy, aesthetic.

After moving to Hollywood in 1935 and studying Beethoven and other classical composers:

I discovered, for instance, that Sibelius was not so bad after all. How effete my tastes had become in Paris.

...that no young artist starts the world all over again for himself but merely continues...the heritage of the past, pushing if possible on a little further.

A check of imdb shows 90 film scores by Antheil including Hellcats of the Navy, Along the Oregon Trail, Hopalong Rides Again, The Plainsman and others of similar insignificance. It's interesting how reaction to Ballet mécanique hurt his career and yet the work is his greatest legacy.

Ballet mécanique (1924). George Antheil

I hadn't heard Antheil's Ballet mécanique in awhile so when iTunes played it today, I was bowled over by its intensity. I'm listening to the The University of Massachusetts Lowell Percussion Ensemble recording (which also includes the superb John Cage/Lou Harrison Double Music).

Paul Lehrman's Ballet mécanique site is complete with FAQ, including answers to questions like how to play an airplane propeller and how to play the parts for sirens and bells.

John Cage's Second Construction is another siren work and Steve Reich's City Life uses sampled car alarms. But those pieces sound humane, even delicate compared to the power of Antheil's.

Second Sonata, "The Airplane" (1922). George Antheil

Despite the Second Sonata being composed by George "Bad Boy" Antheil, having a subtitle of "The Airplane," and the first movement being marked as "To be played as fast as possible," this is a work that has some subtlety and refinement. Some credit goes to the pianist, Herbert Henck, for balancing the mechanized style with musicianship in his playing. I got the same feeling I get when someone else other than the composer interprets Philip Glass' piano music--there's real music here seeking to reveal itself.

Linda Linda Whitesitt from the Database of American Recorded Music:

Airplane Sonata is the product of a series of spectacular dreams in which Antheil felt that he had "for once caught the true significance and atmosphere of these giant engines and things that move about us."* Written in his hometown of Trenton before he left on his first European concert tour, it is the progenitor of his "time mechanisms”: "the future of the world lies in the vibration of its people. The environment of the machine has already become a spiritual thing.... For the great mass of us the war has killed illusion and sentimentality... Hence the birth of the Music-Mechanists." For Antheil the future would embrace two kinds of music: the Banal or Sentimental from distortions of popular tunes and the Mechanistic from his concept of music as sound unwinding in time.

26 from the Library: Intro & Lucier Lang Antheil Rzewski Adams Lucier Nancarrow

Sonatina für Radio (1929). George Antheil

Jovial and jaunty, George Antheil's Sonatina für Radio has a popular feel to it. This is a recording on ECM by Herbert Henck. I don't have much to say about the music but I will point out the CD cover has a picture of a cow. This joins John Adams' Gnarly Buttons CD as the only classical recordings I know of that show a cow.

Disclaimer: This recording, unlike the Adams, contains no actual or simulated cow sounds.
26 from the Library: Intro & #1 #2 #3