GEORGE ANTHEIL: BALLET MÉCANIQUE (ORIG. VERSION, 1924) A JAZZ SYMPHONY (ORIG. VERSION, 1925) GEORGE ANTHEIL (1900-1959) A JAZZ SYMPHONY [1] A JaZZ SYMPHONY (ORIGINAL VERSION, 1925) 13:14 BALLET POUR INSTRUMENTS MÉCANIQUES [2] BALLET POUR INSTRUMENTS MÉCANIQUES ET PERCUSSION ET PERCUSSION (ORIGINAL VERSION, 1924) 26:37 BOSTON MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT TOTAL 39:53 GIL ROSE, CONDUCTOR COMMENT cal dance,” a ballet of mechanism, machinery, possibly to illustrate the interior of a factory. But it must be remembered that 1924 was the beginning of the day of titles without con- nection. If one wrote a book then, for instance, one usually gave it a name as far removed from the contents as possible; as, for example, the titles of Hemingway’s or Ford Maddox By George Antheil Ford’s novels were hardly connected with their contents. (This has even continued to be the style!) I called my musical piece “Ballet Mécanique,” but I really do not remember why. If the public still thinks of me at all, it probably thinks of me as the composer of this damned Ballet Mécanique. It is now strange for me to remember that I actually finished it as long My original title for the work (given on the manuscript started in Germany) was Message to Mars. Considered from the purely euphonistic point of view, it is, of course, a much ago as early 1925, twenty years ago—yet I am still listed among the “young American composers”! Therefore this Ballet Mécanique has become to me what the “C Sharp Minor worse one than Ballet Mécanique; moreover it implies all kinds of moralistic and mystic Prelude” must have become to Rachmaninoff: it is frankly my nightmare, this in spite of things which would certainly be allergic to the ice blocks of its music. The words “Ballet Mécanique” were brutal, contemporary, hard-boiled, symbolic of the spiritual exhaustion, the fact that since 1925 I have never again touched the idea of “mechanism” in music, either aesthetically or practically. the superathletic, non-sentimental period commencing “The Long Armistice.” Better men than myself have been longer remembered and damned for their youthful My original idea in writing the work was to both synthesize and expand the piano sonatas. [ ] escapades or some flamboyant action than for their more sedate efforts. Don’t get the idea, Also to eliminate whatever effect Stravinsky’s “Les Noces” might have made upon me however, that just because I grouse and mumble here, I consider my Ballet Mécanique a through the first movement of the First Violin Sonata—all this in a work of sufficient size mad youthful prank! It is a completely sincere, although possibly youthful, work, but utterly that the public could, so to speak, see it better. The Ballet Mécanique strictly followed representative of a very interesting period in the world’s history. It has had a tremendous “the dream”; it had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual description of factories, success in Paris, aroused the enthusiasm of an entire artistic generation, among them Jean machinery—and if this has been misunderstood by others, Honegger, Mossolov included, Cocteau, Virgil Thomson, Erik Satie, even James Joyce ... It has also been in bad repute in it is not my fault; had they considered it purely as music (as, being musicians, they should America only because it once endured a wrongly advertised and badly presented perfor- have), they might have found it rather a “mechanistic” dance of life, or even a signal of these mance in Carnegie Hall. In short, it became something else than what it really is, a myth. troubled and war-potential 1924 times placed in a rocket and shot to Mars. I think my Ballet Mécanique has been misunderstood here not because of its music, which But certainly not a mundane piece of machinery! few people here have ever heard (I am not even counting all of the three thousand people It is true that at the time I did consider machines very beautiful, and I had even advised who were at Carnegie Hall; they came to see, not to hear), but because of its title and its aesthetes to have a good look at them; still, I repeat again and again, even frantically, I had still more unfortunate publicity. Its title, for instance, seems to imply that it is a “mechani- no idea (as did Honegger and Mossolov, for example) of copying a machine directly down 4 5 I was not successful successful not I was Beethoven’s (since normal fixed always but furnace, asanelectric ashot andalsooften space, silent”asinterplanetary as “musically my it, As Isaw aesthetic. philosophy, mechanistic unconscious own of its and danger beauty simultaneous speak. soto music, into tion, extending, I think, into thefuture. into Ithink, extending, tion, attempting attempting Ballet Mécanique en toto at least to operate on new principles of construction beyond the the beyond construction of principles new on operate to least at M y idea, rather, was to warn the age in which I was living of the livingofthe theageinwhichIwas warn to was rather, y idea, , butit , ( N properly properly inth andBruckner)boundaries. was George Antheil, Antheil, George a “try” towards a new form, new musical concep newmusical anewform, a “try”towards played!) was streamlined, glistening, cold, often often cold, glistening, streamlined, was played!) 6 Bad Boy ofMusic Bad Boy ( N ew Y ork: Samuel French, 1973), 138-140. 1973), ork: SamuelFrench, - FILM STILL FROM BALLET MÉCANIQUE, COURTESY OF UNSEEN CINEMA: EaRLY AMERICAN AVANT-GARDE FILM 1894-1941 7 noteS fistfights all over the continent. He was for a time the most famous American musician in Europe, and counted among his friends Joyce, Picasso, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Virgil Thomson, and Ezra Pound. Although he had never written for a large ensemble before, early A JAZZ SYMPHONY (1925) was premiered April 10, 1927, at Carnegie Hall that year he began working on Ballet Mécanique. by the W.C. Handy Orchestra, conducted by Allie Ross. The work is scored for two oboes, two clarinets, soprano/alto/tenor saxophone, three trumpets, three It was a massive undertaking: the piece is 1240 measures long, with over 600 time-signature trombones, tuba, percussion, two banjos, three pianos, and a full string section. changes, and is filled with complex, blazing-fast rhythmic figures, atonal arpeggios, and huge block chords. It is relentlessly loud and cacophonous, with snatches of melody BALLET POUR INSTRUMENTS MÉCANIQUES ET PERCUssiON (1924) occasionally bubbling up, only to be subsumed by the sheer wall of sound. Parts are remi- was originally written to accompany a Dadaist film of the same name, directed niscent of Stravinsky’s Les noces, but taken to extremes, and it incorporates elements of by Dudley Murphy and Fernand Léger. It was premiered in a reduced orchestration jazz and ragtime, as well as snippets of Rimsky-Korsakov. And after twenty minutes of June 19, 1926, at the Théâtre Champs-Elysées, Paris, France, conducted by Vladimir aural assault, Antheil introduces a completely new element to musical composition: total Golschmann. The original orchestration premiered November 18, 1999, at Durgin silence. In several sections near the end, some as long as twenty seconds, which Antheil Hall, Lowell, Massachusetts, by the University of Massachusetts Lowell Percussion calls “time-space,” absolutely nothing happens. Ensemble, conducted by Jeffrey Fischer. The work is scored for sixteen player pianos in four parts, two regular pianos, three xylophones, seven electric bells, three propellers, a The instrumentation was just as radical, combining massive percussion with industrial siren, four bass drums, and one tam-tam. sound effects, but the most outrageous addition to the ensemble was sixteen synchronized pianolas. The pianola, a close cousin of the player piano, was a device that attached to the keyboard of a conventional piano. Complex pneumatics reading holes in a paper roll operated By Paul D. Lehrman mechanical fingers that pushed down the keys. Pianolas and player pianos had been popular in homes and entertainment venues since the 1890s. A number of composers including My Ballet Mécanique comes out of the first and principle stuff of music...TIME- Stravinsky, Toch, Ravel, Grainger, and Hindemith had written or arranged pieces for them. SPACE.…Now I hope to present you not with an explosion, but the FOURTH Stravinsky was the first to entertain the idea of combining multiple pianolas while he was DIMENSION...THE FIRST PHYSICAL REALIZATION OF THE FOURTH DIMENSION. I working on Les noces (for which he also considered mechanically-controlled cimbaloms and am not presenting you with an abstraction. I am presenting you with a PHYSICALITY harmonium), but he abandoned it as impractical. Antheil, who had befriended Stravinsky LIKE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE. —George Antheil, De Stijl, May, 1925 when the two met in Berlin in 1922, was the first composer to attempt to see it through. In 1924, George Antheil (1900-1959) was a brash young American pianist and composer Antheil’s handwritten scores for the piece (he wrote it out twice, once with the percussion living in post-World War I Paris at the heart of the expatriate community. His performances parts and once without) contain parts for four pianolas, but his articles and letters show of his “ultra-modern” piano compositions were drawing sold-out crowds and causing clearly that he envisioned using sixteen such instruments, four on a part. 8 9 But there was a problem: synchronizing multiple pianolas was simply not possible. Although several such instruments could be started together, and set to the same nominal tempo, there was no way to prevent minute mechanical inconsistencies in the rolls and the mecha- nisms from causing them to drift apart over time. Given the complex and precise rhythms in Antheil’s score, this would have been disastrous.