If you’re in search of loony tunesmiths, you need look no further than July 8. Today marks the birthday anniversaries of two of classical music’s wackiest pianist-composers.
George Antheil, self-proclaimed “Bad Boy of Music,” was born in Trenton, NJ on this date in 1900. His “Ballet Mécanique,” scored for synchronized player pianos, airplane propellers, siren and electric bells, provoked one of the great classical music riots at its Paris premiere in 1926.
Antheil would practice the piano with such ferocity that he would have to pause, periodically, to thrust his hands into two fish bowls filled with ice water. Before the start of a recital, he would ostentatiously remove a pistol from a silk holster sewn into his jacket and place it atop the piano, to telegraph the message that he would brook no nonsense.
Later, he became a Hollywood film composer, a war correspondent, the author of a column of advice to the lovelorn, an expert in endocrinology, and co-inventor, with actress Hedy Lamarr, of a frequency-hopping system for the guidance of Allied torpedoes that would become the basis for modern spread-spectrum communications technology. Neither Antheil nor Lamarr would ever see a dime for their invention.
In 1944, he scored a notable success with his Symphony No. 4, after it was taken up by Leopold Stokowski and later Sir Eugene Goossens, who recorded it. Antheil was also the author of a bestselling autobiography, “Bad Boy of Music.” He died of a heart attack at the age of 59. A third recorded cycle of his symphonies was recently completed for the Chandos label. Not bad for a boy from Trenton.
Wouldn’t you know, Percy Aldridge Grainger was also born on this date, outside Melbourne, Australia, in 1882. Another one of classical music’s great eccentrics, Grainger was obsessed with physical fitness. Rather than drive or take the train between towns and recitals, it was his preference to jog. He was also known to throw a ball over one side of a house, and then race through to the other side to catch it.
Enamored with Nordic culture, he went out of his way to use only Anglo-Saxon words, avoiding in his letters anything of Norman or Latin origin. This extended to his scores, in which he eschewed Italian musical terms in favor of faux “Anglo-Saxon” equivalents (“middle fiddle” for viola, “tone-wright” for composer, “louden” for crescendo). In 1928, he married Ella Ström, from Sweden, during a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. On the program was his new work, “To a Nordic Princess.”
Lest his cultural quirks be misconstrued in an increasingly black-and-white world, Grainger’s embrace of “blue-eyed English” was as idiosyncratic as everything else in his character. He bristled against the dominance of German music, he served in the U.S. Army against Germany in WWI, he embraced music from a wide diversity of cultures, all the way to Bali, he championed works by African-Canadian-American composer R. Nathaniel Dett, and he adored Duke Ellington and George Gershwin.
Grainger was unusually close to his mother and exhibited sadomasochistic tendencies. He donated whips and blood-stained clothes to the Grainger Museum, which he founded in 1932. His request to have his skeleton displayed – posthumously, of course – was denied.
Later, while living in White Plains, NY, he experimented with electronics and “machine music,” in a sense paralleling an obsession of Antheil, who besides “Ballet Mécanique,” wrote such works as “Airplane Sonata” and “Death of Machines.”
Sadly, only the tiniest portion of Grainger’s output is known by the general public, and he is celebrated as the composer of such folksy trifles as “Country Gardens,” “Molly on the Shore,” and “Shepherd’s Hey.” But Grainger’s treatment of harmony and rhythm could be highly original. He was a brilliant musician, and wholly unconventional in more ways than one.
Grainger died in White Plains in 1961 at the age of 78. His remains, including his skeleton, rest in Adelaide.
Happy birthday, you wacky, wacky boys.
Grainger, “Scotch Strathspey and Reel”
Grainger orchestration of Debussy’s “Pagodes”
His imaginary ballet, “The Warriors”
Grainger plays “Molly on the Shore”
R. Nathaniel Dett’s “Juba”
Antheil, “Ballet Mécanique” – presumably in its revision, because of the use of live pianists – with the annoying Fernand Léger film
Antheil, “Jazz Symphony”
Antheil, Symphony No. 4 “1942”
Antheil, “Specter of the Rose” (from the film score, 1946)
Antheil speaks!
PHOTOS: Antheil packing heat (top), and the multifaceted Grainger
