Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Ballet mécanique

“Dementia” and George Antheil’s Surreal Score

If you have a taste for surreal, low-budget horror in the vein of “Carnival of Souls,” you might be curious to watch “Dementia” (1955). The film contains no dialogue, so George Antheil’s music receives a real showcase. The film was banned by the New York State Film Board for being “inhuman, indecent, and the quintessence of gruesomeness.” Two years later, it was reissued – with narration by Ed McMahon! – as “Daughter of Horror.”

That’s Marni Nixon’s voice on the soundtrack. Nixon, secret weapon of the glossy Hollywood musical, ghost-sang for leading ladies Deborah Kerr (“The King and I”), Natalie Wood (“West Side Story”), and Audrey Hepburn (“My Fair Lady”), among others. Her husband, Ernest Gold (Academy Award winning composer of “Exodus”) conducts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF3Xfyj2Dak

The music from “Dementia” was issued in 2019, coupled with Gold’s Piano Concerto, on the Kritzerland label. I happen to own one of the 500 copies pressed. Of course, it still hasn’t sold out!

http://kritzerland.com/dementia.htm

FUN FACT: “Daughter of Horror” is the movie playing in the theater in “The Blob” when the Blob strikes!

Antheil, born in Trenton, NJ, in 1900, certainly scored some crazy movies.

In the past, I know I’ve shared my enthusiasm for Ben Hecht’s “Specter of the Rose” (1946), the ballet noir in which dancer Ivan Kirov (looking all the world like Steve Martin in “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”) may or may not be murdering his wives. If you happened to miss the post, you’ll find my thoughts here:

Of course, Antheil’s most notorious hit was “Ballet Mécanique,” originally conceived as the soundtrack for a Dadaist experimental film by Fernand Léger. However, the two artists parted ways before the project could be brought to fruition, and “Ballet Mécanique” was introduced as an independent concert work.

And what a concert work! Affronted by a battery of player pianos, airplane propellers, bells and sirens, the opening night audience lost their minds and rioted vigorously into the streets of Paris. Needless to say, Antheil’s reputation was made.

Léger’s “Ballet Mécanique,” was united after the fact with Antheil’s music (which in concert runs a good ten or fifteen minutes longer than the film):

Antheil is buried in Trenton’s Riverview Cemetery. I wrote about my visit there and my tour of the composer’s childhood haunts for an article for The Times of Trenton in 2013:

https://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/2013/08/early_life_in_trenton_left_mar.html

October 15, 2021
Wacky Classical Music Geniuses Celebrate Birthdays

When they were handing out looney, they must have found themselves with an overabundance when it came to July 8.

Today marks the birthday anniversaries of two of 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, inspired 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 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 is currently underway, on 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 around 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 their English equivalents. 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”

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)

PHOTOS: Bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Percy Grainger (left) and Trenton’s own George Antheil.

July 8, 2021
Buck Moon Twins: Antheil & Grainger’s Mad Genius

It’s got have something to do with that Buck Moon.

July 8 marks the birthdays of two of music’s looniest pianist-composers.

George Antheil, self-proclaimed “Bad Boy of Music,” was born in Trenton on this date in 1900. Antheil’s “Ballet Mécanique,” scored for player pianos, airplane propellers, siren and electric bells, inspired 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 commencing a recital, he would remove a pistol from a silk holster sewn into his jacket and ostentatiously place it atop the piano, to send a 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.

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 is currently underway, on 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. Grainger, one of classical music’s great eccentrics, was an outstanding pianist and an innovative composer, who also happened to be obsessed with physical fitness. Rather than drive or take the train between towns and engagements, it was his preference to jog. He was also known to throw a ball over one side of a house, and then race around 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. However, the dominance of German music rankled him, and he loved Duke Ellington.

He 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.

Antheil and Grainger. What are the odds? Blame it on that old devil moon.

Two peas in a pod: George Antheil, smoking, and Percy Grainger, smoking hot, in self-designed “toweling clothes”

July 8, 2020
George Antheil Trenton’s Bad Boy of Music

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” Trenton’s Bad Boy makes good.

George Antheil, self-proclaimed “Bad Boy of Music” (the title of his autobiography), sparked one of classical music’s great riots when his “Ballet Mécanique” was unveiled in Paris in 1926.

The work made preposterous demands on performers and audience alike, with its battery of player pianos, sirens, bells, and airplane propellers – all difficult to coordinate, but worth it, if they were to transform concert halls into free-for-alls and secure Antheil’s status as enfant terrible. His notoriety earned him the respect, friendship, and envy of Paris’ artistic community. From the stage, he watched as Man Ray punched a heckler in the face, as Satie cheered, “Quel precision!,” and as Ezra Pound shouted, “Shut up, you are all stupid idiots.” Pound became one of Antheil’s most ardent champions, taking a break from poetry to publish an inflammatory book, “Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony.”

Antheil speculated, perhaps facetiously, that his mechanistic nightmares may have been inspired by his having been born across the street from a noisy machine shop. In fact, a number of his works bear the boisterous imprint of the factories he knew in Trenton as a boy, including the “Airplane Sonata,” “The Death of Machines,” and the “Sonata Sauvage.”

It was all rather forward-looking. Antheil was one of the first composers to search beyond conventional instruments for musical means. He not only presaged the alien soundscapes of Edgard Varèse, but also anticipated the stupefying repetitions of minimalism – though infusing his own compositions with enough violence to prevent them from ever becoming numbing. Stravinsky was his hero. He fed off the savagery of “The Rite of Spring,” then followed the master’s subsequent hairpin turn into neoclassicism. Both artists suffered a backlash from former idolaters who felt betrayed by what was perceived as a cowardly retreat into the past.

In Antheil’s case, his reputation never recovered. The one-two punch of his Piano Concerto No. 2, transparently influenced by Bach, and the spectacular failure of his “Ballet Mécanique” to impress at its American premiere at Carnegie Hall (mostly due to faulty machinery) cast Antheil, rebel angel that he was, from the lofty heights of notoriety to the slag heap of has-beenery.

But if it is true that the remainder of his career was indeed that of a has-been, we should all be so lucky.

The composer of six symphonies, Antheil also wrote books on endocrinology and speculative war tactics, a murder mystery, a nationally syndicated column of advice to the lovelorn, and over 30 Hollywood film scores. With the actress Hedy Lamarr, he patented a torpedo guidance system that became the basis for modern Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular phone technology.

I hope you’ll join me for music by this eccentric and multitalented figure, including “Ballet Mécanique,” in all its original, uncompromising glory; then selections from his neo-classical Piano Concerto No. 2, his wartime Symphony No. 4, and dance music from his score to the ballet film noir “Specter of the Rose.”

Trenton’s “Bad Boy” makes good, on “Antheil Establishment,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Happy birthday, George Antheil (born July 8, 1900).

Sylvia Beach acts as spotter as Antheil ascends to his second-story apartment, located above the legendary Parisian bookshop Shakespeare and Company

July 8, 2018
George Antheil Trenton’s Bad Boy of Music

Lo and behold! It’s been brought to my attention by Paul Lehrman of the Ballet Mécanique Project that my article on Trenton’s “Bad Boy of Music,” George Antheil, is in the March issue of the Trenton Downtowner, out today. I think it’s also supposed to run in U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo at some point, but you can take a look at it here:

https://communitynews.org/2018/02/28/trentons-bad-boy-of-music-george-antheil-jazzes-concert/

Antheil’s “Jazz Symphony” will be presented by the Capital Philharmonic of New Jersey on a program devoted to classical music of “The Jazz Age,” which will also include works by Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, and Kurt Weill. The concert will take place at the Trenton War Memorial’s George Washington Ballroom on March 10.

March 1, 2018

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