A spacious carpeted room, party FX

I knew that the Ballet Mécanique was scored for an incredible collection of instruments - how incredible I was to find out later. Eugene Goossens was engaged as conductor and we hired 6 xylophonists, 2 bass drummers, and some very fine pianists, including Aaron himself. But I couldn't make head or tail of George's demands for things like electric bells and a fire siren, so we left all that until his arrival.

MUS 12 JAZZ SYMPHONY Disc: Telefunken 6.42196 with edits Hold then dialog over

For such an audience, a String Quartet was a hideously bad choice to open with. Next I was to accompany my 2nd Violin Sonata. Ordinarily, it would've been duck soup for me, but Donald's physician, noting my low physical condition, thought it well to give me some glandular injection at the last moment, which he most unfortunately gave me in the right arm. This caused my arm to swell and made every note I played an exquisite torture, but contributed no new energy whatever.

MUS 12 Coda Jazz Symphony

The 1st half concluded with the Jazz Symphony, which was quite well received. But during the interval all that good work was undone by the infernal scenery.

FRIEDE

To our chagrin we found that the backdrops could not be changed over without raising the front curtain. Word quickly spread around the lobbies that there were strange doings to be seen onstage, with the result that the entire audience trooped back in to watch. It was a bad introduction, but worse was to follow.

MUS 13 Ballet Mécanique

For the first few minutes they listened carefully. But when the moment came for the wind machine to be turned on, I bitterly regretted that we had agreed to the publicity agent's suggestion of a real aircraft propeller, the more so because the darn thing was found to be pointing right at the audience. As it slowly gathered speed people clutched their programs, women held onto their hats. One man tied a white handkerchief to his cane and waved it wildly as a sign of mock-surrender. Eventually the operator was able to redirect the blast ...

ANTHEIL

But the damage had been done. A kind of hysterical laughter spread contagiously. It was agonising. Serious concert-goers began to leave. I wished with all my heart that I had never heard of Donald Friede. But the crowning indignity was saved until last.

FRIEDE

George's score calls for a siren towards the end. Getting a portable one had caused endless trouble, and we'd only just gotten a New Jersey Fire Department siren late on this very day.

FX of siren?

On cue the man turned the crank, but nothing happened. He wound it more and more vigorously. As he redoubled his efforts so the mirth of the audience grew more hysterical. At last, just before the end, he stopt. But what he had in fact been doing was setting in motion a great flywheel which now could not be arrested. The sound first emerged with a menacing growl, which rose steadily in stridency and volume, completely drowning the end of the piece, but reserving its full force for the moment when Antheil & Goossens stood to take their bow. The noise was devastating & painful. Applause was out of the question, people were running for the exits covering their ears with their hands.

MUS /FX Conclude

ANTHEIL

Few people bothered to consider the whole experience objectively, but one of those who did was the writer William Carlos Williams.

If it had been Beethoven we should, no doubt, have been alleviated and strengthened against Life - the enemy. And, going out into the subway we should for a moment have withstood the assault as the strength of the music died. Tho we may even have felt its benediction a week long.

But as I came from Antheil's concert a musician of our party remarked "The subway seems sweet after that." And this is what I noted - the unrelated noise of life such as in this subway had not been battened out as would have been the case with Beethoven still warm in the mind but actually it had been mastered, subjugated. Antheil had taken this hated thing life and rigged himself into power over it by his music - an important difference. By hearing Antheil's music, seemingly so much noise, when I actually came upon noise in reality, I found I had gone up over it.

We past into a bedroom. There lay a sensitive, dark-haired, but slightly bald young man, sprawled across the bed in a nasty patch of wet crimson. Exactly in the middle of the forehead was a bullet hole. "We're looking for a real good marksman," drawled Wayson. "It musta been someone he knew & trusted."

"So the extraordinary young concert manager has perished," I replied coldly.

A new American generation had grown up in Paris, displacing the first wave of post-war émigrés, who in their turn had left in search of exotic settings. Pound had settled in Rapallo, and was already exhibiting signs of the psychosis that would lead to his imprisonment. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald, that symbolic pairing of the 20's, were beginning their long, slow, unmourned descent into madness and motion picture scripting.

Just as The Crash dislocated everyone's financial preconceptions, so Hemingway's invention of The 'Writer As Hero' exploded America's reliance on European cultural models. In 1929 I closed up The Little Review. There was no longer anything worth reviewing.

ANTHEIL

My response to the situation was an Opera about political corruption in an American Presidential campaign called Transatlantic. It was premiered at Frankfurt in May 1930, and attended by Irving Schwerké who had earlier been so hostile to my Violin Sonatas:

With the capitalist world in the grip of Recession, George began to negotiate a permanent return to America with a project which he desperately hoped would restore his reputation in the eyes of the musical establishment. But alas, Antheil's choice of librettist for his opera Helen retires -tho poetically & diplomatically astute- was dramatically disastrous. And the critics unanimously pasted him 'bad boy of music' once and for all.

Now things looked bleak indeed. Effectively barred from the world of serious music, George was to have considerable success with ballet scores for Balanchine & Graham tho his idiom had now assumed its mature form.

MUS 14 Either CAPITAL OF THE WORLD or LA FEMME 100 TETES Establish then dialog over

What I did for you financially in those first years I did with hope. But not once has musical opinion favoured your output. And as for your recent opera Helen Retires I know no one at the Juilliard that has either pleasure, interest, or respect for the score.

In all your arguments you quite evidently place the blame for your lack of success anywhere but on yourself. Your egoism has displeased me for it transcends rational self-confidence, nor have the successes you have quoted in your many letters ever had the endorsement of those whose judgment I trust.

Now, my dear George, it is high time for you to make up your mind to stand upon your own feet and make your own living. I have at least 200 musical children who need my interest and support, and it is really not fair to them if I continue to give money to a man whose music I cannot endorse. I am sorry.

Following their great success with The Front Page Ben Hecht & Charlie MacArthur had taken up residence in Los Angeles, first as motion picture writers and latterly as producers.

ANTHEIL

A friend put my name forward to Hecht as a composer. By absolute chance, he had been in the audience of one of my riotous early piano recitals in Budapest when I had produced that famous revolver and ordered the attendants to lock the doors! Remembering this, Hecht immediately realised I was well suited to the film industry!

My introduction to Hecht-MacArthur Pictures outdid anything the Marx Brothers ever put up on the screen. Going to their offices, I chatted with Ben, who offered me the Post of Musical Director. When I tentatively asked what the salary would be, he said "Let me introduce you to our President, he alone decides all matters of this kind." So he took me to the next room which was marked PRESIDENT and told me to go in. I advanced to the desk, where a little pin-headed gentleman in a high wing collar was writing. He did not even look up. I advanced farther, without any response, until I was close enough to see what he was writing.

To my surprise he was just doodling. But suddenly, in a single movement, he looked up at me and jumped right over the desk, jabbering incoherently! He was a pinhead, hired by Ben & Charlie from the local circus to divert people's minds from unpleasant questions.

On the walls of their own office were 2 huge signs, one read "Is The Public In On Our Secret?", the other "Cut To The Chase." Admirable advice to any writer, and probably the nearest thing to sanity I ever encountered in their remarkable company.

MUS 15 4th SYMPHONY Establish & Hold under

George wrote a number of Symphonies after his return to America - which were premiered consecutively by Stokowski, Ormandy, Monteux & Dorati- as well as Operas and Concertos. Critics were frequently enthusiastic ...

US CRITIC

Manhattan's Radio City witnessed an almost unprecedented musical event - a new US Symphony that failed to bore its audience. It was also testimony that Composer Antheil, once #1 bad boy of US musical Dadaism, had come home. And was easily the loudest and liveliest symphonic composition to turn up in years.

Antheil's 4th proved what some had long suspected: that the talent Antheil has hid under a bushel of aestheticism is one of the most robust in modern music.

MUS 15 concludes

Since George's death of a heart attack in 1959 there have been many thoughtful obituaries, of which the most candid was his old friend Virgil Thomson's.

MUS 16 Ballet Mécanique Pianola Version (if available)

American research by Julia Landau.
Antheil's early piano music was sequenced on a digitally-controlled piano by Maxwell Steer.
The singer was Nancy Hadden.