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Avant-Garde Art \ George Antheil

The son of Lutheran immigrants from Germany, George Antheil was born in Trenton, New Jersey, in July 1900. After giving his first European recital at the Wigmore Hall in London in June 1922, Antheil settled in Berlin, meeting Stravinsky and developing a cold, anti-romantic, propulsive piano style, typified by compositions such as Airplane Sonata (1921), Mechanisms (1922/23), Sonata Sauvage (1922/23), Death of Machines (1923) and Jazz Sonata (1922/23), and well as the celebrated Ballet méchanique, written between 1923 and 1925 for eight pianos, percussion, aircraft propellers and effects.

In a somewhat fanciful memoir published in 1947, Bad Boy of Music, Antheil claimed that early performances in Berlin, Budapest and Paris provoked extreme reactions. "I bought a small .32 automatic, and when I arrived in Berlin I went to a tailor with a sketch for a silken holster which was to fit neatly under my arm. I had read about Chicago gangsters wearing their guns in this fashion. From then on, my .32 automatic accompanied me everywhere, especially to concerts. Quite a number of observers have commented on my coolness during various riotous concerts which I performed at during those first tumultuous years of the armistice between World War 1 and World War 2. The reason is very simple: I was armed. Without a further word I placed my ugly little automatic on the front desk of my Steinway, and proceeded with my concert. Every note was heard..."

By 1936 the impoverished enfant terrible had relocated to Hollywood to become a composer of tame film music, operas and ballets, as well as portmanteau work as a writer, inventor and lonely-hearts columnist. Antheil died in New York on 12 February 1959. A Futurist by inclination, if not cultural allegiance, Antheil confirmed in Bad Boy of Music: "I called the Airplane Sonata that because, as a symbol, the airplane seemed most indicative of that future into which I wanted to escape."

Mechanisms and La Femme 100 Têtes (after Max Ernst), 20 Préludes are both featured on Futurpiano (LTMCD 2541)

Sonata Sauvage and the Ballet méchanique are both featured on The American Avant-Garde in the 20th Century (LTMCD 2579)

Shimmy is featured on The Bauhaus Reviewed 1919-33 (LTMCD 2472)

Mechanisms is also featured on A Young Person's Guide to the Avant-Garde (LTMCD 2569)

George Antheil
George Antheil

Antheil also gave an excited description of a performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris on 4 October 1923: "My little group of piano pieces, the Mechanisms, the Airplane Sonata and the Sonata Sauvage were to go on as a prelude to the opening of the brilliant Ballets Suédois of Rolf de Mare. The theatre was crowded with the most famous personages of the day, among others Picasso, Stravinsky, Auric, Milhaud, James Joyce, Erik Satie, Man Ray, Diaghilev, Miro, Artur Rubinstein, Ford Madox Ford and unnumbered others. They had not come to see me, but the opening of the ballet. My piano was wheeled out on the front of the stage, before the huge Léger cubist curtain and I commenced playing. Rioting broke out almost immediately... I felt for the automatic under my arm and continued playing... I remember Man Ray punching somebody in the nose in the front row. Marcel Duchamp was arguing loudly with somebody else in the second row. In a box nearby Erik Satie was shouting, "What Precision! What precision!" and applauding. The spotlight was turned on the audience by some wag upstairs, hurting his sensitive eyes... In the gallery the police came in and arrested the Surrealists who, liking the music, were punching everybody who objected."