George Antheil
American composer born 8 July 1900 in Trenton, New Jersey; died 12 February 1959 in New York City.
George Antheil was born to a family of German immigrants on 8 July 1900 in Trenton, New Jersey, where his father owned a shoestore. He began learning piano at the age of six, showing exceptional musical talent. In 1916, he began traveling to Philadelphia to study with Constantin von Sternberg, a former student of Franz Liszt. In 1917, he enlisted in the American Air Force, serving for two years before returning to his studies in New York City in 1919, this time with Ernest Bloch, who oversaw the composition of Antheil’s Symphony n° 1 “Zingaresca” (1920-1922, revised in 1923). Immersed in the modernist world of the New York avant-garde, his focus during this period was on pieces for piano and percussion, highly influenced by futurism. Thanks to the patronage of Mary Louise Curtis Bok, he was able to enroll in the Philadelphia Settlement Music School.
In 1922, the agent Martin H. Hanson invited Antheil to replace Leo Ornstein on a musical tour of Europe, launching his career as an avant-garde pianist. He performed in London, then played in Budapest, Vienna, and Donaueschingen. His home base during this time in Europe was in Berlin, where he premiered his Sonate n° 2 - Airplane (1921) and met Stravinsky. The following year, he moved to Paris, where he mingled with artists and intellectuals, making friends with James Joyce as well as with fellow American expats such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Aaron Copland, and Virgil Thomson. While in Paris he composed Sonate n° 2 for violin, piano, and drums (1923) following a trip to Tunis, his Stravinsky-inspired Symphonie for five instruments (1922, second version in 1923), and his Concerto pour piano (1926). On 19 June 1926, the premiere of his Ballet mécanique (1923-1924, revised in 1952-1953) for pianos, percussion, and various mechanical instruments, was performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. It caused a sensational scandal. Ballet mécanique premiered in the United States on 10 April 1927 at Carnegie Hall in New York City. The first half of the program was a performance of A Jazz Symphony (1925, revised in 1955), which garnered favorable reactions from the audience, but Ballet mécanique elicited such shock that Antheil decided to give up ultra-modernist music. Antheil returned to Berlin in the winter of 1928, where he met Kurt Weill and was hired as assistant musical director of the Deutsches Theater. His first opera, Transatlantic (1927-1928) premiered in Frankfurt on 25 May 1930. In the spring of 1931 Antheil returned to France, where two Guggenheim scholarships (in 1932 and 1933) made it possible for him to compose his second opera, Helen Retires, which premiered in New York City on 28 February 1934. He also composed several chamber music pieces during this period, including Concerto for wind quintet (1932).
In autumn 1933, with Nazism on the rise, Antheil returned to New York and became deeply involved in the music community, organizing and performing concerts with Aaron Copland and Wallingford Riegger, and taking part in committees and organizations associated with modern and avant-garde music. The following year, he composed the score for Dreams (1934-1935), a ballet choreographed by George Balanchine, and commenced work on Symphony n° 3 “American” (1936-1939, revised in 1946).
In 1936, Antheil moved to Hollywood to compose film scores. He wrote some thirty of them, in collaboration with noted screenwriters and directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, Nicholas Ray, and Ben Hecht. From 1936 to 1940, he was a music reporter and critic for the magazine Modern Music. Later on in the Second World War, he worked as a war correspondent for the Los Angeles Daily News. His brother, Henry, a diplomatic courier, was killed in 1940 when his plane was shot down over the Baltic Sea, a loss that deeply affected Antheil. Symphony n° 4 “1942” (1942) and Symphony n° 5 “Tragic” (1945-1946) are both marked by Antheil’s grief and anguish over this loss and over the war as a whole. It was during this difficult period in his life that he began working with Hedy Lamarr, where they used the player piano technology Antheil had developed for Ballet méchanique to randomly change the radio frequencies used to guide torpedoes, making them undetectable to the enemy. Alongside his work as a film scorer, Antheil continued composing concert music and operas, including Volpone (1949-1952) and The Brothers (1954). A trip to Spain in the late 1950s provided much inspiration in his later work, such as Capital of the World (1952), a ballet composed for the CBS Television Network and the score of Stanley Kramer’s film The Pride and the Passion (1957). George Antheil died of a heart attack on 12 February 1959 in New York City.
© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2017
By Max Noubel
Popular Music and Jazz
Growing up in Trenton, New Jersey, George Antheil was surrounded by popular music: gospel, creole, and Latin-American dances. On summer days on the banks of the Delaware River, he would watch black workers singing and dancing. He sang American folk melodies, including songs by Stephen Foster, with his childhood friend Richard Crooks, who would later find fame as a tenor at the Metropolitan Opera. He was above all fascinated by New Orleans jazz, blues, and ragtime. He absorbed the syncopated rhythms of Scott Joplin, fashionable in the Trenton suburbs, and Jelly Roll Morton — especially his jazz foxtrot Jelly Roll Blues. Ragtime influenced Antheil’s compositions in the 1920s and beyond. While he only rarely used syncopated rhythms as a large-scale structural tool, he incorporated them more discretely in his Jazz Sonata (1922 or 1923) and other pieces. These rhythms contrast with the motor-like ostinati of his piano works such as Sonata sauvage (1922-1923) and challenge the irregular, Stravinskian rhythms in works from his European period, between 1922 and 1933. He was further encouraged to include jazz in his compositions after encounters in Paris with Darius Milhaud and, in 1925, George Gershwin, who likely influenced his A Jazz Symphony (1925, revised in 1955). At the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 4 October 1923, Antheil’s avant-garde piano music created a scandal when it opened for the premiere of Milhaud’s La Création du monde, a piece that left a great impression on him, with its jazz and Brazilian influences.
Modernist Ambition
Starting around 1916, Antheil went frequently to Philadelphia to study music and, while there, had his first significant encounters with modern art. He saw Dadaist paintings in art galleries. Back in Trenton, the smoke chimneys of the suburban factories reminded him of paintings by Giorgio de Chirico. In New York, he became close to important actors in the American modernist scene: the painter John Marin, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, the music critic Paul Rosenfeld, and the editor of The Little Review, Margaret Anderson. She, some years later during Antheil’s stay in Paris, would introduce him to the surrealist painters Fernand Léger and Max Ernst and the sculptor Constantin Brâncuși. The latter’s famous sculpture L’Oiseau d’or had inspired Antheil’s Golden Bird “After Brancusi” (1921).
In 1923, Antheil settled in Paris at 12, rue de l’Odéon, above Sylvia Beach’s famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore. He found in the French capital the creative home of which he had always dreamed. He was at the center of the artistic Tout-Paris. His modernist ideas attracted painters (Fernand Léger, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí) and musicians (Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, and members of Les Six), as well as English and American artists on holiday in Paris (Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Walter Piston, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot).
Long before his decision to settle in Paris, Antheil had developed an interest in modern music and especially in the French composers Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Les Six, whose influences can be heard in his Profane Waltzers for the piano, composed when he was nineteen years old. He was also deeply moved by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which he first heard at its American premiere conducted by Leopold Stokowski on 3 March 1922. All his life, Antheil admired Stravinsky and considered him an important model. The fourth movement of Antheil’s Symphony No. 1 (1920-1922), with its startling orchestral gestures and juxtaposed contrasting sections, testifies to his fascination for the Rite. Stravinsky’s influence is also obvious in Antheil’s Symphonie for Five Instruments (1922-1923), composed upon arriving in Paris. The first movement in particular harks back to Stravinsky’s Ragtime (1917-1918) for eleven instruments, and Antheil’s Concerto for Chamber Orchestra (Octet for Winds) (1932) is reminiscent of the Octet for Wind Instruments (1922-1923).
Antheil also associated with the pianist, composer, and pioneer of American avant-garde music Leo Ornstein, who strongly influenced his writing for the piano. Antheil’s Airplane Sonata (1921) echoes Ornstein’s Suicide in an Airplane (1921). Similar to Ornstein, Antheil had the reputation of being a fiendish pianist with diabolical technique that made the piano sound like a percussion instrument. His barbaro style entails violently struck chords — which he said must sound as hard as a stone — and repetitive rhythms inspired by the mechanical noises made by the factories that fascinated him in his boyhood. Composed in the 1920s, these deeply intuitive pieces for “machinelike” piano are presented as a futuristic dream. They include his Sonata sauvage and Sonata No. 3, “Death of Machines” (1923). To compose these unpredictable works, Antheil may have used automatic writing, a technique associated with the surrealists. He shared that his process for composing Airplane Sonata had similarities with a seance: only after he had played the piece in its entirety, without interruption, did he write out the score. Most of his pieces from the 1920s are a collage of contrasting sections, a structure indebted to both Stravinsky and the surrealists. Antheil’s futurist-machinist style, influenced by Dadaism and surrealism, finds a climax in Ballet mécanique, his most ambitious and extravagant piece.
Ballet mécanique
Composed in the winter of 1923 to 1924, Ballet mécanique had initially been conceived to accompany an experimental film by Léger and Dudley Murphy in collaboration with Man Ray. The filmmakers and Antheil worked independently without conferring with each other, and in the end they did not manage to combine the film with the music, the musical score being twice as long as the film. It also seems that, at the time, it was impossible to synchronize a film projector with an ensemble of player pianos. The cinematographic component of the work was thus premiered in Vienna on 24 September 1924 as a 19-minute silent film.1
The original version of Ballet mécanique reveals Antheil’s extreme ambition: he saw the piece as a symbol of the glorious future of the machine era. The original score called for sixteen player pianos that played four different parts, four bass drums, three xylophones, one tam-tam, seven electric bells, one siren, three airplane propellers (one high-pitched, in wood; the other two low-pitched, in wood and metal), and two pianos. Faced with the impossibility to synchronize the player pianos, or even to bring them together with the other instruments, Antheil changed the instrumentation by keeping only one of the player pianos and recommending two additional pianos. After a few run-throughs in Parisian salons, Ballet mécanique was premiered in its revised version, without the film, during a gala at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées on 19 June 1926. Artists and friends attended in support, among them Erik Satie, Milhaud, Man Ray, Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and Francis Picabia. Antheil had skillfully publicized the work as an event of unprecedented modernity. The premiere was a scandalous success, and Antheil was acclaimed as the uncontested leader of musical ultra-modernism.
Antheil rightly considered Ballet mécanique to be his most radical work, as well as his first major composition. Using the pithy verbiage of advertising slogans, he described it as the “new FOURTH DIMENSION of music” and “the first piece of music that has been composed OUT OF and FOR machines, ON EARTH.”2 For him, the piece was “all efficiency. NO LOVE. Written without sympathy. Written cold as an army operates.”3 He meant his music to be aggressive and even violent. The pianists were directed to play ever louder and with a complete absence of expressivity, hitting the keys as if the instrument were a typewriter. The piece fits in with Stravinsky’s primitivism: the alternation of contrasting blocks of sound and the irregular rhythms bring to mind the Rite of Spring. The work’s first version also contained long sections of silence meant to evoke outer space.
Ballet mécaniquewas performed at Carnegie Hall in New York on 10 April 1927. For this concert, the massive instrumentation included ten pianos (one of which was played by Copland), one player piano, six xylophones, electric bells, airplane propellers, four bass drums, a large gong, and most probably whistles, rattles, and motors from sewing machines. Despite Antheil’s expectations, the American premiere created just a one-night scandal. It left him dismayed and disappointed, and he never recovered from this bitter failure.Ballet mécanique had become both the zenith and the nadir of his career as an avant-garde composer.
From then on, he turned away from radical modernism, the artistic path he had so passionately championed. This aesthetic turn had already begun before the American premiere of Ballet mécanique with his neoclassical Piano Concerto, composed in 1926. The public had reacted coolly to this concerto, which has neither the savage crudeness nor the exhilarating energy of Antheil’s futurist pieces. The influence of Stravinsky is more that of Pulcinella than Rite of Spring.
In Search of a Certain Americanness
Having spent ten years in Europe, Antheil moved back to the United States in 1933. On the old continent, he had known both success and the disillusionment that unavoidably meets a flagbearer of radical modernism. Back in America, he was faced with a new set of problems around his musical identity. His compatriots perceived him as an “American in Paris” and no longer as a fellow composer who had been born and educated in America, like them. Despite his fondness for France and especially for Paris, it remained a place of his exile, though he had found a sizeable community of American artists there. He indeed kept a deep and lifelong attachment to his American roots, which inspired him throughout his stylistically changing musical career.
During his voluntary exile, Antheil had developed a nostalgic vision of the music made in America. After his return, he traveled through his native country so as to reunite with his roots. And yet, in Florida, he discovered that the Suwannee River was but a muddy stream — not the magnificent river depicted by Stephen Foster, who had never set foot in Florida! Antheil’s search for “Americanness” was perhaps based more on an imaginary ideal than on pure facts. His Symphony No. 3, “American,” (1936-1939, revised in 1946) was composed in part during this trip. It contains references to American popular music: the brass sometimes evoke a marching band, and the diatonic melodies and syncopated rhythms allude to folk songs. Personal interpretations of American music also appear in his lyrical works. His vocal style and articulation of English, with light and simple orchestrations, recall staged musicals. The tragic ending of his opera The Brothers (1954), inspired by the story of Cain and Abel, has intense romantic expressivity, but closer to Leonard Bernstein’s lyricism in West Side Story than to German post-romanticism.
Stylistic Eclecticism
Apart from his avant-garde ambitions and his ultimately somewhat artificial search for an American identity, Antheil was not interested in finding a style to which he would adhere. His catalog is stylistically eclectic. Neoclassicism and French music, which appeared in works from his Paris years, continued to inform his music episodically. The extroverted, joyful, bright music of his ballet Dreams (1934-1935) combines the rebellious stance of Les Six with the irony of Stravinsky, the humor of Jacques Offenbach, and the simplicity of American popular music. Over the last two decades of his career, a post-romantic style became progressively present. The lyrical style of the Adagio molto second movement of his Symphony No. 5, “Joyous,” (1947-1948) harkens back to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Antheil was passionate about Russian music) and Gustav Mahler.
Antheil made no attempt to hide his influences. To the contrary, he featured them in his composition process by quoting from them. His String Quartet No. 2 (1927, revised in 1943) demonstrates his admiration for masters of the past such as J.S. Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Johannes Brahms. If Stravinsky’s influence was prominent in the 1920s, it was eclipsed by Sergei Prokofiev and even more so Dmitri Shostakovich, to whom Antheil made ample reference, notably in his fourth (1948) and fifth (1950) piano sonatas.
Spanish and Latin-American music also inspired him. Examples of a new — and exoticizing — fondness for Hispanic music appear in his ballet Capital of the World (1952), based on a short story by Hemingway, and his soundtrack to The Pride and the Passion (1957), a film by Stanley Kramer, which takes themes from nineteenth-century Spanish music. Latin-American music seems to have influenced Antheil in a deep and authentic way. He approached it with care in his Symphony No. 2, a work he structured around a quotation from Milhaud’s Bœuf sur le toit, in which Milhaud had borrowed from a short Brazilian tango.
Cinema
Starting in 1935, Antheil worked intensely for film, mainly for Paramount Pictures. Though this activity was lucrative and enabled him to live comfortably and become known in Hollywood, he never considered film music a convincing way to express himself. He nonetheless made great effort to produce quality scores while complying with the demands of producers who cared little for the music’s artistic quality. He eventually gave up on trying to “save” mediocre films with music that, according to him, deserved much better. But before his exit, he collaborated with big names in cinema and contributed to major films. Among the circa thirty films for which he composed are The Scoundrel (1935) by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur; The Plainsman (1936) by Cecil B. DeMille, with Gary Cooper; Angels over Broadway (1940) and Specter of the Rose (1946) by Ben Hecht; In a Lonely Place (1950) by Nicholas Ray, with Humphrey Bogart; and Dementia (1955) by John Parker.
1. It was only in 1935, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, that the film was projected along with an arrangement of Antheil’s piece, which used only one player piano. ↩
2. George Antheil, “My Ballet mécanique: What It Means,” Der Querschnitt 5 (1925): 789. ↩
3. Letter by George Antheil to Stanley Hart, dated 1 September 1925, Library of Congress, George Antheil Collection. ↩
© Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2017
- Solo (excluding voice)
- Clown Suite for piano (), Schirmer
- Fireworks and the Profane Waltzers for piano (1919), 6 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 1 for piano (1919), Schirmer
- Golden Bird "After Brancusi" for piano (1921), 7 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 2 - Airplane for piano (1921), Schirmer
- Four-hand Suite for piano (1922), Schirmer
- Jazz Sonata for piano (1922), 3 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 6 - Woman for piano (1922), 10 mn, Schirmer
- Little Shimmy for piano (1923), 60 s, Schirmer
- Sonate Sauvage for piano (1922-1923), 10 mn, Schirmer
- Sonatina - Death of the Machines for piano (1923), 4 mn, Schirmer
- Printemps for violin (1924), 60 s, Schirmer
- Sonatina für Radio for piano (1929), Schirmer
- Tango for piano (1930)
- La Femme 100 Têtes - 45 Preludes and Percussion Dance for piano (1932), 30 mn, Schirmer
- Can-Can from "Dreams" for piano (1934), Schirmer
- La Vie Parisienne for piano (1939), 6 mn, Schirmer
- The Ben Hecht Waltzes for piano (1943), Schirmer
- Carnival of the Beautiful Dresses for piano (1946), Schirmer
- Musical Picture of a Friend for piano (1946), 5 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 3 for piano (1947), 15 mn, Schirmer
- Prélude for piano (1948)
- Sonate n° 4 for piano (1948), Schirmer
- Toccata n° 1 for piano (1948), 5 mn, Schirmer
- Toccata n° 2 for piano (1948), 5 mn, Schirmer
- Valentine Waltzes for piano (1948), 7 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 5 for piano (1950), 15 mn, Schirmer
- Berceuse for Thomas Montgomery Newman for piano (1955), 3 mn, Schirmer
- Waltzes from Volpone for piano (1955)
- Piano Pastels - "Modern Sounds for Small Hands" for piano (1956), Schirmer
- Chamber music
- Lithuanian Night for string quartet (1919), 4 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 1 for violin and piano (1923), Schirmer
- Sonate n° 2 for violin and piano (with arabic drum) (1923), 8 mn, Schirmer
- Golden Bird "After Brancusi" for two pianos (1924), 5 mn, Schirmer
- Quatuor à cordes n° 1 (1924), 13 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 3 for violin and piano (1924), Schirmer
- Quatuor à cordes n° 2 (1927, 1943), 20 mn, Schirmer
- Concertino for flute, bassoon and piano (1930), 15 mn, Schirmer
- Six petites pièces for string quartet (1931), 6 mn, Schirmer
- Concerto pour quintette à vent (1932)
- Sonatina pour violon et violoncelle (1932), 8 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 4 for violin and piano (1947), Schirmer
- Quatuor à cordes n° 3 (1948), 18 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate pour flûte et piano (1951), 12 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate pour trompette et piano (1951), 16 mn, Schirmer
- Instrumental ensemble music
- Symphonie n° 5A for orchestra (), Schirmer
- Lithuanian Night for string orchestra (1919), 4 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie n° 1 "Zingaresca" for orchestra (1920), 30 mn, Schirmer
- Golden Bird "After Brancusi" for orchestra (1921), 7 mn, Schirmer
- Zwei Orchester Stücke für ein kleines Baby for wind ensemble (1922), 8 mn, Schirmer
- Ballet mécanique ensemble for pianos, percussions and various mechanisms (airplane propellers, electric bells, mechanical pianos) (1923, 1926), 27 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie pour cinq instruments (1922-1923, 1923), 13 mn, Schirmer
- A Jazz Symphony for orchestra (1925), 12 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie en fa for orchestra (1925), 30 mn, Schirmer
- Suite pour orchestre (1926), 8 mn, Schirmer
- Capriccio for orchestra (1930)
- Archipelago "Rhumba" for orchestra (1935), 10 mn, Schirmer
- stage Dreams for orchestra (1934-1935), 25 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie n° 2 for orchestra (1931-1938, 1943), 30 mn, Schirmer
- Music to a World’s Fair Film for orchestra (1939), 11 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie n° 3 "American" for orchestra (1936-1939, 1946), 25 mn, Schirmer
- Water Music for 4th of July Evening for string orchestra (1942), Schirmer
- Decatur at Algiers (Nocturne from "Stephen Decatur Suite") for orchestra (1943), 6 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie n° 4 "1942" for orchestra (1942-1943), 36 mn, Boosey & Hawkes
- Over the Plains for orchestra (1945), 7 mn, Schirmer
- Spectre on the Rose Waltz for orchestra (1946), 7 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie n° 5 "Tragic" for orchestra (1945-1946), 30 mn, Schirmer
- The Golden Spike (Scherzo from "Symphony No. 3") for orchestra (1946), 5 mn, Schirmer
- Autumn Song "An Andante for Orchestra" (1947), Schirmer
- Symphonie n° 6 "After Delacroix" for orchestra (1947), 26 mn, Schirmer
- American Dance Suite for orchestra (1948)
- Hot-Time Dance for orchestra (1948), 5 mn, Schirmer
- McKonkey’s Ferry Overture for orchestra (1948), 7 mn, Schirmer
- Serenade for string orchestra (1948), 15 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie n° 5 "Joyous" for orchestra (1947-1948)
- Serenade II for orchestra (1949), 21 mn, Schirmer
- Tom Sawyer Overture for orchestra (1949), 7 mn, Schirmer
- Accordion dance for orchestra (1951), 5 mn, Schirmer
- Nocturne in Skyrockets for orchestra (1951), 7 mn, Schirmer
- Bohemian Grove at Night for wind ensemble (1952), 5 mn, Schirmer
- Ballet mécanique for percussions and pianos (1953), 16 mn, Schirmer
- Capital of the World suite in three movements for orchestra (1953), 14 mn, Schirmer
- A Jazz Symphony for orchestra (1955), 6 mn, Schirmer
- Concertant music
- Concerto n° 1 pour piano et orchestre (1922), 30 mn, Schirmer
- Concerto n° 2 pour piano et orchestre (1926), 25 mn, Schirmer
- Morceau (The Creole) for piano and orchestra (1932), Schirmer
- Concerto pour violon et orchestre (1946), 30 mn, Schirmer
- Vocal music and instrument(s)
- In Time of Death for voice and piano ()
- Madonna of the Evening Flowers for voice and piano ()
- Song of Spring for voice and piano ()
- The Ballade of Jesse James for voice and piano (), 3 mn, Schirmer
- You Can Tell You’re in New Jersey for choir and piano (), Schirmer
- Five Songs for voice and piano (1919-1920)
- Five Lieder for voice and piano (1922), 6 mn, Schirmer
- Two Children’s Songs for voice and piano (1922), 2 mn, Schirmer
- Two Songs on Texts of Lewis Carroll for baritone and piano (1924), 4 mn, Schirmer
- stage Flight - Ivan the Terrible opera - ballet in one act (1927), Schirmer
- stage Transatlantic opera (1927-1928)
- Fighting the Waves stage music for choir and ensemble (1929), 15 mn, Schirmer
- stage Helen Retires opera in three acts (1930), Schirmer
- Nightpiece for voice and piano (1930), 4 mn, Schirmer
- Merry-go-round for unison choir and piano (1932)
- Six songs for voice and piano (1933), 7 mn, Schirmer
- Bequest for voice and piano (1935), 3 mn, Schirmer
- Spectre of the Rose for voice and piano (1946), Schirmer
- Songs of Experience for voice and piano (1948), 8 mn, Schirmer
- Two Odes for narrator and piano (1950), 5 mn, Schirmer
- Eight Fragments from Shelley for choir and piano (1951), Schirmer
- The Fable of the Redwoods for voice and piano (1952), 4 mn, Schirmer
- stage Volpone opera in three acts (1949-1952), 2 h 15 mn about , Schirmer
- stage The Brothers one act opera (1954), 53 mn, Schirmer
- stage The Wish opera in four scenes (1954), 60 mn, Schirmer
- stage Venus in Africa one act opera (1954), 45 mn, Schirmer
- Cabeza de Vaca for choir and orchestra (1955), 52 mn, Schirmer
- Sighs and Grones for voice and piano (1956), 3 mn, Schirmer
Catalog sources and details
Musique pour le cinéma, la télévision et la radio
- 1934 : Harlem Picture (?)
- 1935 : Once in a Blue Moon de Ben Hecht
- 1935 : The Scoundrel (Le Goujat) de Ben Hecht et Charles MacArthur (perdu)
- 1936 : Millions in the Air de Ray McCarey
- 1936 : The Plainsman (Une aventure de Buffalo Bill) de Cecil B. DeMille
- 1937 : Make Way for Tomorrow (Place aux jeunes ou Au crépuscule de la vie) de Leo McCarey (perdu)
- 1937 : The Buccaneer (Les Flibustiers) de Cecil B. DeMille (perdu)
- 1938 : Union Pacific (Pacific Express) de Cecil B. DeMille
- 1939 : Music to a World’s Fair, film pour la World’s Communications Building
- 1940 : Angels Over Broadway (L’Ange de Broadway) de Ben Hecht
- 1941 : Orchids to Charlie (?)
- 1946 : Spectre of the Rose de Ben Hecht
- 1946 : That Brennan Girl d’Alfred Santell
- 1946 : The Plainsman and the Lady de Joseph Kane
- 1946 : Repeat Performance d’Alfred L. Werker
- 1947 : Ballerina (?)
- 1948 : Knock on Any Door (Les Ruelles du malheur) de Nicholas Ray
- 1949 : The Fighting Kentuckian (Le Bagarreur du Kentucky) de George Waggner
- 1949 : Tokyo Joe de Stuart Heisler
- 1949 : We Were Strangers (Les Insurgés) de John Huston
- 1950 : House by the River de Fritz Lang
- 1950 : In a Lonely Place (Le Violent) de Nicholas Ray
- 1951 : Sirocco de Curtis Bernhardt
- 1952 : Actors and Sin de Ben Hecht
- 1952 : The Sniper (L’Homme à l’affût) d’Edward Dmytryk
- 1953 : The Juggler (Le Jongleur) d’Edward Dmytryk
- 1955 : Conquest of the Air, pour la télévision (perdu)
- 1955 : Dementia de John Parker
- 1955 : Hunters of the Deep (?)
- 1955 : Not as a Stranger (Pour que vivent les hommes) de Stanley Kramer
- 1955 : Target Ploesti, pour la télévision (perdu)
- 1957 : The Pride and the Passion (Orgueil et Passion) de Stanley Kramer
- 1957 : The Young Don’t Cry d’Alfred L. Werker (il ne reste que deux chansons)
- 1957 : Woman without Shadow, pour la télévision (CBS)
- 1957-1958 : The Twentieth Century Series, dix documentaires de télévision (CBS)
- 1959 : Musique pour les programmes d’Edward R. Murrow à la CBS (perdu)
- s.d., The Path and the Door, pour la radio
- s.d., Airpower, pour la télévision
- s.d., Rough Sketch
- 1956
- Piano Pastels - "Modern Sounds for Small Hands" for piano, Schirmer
- Sighs and Grones for voice and piano, 3 mn, Schirmer
- 1955
- A Jazz Symphony for orchestra, 6 mn, Schirmer
- Berceuse for Thomas Montgomery Newman for piano, 3 mn, Schirmer
- Cabeza de Vaca for choir and orchestra, 52 mn, Schirmer
- Waltzes from Volpone for piano
- 1954
- stage The Brothers one act opera, 53 mn, Schirmer
- stage The Wish opera in four scenes, 60 mn, Schirmer
- stage Venus in Africa one act opera, 45 mn, Schirmer
- 1953
- Ballet mécanique for percussions and pianos, 16 mn, Schirmer
- Capital of the World suite in three movements for orchestra, 14 mn, Schirmer
- 1952
- Bohemian Grove at Night for wind ensemble, 5 mn, Schirmer
- The Fable of the Redwoods for voice and piano, 4 mn, Schirmer
- stage Volpone opera in three acts, 2 h 15 mn about , Schirmer
- 1951
- Accordion dance for orchestra, 5 mn, Schirmer
- Eight Fragments from Shelley for choir and piano, Schirmer
- Nocturne in Skyrockets for orchestra, 7 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate pour flûte et piano, 12 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate pour trompette et piano, 16 mn, Schirmer
- 1950
- Sonate n° 5 for piano, 15 mn, Schirmer
- Two Odes for narrator and piano, 5 mn, Schirmer
- 1949
- Serenade II for orchestra, 21 mn, Schirmer
- Tom Sawyer Overture for orchestra, 7 mn, Schirmer
- 1948
- American Dance Suite for orchestra
- Hot-Time Dance for orchestra, 5 mn, Schirmer
- McKonkey’s Ferry Overture for orchestra, 7 mn, Schirmer
- Prélude for piano
- Quatuor à cordes n° 3, 18 mn, Schirmer
- Serenade for string orchestra, 15 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 4 for piano, Schirmer
- Songs of Experience for voice and piano, 8 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie n° 5 "Joyous" for orchestra
- Toccata n° 1 for piano, 5 mn, Schirmer
- Toccata n° 2 for piano, 5 mn, Schirmer
- Valentine Waltzes for piano, 7 mn, Schirmer
- 1947
- Autumn Song "An Andante for Orchestra" , Schirmer
- Sonate n° 3 for piano, 15 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 4 for violin and piano, Schirmer
- Symphonie n° 6 "After Delacroix" for orchestra, 26 mn, Schirmer
- 1946
- Carnival of the Beautiful Dresses for piano, Schirmer
- Concerto pour violon et orchestre, 30 mn, Schirmer
- Musical Picture of a Friend for piano, 5 mn, Schirmer
- Spectre of the Rose for voice and piano, Schirmer
- Spectre on the Rose Waltz for orchestra, 7 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie n° 5 "Tragic" for orchestra, 30 mn, Schirmer
- The Golden Spike (Scherzo from "Symphony No. 3") for orchestra, 5 mn, Schirmer
- 1945
- Over the Plains for orchestra, 7 mn, Schirmer
- 1943
- Decatur at Algiers (Nocturne from "Stephen Decatur Suite") for orchestra, 6 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie n° 4 "1942" for orchestra, 36 mn, Boosey & Hawkes
- The Ben Hecht Waltzes for piano, Schirmer
- 1942
- Water Music for 4th of July Evening for string orchestra, Schirmer
- 1939
- La Vie Parisienne for piano, 6 mn, Schirmer
- Music to a World’s Fair Film for orchestra, 11 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie n° 3 "American" for orchestra, 25 mn, Schirmer
- 1938
- Symphonie n° 2 for orchestra, 30 mn, Schirmer
- 1935
- Archipelago "Rhumba" for orchestra, 10 mn, Schirmer
- Bequest for voice and piano, 3 mn, Schirmer
- stage Dreams for orchestra, 25 mn, Schirmer
- 1934
- Can-Can from "Dreams" for piano, Schirmer
- 1933
- Six songs for voice and piano, 7 mn, Schirmer
- 1932
- Concerto pour quintette à vent
- La Femme 100 Têtes - 45 Preludes and Percussion Dance for piano, 30 mn, Schirmer
- Merry-go-round for unison choir and piano
- Morceau (The Creole) for piano and orchestra, Schirmer
- Sonatina pour violon et violoncelle, 8 mn, Schirmer
- 1931
- Six petites pièces for string quartet, 6 mn, Schirmer
- 1930
- Capriccio for orchestra
- Concertino for flute, bassoon and piano, 15 mn, Schirmer
- stage Helen Retires opera in three acts, Schirmer
- Nightpiece for voice and piano, 4 mn, Schirmer
- Tango for piano
- 1929
- Fighting the Waves stage music for choir and ensemble, 15 mn, Schirmer
- Sonatina für Radio for piano, Schirmer
- 1928
- stage Transatlantic opera
- 1927
- stage Flight - Ivan the Terrible opera - ballet in one act, Schirmer
- Quatuor à cordes n° 2, 20 mn, Schirmer
- 1926
- Concerto n° 2 pour piano et orchestre , 25 mn, Schirmer
- Suite pour orchestre, 8 mn, Schirmer
- 1925
- A Jazz Symphony for orchestra, 12 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie en fa for orchestra, 30 mn, Schirmer
- 1924
- Golden Bird "After Brancusi" for two pianos, 5 mn, Schirmer
- Printemps for violin, 60 s, Schirmer
- Quatuor à cordes n° 1, 13 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 3 for violin and piano, Schirmer
- Two Songs on Texts of Lewis Carroll for baritone and piano, 4 mn, Schirmer
- 1923
- Ballet mécanique ensemble for pianos, percussions and various mechanisms (airplane propellers, electric bells, mechanical pianos), 27 mn, Schirmer
- Little Shimmy for piano, 60 s, Schirmer
- Sonate Sauvage for piano, 10 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 1 for violin and piano, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 2 for violin and piano (with arabic drum), 8 mn, Schirmer
- Sonatina - Death of the Machines for piano, 4 mn, Schirmer
- Symphonie pour cinq instruments, 13 mn, Schirmer
- 1922
- Concerto n° 1 pour piano et orchestre, 30 mn, Schirmer
- Five Lieder for voice and piano, 6 mn, Schirmer
- Four-hand Suite for piano, Schirmer
- Jazz Sonata for piano, 3 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 6 - Woman for piano, 10 mn, Schirmer
- Two Children’s Songs for voice and piano, 2 mn, Schirmer
- Zwei Orchester Stücke für ein kleines Baby for wind ensemble, 8 mn, Schirmer
- 1921
- Golden Bird "After Brancusi" for piano, 7 mn, Schirmer
- Golden Bird "After Brancusi" for orchestra, 7 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 2 - Airplane for piano, Schirmer
- 1920
- Five Songs for voice and piano
- Symphonie n° 1 "Zingaresca" for orchestra, 30 mn, Schirmer
- 1919
- Fireworks and the Profane Waltzers for piano, 6 mn, Schirmer
- Lithuanian Night for string quartet, 4 mn, Schirmer
- Lithuanian Night for string orchestra, 4 mn, Schirmer
- Sonate n° 1 for piano, Schirmer
- Date de composition inconnue
- Clown Suite for piano, Schirmer
- In Time of Death for voice and piano
- Madonna of the Evening Flowers for voice and piano
- Song of Spring for voice and piano
- Symphonie n° 5A for orchestra, Schirmer
- The Ballade of Jesse James for voice and piano, 3 mn, Schirmer
- You Can Tell You’re in New Jersey for choir and piano, Schirmer
Catalog source(s)
Musique pour le cinéma, la télévision et la radio
- 1934 : Harlem Picture (?)
- 1935 : Once in a Blue Moon de Ben Hecht
- 1935 : The Scoundrel (Le Goujat) de Ben Hecht et Charles MacArthur (perdu)
- 1936 : Millions in the Air de Ray McCarey
- 1936 : The Plainsman (Une aventure de Buffalo Bill) de Cecil B. DeMille
- 1937 : Make Way for Tomorrow (Place aux jeunes ou Au crépuscule de la vie) de Leo McCarey (perdu)
- 1937 : The Buccaneer (Les Flibustiers) de Cecil B. DeMille (perdu)
- 1938 : Union Pacific (Pacific Express) de Cecil B. DeMille
- 1939 : Music to a World’s Fair, film pour la World’s Communications Building
- 1940 : Angels Over Broadway (L’Ange de Broadway) de Ben Hecht
- 1941 : Orchids to Charlie (?)
- 1946 : Spectre of the Rose de Ben Hecht
- 1946 : That Brennan Girl d’Alfred Santell
- 1946 : The Plainsman and the Lady de Joseph Kane
- 1946 : Repeat Performance d’Alfred L. Werker
- 1947 : Ballerina (?)
- 1948 : Knock on Any Door (Les Ruelles du malheur) de Nicholas Ray
- 1949 : The Fighting Kentuckian (Le Bagarreur du Kentucky) de George Waggner
- 1949 : Tokyo Joe de Stuart Heisler
- 1949 : We Were Strangers (Les Insurgés) de John Huston
- 1950 : House by the River de Fritz Lang
- 1950 : In a Lonely Place (Le Violent) de Nicholas Ray
- 1951 : Sirocco de Curtis Bernhardt
- 1952 : Actors and Sin de Ben Hecht
- 1952 : The Sniper (L’Homme à l’affût) d’Edward Dmytryk
- 1953 : The Juggler (Le Jongleur) d’Edward Dmytryk
- 1955 : Conquest of the Air, pour la télévision (perdu)
- 1955 : Dementia de John Parker
- 1955 : Hunters of the Deep (?)
- 1955 : Not as a Stranger (Pour que vivent les hommes) de Stanley Kramer
- 1955 : Target Ploesti, pour la télévision (perdu)
- 1957 : The Pride and the Passion (Orgueil et Passion) de Stanley Kramer
- 1957 : The Young Don’t Cry d’Alfred L. Werker (il ne reste que deux chansons)
- 1957 : Woman without Shadow, pour la télévision (CBS)
- 1957-1958 : The Twentieth Century Series, dix documentaires de télévision (CBS)
- 1959 : Musique pour les programmes d’Edward R. Murrow à la CBS (perdu)
- s.d., The Path and the Door, pour la radio
- s.d., Airpower, pour la télévision
- s.d., Rough Sketch
Bibliographie
- Daniel ALBRIGHT, Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources, Chicago / Londres, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
- George ANTHEIL, Bad Boy of Music, Garden City, New York, Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1945.
- Hugh FORD, Four Lives in Paris, San Francisco, North Point Press, 1987.
- John Andrew JOHNSON, « George Antheil (1900-1959) », dans Larry Sitsky et Jonathan D. Kramer (éds.), Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook, Westport, CT, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, p. 1-10.
- Susan KEY et Larry ROTHE, American Mavericks: Musical Visionaries, Pioneers, Iconoclasts*, Berkeley / Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2001 p. 53–59.
- Clifford Mc CARTY, « Revising George Antheil’s Filmography », The Cue Sheet, VI/4 (1989), p. 139-142.
- Carol J. OJA, Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s, Oxford / New York, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 71-94.
- Linda WHITHESITT, The Life and Music of George Antheil, 1900-1959, Ann Arbor, MI, UMI Research Press, 1981.
Discographie
- George ANTHEIL, String Quartets, Mondriaan String Quartet, 1 cd Etcetera, 1990, KTC 1093.
- George ANTHEIL, Sonatas for Violin and Piano 1923, 1946. Sonata n° 1; Sonata n° 2, formerly New Sonata n° 2, Vera Beths (violin), Reinbert De Leeuw (piano), 1 cd Montaigne, 1994, MO 782022.
- George ANTHEIL, Jazz Sonata; Sonatina; La Femme 100 têtes, Hideki Nagano (piano), 1 cd Pianovox, 1998, PIA 511-2v.
- George ANTHEIL, Symphony n° 1; Symphony n° 6, Radio-Sinfonie-Orchestrer Frankfurt, sous la direction de Hugh Wolff, 1 cd cpo, 2000, 999 604-2.
- George ANTHEIL, Symphony n° 4; Symphony n° 6; McKonkey’s Ferry, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, sous la direction de Theodore Kuchar, 1 cd Naxos, 2000, 8.559033.
- George ANTHEIL, Ballet mécanique (révision de 1953) ; Serenade for String Orchestra n° 1; Symphony for Five Instruments (second version) ; Concerto for Chamber Orchestra, Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, sous la direction de Daniel Spalding, 1 cd Naxos, 2001, 8.559060.
Liens internet
- Paul D. LEHRMAN, « Blast From the Past », Wired Magazine du 11 janvier 1999 : https://www.wired.com/1999/11/ballet/ (lien vérifié en juin 2017).
- Guy LIVINGSTON, « Bad Boy of Music: The Rise and Fall of George Antheil », ABC, 24 février 2015 : http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/the-rise-and-fall-of-george-antheil/6249624 (lien vérifié en juin 2017).
- Linda WHITESITT, Charles AMIRKHANIAN et Susan C. COOK, « George Antheil », dans Stanley Sadie et John Tyrrell (éds.), Grove Music Online :http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/00997(lien vérifié en janvier 2017).
- Preston WRIGHT, « Reconstructing Ballet Mécanique: An interview with Paul Lehrman », American Public Media, janvier 2003 : http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/interview_lehrman.html (lien vérifié en juin 2017).
- Site web de Paul D. Lehrman dédié à George Antheil : http://www.antheil.org (lien vérifié en juin 2017).