VOTD 1/29/2023

 George Antheil: Ballet Méchanique/A Jazz Symphony/Violin Sonatas Nos. 1&2 (Philips)

Purchased from Jerrys Records

Thanks to John Roman's eagle eye, there have been more eyes on this blog due to my posting about the current Microwaves album. Whether that translates into more views long term, remains to be seen. If you hunt through my previous posts, you'll find that I've already commented that I'm doing this for myself more than anything else. I'm not monetizing it, that's for damn sure.

No doubt some might find my choices curious. After all, I'm a "jazz saxophonist", aren't I? Only two of my posts to date are remotely "jazz." And even then, one of those was the Art Ensemble of Chicago, hardly mainstream.

I don't necessarily see myself as being a "jazz saxophonist." I'm a musician first, I play the saxophone, I compose, and much of that work falls under the jazz idiom. I believe in being honest about these things, but also have little time for labels. No doubt we've all read an interview with a band in which they say, "We don't really think of ourselves as being a rock band," when it's perfectly obvious that's EXACTLY what they are. Thoth Trio is a jazz group and I have no illusions about that. I don't want want to limit myself to a single idiom or method, and definitely not in my listening choices.

If you want to be creatively involved with jazz, I always suggest studying the four Ms: Miles, Monk, Mingus, and Messiaen. The first three are obvious. Messiaen? He has interesting ideas about rhythm, melody and harmony, and has written about them extensively. A jazz composer would be remiss in not studying those ideas. 

So then, George Antheil. The self-proclaimed "Bad Boy of Modern Music." On the basis of "Ballet Méchanique" alone, he might have earned that title. Antheil's name came up recently when my wife was watching Not As a Stranger on TCM recently, a turgid little doctor melodrama with music written by Antheil. It was a competent score, but nothing out of the ordinary. So much for his "Bad Boy" status.

On further investigation (that is, a search on IMDB), it turns out his music has been used in many films, usually in the form of library music. Of those, the titles of most interest to me were Zombies of Mora Tau, The Werewolf, The Giant Claw, and most notably, 20 Million Miles to Earth. His original scores include Dementia (aka Daughter of Horror), the strange, nearly silent expressionistic nightmare film of 1955. 

I'll throw in one more historical reference, since I'm at it. You've heard how screen beauty Hedy Lamarr was responsible for the technology that lead to the current cell phone? Well, maybe not so much. This issue was this: during WWII, torpedos were controlled by radio signal. If the target ship could locate and jam the signal, it rendered the object useless. Hedy figured, why not constantly change the radio signal? Her idea was then engineered by George Antheil, who created a player piano-style system for changing the radio signal frequency. Both the launching ship and missile would have a mechanical system that synchronously changed the signal. so if a single frequency was blocked, it would quickly change. Supposedly, their prototype worked effectively. The Navy took it for study, put it away in storage and never used it. the same idea of constantly shifting frequencies is now used in all cell phone communications.

"Ballet Méchanique" is unquestionably Antheil's most well-known work. It's a clangorous collection of percussion, sirens, propellor, and pianos (including player piano). The piece unquestionably predates works such as Varése's "Ionisation", the Cage percussion ensemble works, and Nancarrow's player piano studies. It can be performed as a concert work, but was written to accompany an avant garde non-linear film by Fernand Léger. I've seen the film with the music playing, and there's no connection of the visuals with the music. But did they care? I don't know. 

That machine-age aesthetic is carried into the violin sonatas. While still maintaining tonality, there's something of the machine-like character of the works that speaks to this time. I had a CD at one time, The Bad Boys!, that had solo piano works by Antheil, Henry Cowell, and Leo Ornstein, the early 20th century American vanguard. I lent it to a friend, who never returned it to me. I won't name names, but I used to work with her. I'm still waiting! Point being, I've heard some of Antheil's period chamber music, and remember liking it.

"A Jazz Symphony", from around the same time, was less interesting to me. Maybe it seemed more daring in the 1920s, but the style of jazz inspired concert music has long since entered the mainstream. Now the music sounds more circus-y.

There's a point I sometimes make to students: we lack the opportunity to experience the music as it was first heard. "Ballet Méchanique" might have seemed shocking at the time. It still packs a punch, even if it might not sound as distressing as it once did. On the other hand, I wonder how "A Jazz Symphony" was received. It would be a welcome additional to a concert program to this day, but it wouldn't have the sense of newness that it once might have.