George Antheil

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George Antheil actually Georg Johann Carl Antheil (born July 8, 1900 in Trenton , New Jersey , † February 12, 1959 in New York City ) was an American composer and pianist .

Training and first successes

Born in 1900 in Trenton ( New Jersey ) as the son of German immigrants, Antheil received music theory and composition lessons from Constantin von Sternberg in Philadelphia from 1913 , and from 1919 to 1921 with Ernest Bloch in New York.

He had learned the piano since he was six, later with George Boyle at the Curtis Settlement School . In 1922 Antheil went to Berlin on a scholarship to pursue a career as a pianist of his own and contemporary works (by Arnold Schönberg and Igor Stravinsky, among others ). Soon after, however, he devoted himself mainly to composition. His pieces were percussive, dissonant and strongly rhythmic .

In June 1923, Antheil relocated to Paris , where he soon met with important artists such as Erik Satie , Jean Cocteau , Ernest Hemingway , James Joyce , Ezra Pound , Pablo Picasso , Olga Rudge and others. Numerous concert tours have taken him through Europe . He also became a member of De Stijl .

The ballet mécanique - scandalous success in Paris

In 1924 Antheil began with Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy with the project Ballet Mécanique . Léger and Murphy created one of the first abstract films to accompany Antheil's music with sixteen player pianos (mechanical pianos). However, the pianos could not be synchronized with each other or with the film , which is why film (16 or 19 minutes in length, depending on the version) and music (30 minutes in length) became two separate works. Antheil then had extra piano rolls made for a player piano, to which he added eight pianos, four xylophones , two electric bells, two airplane propellers, tam-tam , four large drums and sirens . The Paris premiere under Vladimir Golschmann on June 19, 1926 can be seen as a (scandalous) success, but the performance in New York City in 1927 under Eugène Goossens was one of the greatest disasters that New York remembered.

For the German Chamber Music Baden-Baden in 1927 Antheil arranged the first part of the ballet mécanique for Welte-Mignon , where it was performed on July 16, 1927.

In 1952/53, Antheil revised the work again by emphasizing repetition bars that were originally intended to synchronize the film, which almost halved the playing time. Furthermore, he downsized the line- up : the player piano is completely missing, the eight pianos became four, the number of xylophones was also reduced from four to two, etc. The basic character was retained, according to him, the work was only "more precise" . At the premiere in 1954 at Columbia University there was no more tumult, three-minute ovations forced the "bad boy" to make numerous "bourgeois" bows to the audience. In order to take into account Antheil's original intentions of the composition, several performances of the original version have taken place in the last few years, initially in the USA, another performance with sixteen player pianos took place in Essen in 2002 .

The ballet mécanique remained George Antheil's best-known composition , although it was very productive until the end of his life. Among other things, he wrote several operas , six symphonies , solo concerts , chamber music , songs , and piano music .

Back in the USA - the invention

In 1936 Antheil moved to Los Angeles and in 1945 drew attention again with the aforementioned scandalous biography Bad Boy of Music , which became a bestseller because of its entertainment value . Otherwise, he composed a lot of film music , wrote Illustrated article and a detective story and reported a radio-controlled torpedo the patent , which he together with the actress Hedy Lamarr had developed in evening sessions. To do this, they used the frequency hopping process , a technology that is used today in Bluetooth , partly also in cellular technology ( GSM ) and in wireless networks in the simplest version of the industry standard IEEE 802.11 .

Inspired by the Polish-American conductor Leopold Stokowski , from 1940 onwards he began composing more and more independent musical works. For the film producer and director Stanley Kramer , Antheil composed a number of partly important film scores. These include The Sniper (1952), The Juggler (1953), Not as a Stranger (1955) and most recently Pride and Passion (1957). The screenwriter , film producer and director Ben Hecht engaged Antheil regularly for his films as early as the mid-thirties, e.g. for The Scoundrel (1935), Once in a Blue Moon (1935), Angels Over Broadway (1940), Specter of the Rose ( 1946) and Actor's and Sin (1952). He also composed music for Nicholas Ray's films Knock on Any Door (1949) and Ein Einsamer Ort (1950) as well as for Fritz Lang's House by the River (1950). Cecil B. DeMille engaged Antheil for two of his earlier film epics The Plainsman (1936) and The Buccaneer (1938).

Antheil died in 1959 of complications from a heart attack. He was a heavy smoker and did not look after his health. He composed until his death. Henry Brant and Benjamin Lees studied with him . He had two sons, Peter and Chris Beaumont, the latter from an extramarital relationship.

Much of Antheil's work is in the Music Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in Lincoln Center , Princeton University , Columbia University , UCLA and Stanford University .

Others

George Antheil may have been forgotten nowadays, but in Paris in the 1920s his name was on everyone's lips - people eagerly waited for the next scandal. His concerts often ended with tumults that almost degenerated into hall battles, which is why, according to his own account, he was reassured by the idea of ​​being able to shoot his escape route with the pistol carried in the shoulder holster during the concert if necessary. In general, Antheil, who increased the already numerous anecdotes by publishing his memoirs, was a colorful personality, although the line between poetry and truth cannot always be clearly identified.

Works

Chamber music

  • Fireworks and the Profane Waltzes (1919/21)
  • Second Sonata "The Airplane" (1921/22)
  • Sonata Sauvage (1922/23)
  • Third Piano Sonata "Death of Machines" (1923)
  • Fourth Sonata for Pianoforte - Jazz Sonata (1923)
  • Sixth Piano Sonata "Woman Sonata" (1923)
  • Violin Sonata No.1 for Olga Rudge (1923)
  • Second Sonata for Violin with Accompaniment of Piano and Drums (1923)
  • Third Sonata for Violin and Piano (1924)
  • String Quartet No.1 (1924/25)
  • Second String Quartet (1927/43)
  • Sonatina for radio (1929)
  • Six Little Pieces for String Quartet (1931)
  • La Femme 100 Têtes (1932/33)
  • Six Songs (1933)
  • Sonatina for Violin and Piano (1945)
  • Violin Sonata No.4 (1947/48)
  • Sonata No.4 "To Virgil Thomson" (1948)
  • Third String Quartet (1948)
  • Sonata for Trumpet and Piano (1951)
  • Sonata for Flute and Piano (1951)
  • Modern Sounds for Small Hands for Piano (1956)

Works with orchestra

  • First Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1919/23)
  • Symphony No. 1 "Zingareska" (1920-22, rev. 1923)
  • A Jazz Symphony (1923/25)
  • Ballet mécanique (1924 original version, 1953 reduced version)
  • Piano Concerto No.2 (1926/27)
  • Second Symphony (1931/38)
  • Archipelago Rhumba for orchestra (1933/35)
  • Dreams ballet music for orchestra (1934/35)
  • Symphony No. 3 - American (1935/39)
  • Fourth Symphony "1942" (1942)
  • Violin Concerto (1946)
  • Fifth Symphony "Joyous" (1948)
  • Sixth Symphony "after Delacroix" (1948)
  • McKonkey's Ferry - A Concert Overture for orchestra (1946)
  • Capital of the World Ballet Music after Hemingway (1952)

Operas

  • Transatlantic (The People's Choice) Opera in three acts (1928/30)
  • Helen Retires. A Grand Opera in Three Acts (1930/31)
  • The Brothers. A One Act Opera (in three scenes) (1948/54)
  • Volpone. A Satire in Music in Three Acts (1949/52)
  • The Wish Opera in one act (1954)
  • Venus in Africa opera in one act (1954)

Filmography

Fonts

  • Death In the Dark , a detective novel edited by TS Eliot (1930) (English)
  • Everyman His Own Detective: A Study of Glandular Criminology, New York City: Stackpole Sons (1937) (English)
  • The Shape of the War to Come (1940) (English, a pamphlet)
  • Bad Boy of Music, Garden City, New York: Doubleday (1945) (English, numerous new editions and translations into various languages)

literature

  • Peter Aistleitner: George Antheil (1900-1959). A portrait of the (film music) composer on the occasion of the re-performance of his opera "Transatlantik" , in: Filmharmonische Blätter . Issue 6 / June 1987, pp. 12-17
  • Linda Whitesitt: The Life and Music of George Antheil: 1900-1959 . UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1983, ISBN 0-8357-1462-4 .
  • Linda Whitesitt: Share  , George. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 1 (Aagard - Baez). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 1999, ISBN 3-7618-1111-X  ( online edition , subscription required for full access)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Most biographies and encyclopedias name July 8th as the date of birth, including Grove Music Online (2001) , American National Biography (1999) , Harvard Biographical (1996), Brockhaus Enzyklopädie (1986), www.klassika.info and www.schirmer .com . On the other hand, July 9th can be found at MGG Online and at www.operone.de , and on June 8th Kay Less: The large personal lexicon of film and IMDb .
personal data
SURNAME Antheil, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Antheil, Georg Johann Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American pianist, composer, inventor
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Trenton , New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1959
Place of death New York City