By Meghann Wilhoite
American composer and self-proclaimed “bad boy of music” George Antheil was born today 114 years ago in Trenton, New Jersey. His most well-known piece is Ballet mècanique, which was premiered in Paris in 1926; like Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, from which Antheil seems to have derived quite a bit of inspiration, the premiere resulted in audience outrage and a riot in the streets. The piece is scored for pianos and a number of percussion instruments, including airplane propellers.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Though he died at the age of 58, polymath Antheil managed to accomplish quite a bit in his relatively short life both in and outside the field of music. Here are some highlights:
- His name appears alongside the actress Hedy Lamarr’s on a patent, granted in 1942, for an early type of frequency hopping device, their invention for disrupting the intended course of radio-controlled German torpedoes.
- In 1937 he published a text on endocrinology called Every Man His Own Detective: A Study of Glandular Criminology. The book includes chapters on “How to read your newspaper” and “The glandular rogue’s gallery”.
- His music was championed by the likes of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Sylvia Beach, W.B. Yeats, Erik Satie, and Pablo Picasso.
- Under the pseudonym Stacey Bishop, he wrote Death in the Dark, a detective novel edited by T.S. Eliot, the hero of which is based on Pound.
- After spending the majority of the 1920s and 30s in Europe, he settled in Hollywood and wrote dozens of film, television and radio scores, for directors such as Cecil B. DeMille and Fritz Lang (and with such titillating titles as “Zombies of Mora Tau” and “Panther Girl of the Kongo”).
- Last, but not least, here is Vincent Price narrating Antheil’s “To a Nightingale” with the composer himself on piano: George Antheil – Two Odes of John Keats – To A Nightingale: Vincent Price, narrator; George Antheil, piano
Meghann Wilhoite is an Associate Editor at Grove Music/Oxford Music Online, music blogger, and organist. Follow her on Twitter at @megwilhoite. Read her previous blog posts on Sibelius, the pipe organ, John Zorn, West Side Story, and other subjects.
Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.
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The post George Antheil, the bad boy of early twentieth century music appeared first on OUPblog.
Since joining the Grove Music editorial team, Meghann Wilhoite has been a consistent contributor to the OUPblog. Over the years she has shared her knowledge and insights on topics ranging from football and opera to Monteverdi and Bob Dylan, so we thought it was about time to get to know her a bit better.
Do you play any musical instruments? Which ones?
In order of capability, I play the pipe organ, piano, synths, and guitar. I also sing a bit, but I gave up on my dream of being an opera singer long ago!
Organ Console, Holy Trinity, Buffalo, NY. Photo by Jarle Fagerheim. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Do you specialize in any particular area or genre of music?
As an organist, I mostly play Baroque music (I <3 Bach 5eva), though I recently commissioned an excellent piece from contemporary composer Matthew Hough, which we’ll get to recording as soon as we have the funding. As a pianist, I play lots of different stuff from Classical era onwards. As a synth player and guitarist I play indie rock, mostly stuff I’ve written or stuff I’ve collaborated on.
What artist do you have on repeat at the moment?
My current lifestyle sort of dictates what I listen to right now: I’m either on the subway or blocking out ambient sounds in the office (nothin’ but love for my fellow cube dwellers), which means it’s difficult to listen to stuff where there’s an extreme difference between the loudest and the softest sound. Thus, artists like Interpol, Cocteau Twins (Elizabeth Fraser swoon), and Grimes dominate my playlist; if I had more time in quieter spaces I would also be listening to more avant-garde stuff as well.
What was the last concert/gig you went to?
The last concert I went to was part of the series I help run called Music at First; we were presenting the music of Jerome Kitzke, and it was pretty wild.
How do you listen to most of the music you listen to? On your phone/mp3 player/computer/radio/car radio/CDs?
Phone on the subways, computer (Pandora or Spotify) at work.
Do you find that listening to music helps you concentrate while you work, or do you prefer silence?
Music definitely helps me concentrate while I work, with the exception of creative writing.
Has there been any recent music research or scholarship on a topic that has caught your eye or that you’ve found particularly innovative?
Actually, my most recent scholarship binge has been on historiography, specifically the white-washing of European history (there’s a great Tumblr called MedievalPOC that focuses on the white-washing of European art). I would love to do more research on people of color with regards to the Western music canon (you know, those same hundred or so pieces by the same twenty or so composers that every music history textbook teaches you about).
Who are a few of your favorite music critics / writers?
Anastasia Tsioulcas (NPR, et al.) and Steve Smith (Boston Globe) are two critics/writers whose work I admire. They give an honest take on the music they’re reviewing without getting polemical, and they both promote gender parity within the field.
Meghann Wilhoite is an Associate Editor at Grove Music/Oxford Music Online, music blogger, and organist. Follow her on Twitter at @megwilhoite. Read her previous blog posts on Sibelius, the pipe organ, John Zorn, West Side Story, and other subjects.
Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only music articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
The post Getting to know Grove Music Associate Editor Meghann Wilhoite appeared first on OUPblog.
By Meghann Wilhoite
It’s difficult to pin a label on John Zorn. Active since the early 70s, Zorn has effectively woven his peculiar style of musical experimentation into the fabric of New York City’s downtown scene. His work — in the general sense of the word — has varied from philanthropic to shocking, with a curatorial bent that has often held quite a bit of sway.
Where to start? I could talk about Zorn’s music venue, The Stone, which pays for itself through CD sales and other contributions, so that “100% of the nightly revenue” goes directly to the performing musicians.
Or I could talk about his Obsessions Collective, a “non-profit alternative to the commercial Arts scene,” which boasts zero overhead so that, like with The Stone, every cent derived from sales goes directly to the artists.
Or maybe I should tell you about Zorn’s record label, Tzadik, which releases the work of contemporary composers “who find it difficult or impossible to release their music through more conventional channels.”
But perhaps I should first tell you about his “radical Jewish music” projects, which found initial voice when Zorn curated the Art Projekt Festival in Munich in 1992, and resulted in what has since been considered a sort of radical Jewish music manifesto (written by Zorn and guitarist Marc Ribot).
What I really don’t want to do is try to “describe” the MacArthur Fellow’s music to you — because, to be honest, it’s almost impossible. Sometimes it’s noise, sometimes it’s atonal, sometimes it’s klezmer, sometime it’s jazz. It’s always pushing the boundaries of what you think it will be.
In honor of Zorn’s 59th birthday (which took place over the weekend), why don’t we just enjoy this clip from 1991, featuring Zorn’s group Naked City performing at the Vienna Jazz Festival? Be warned, this might fall in the “shocking” category for you! (Zorn is the one the camouflage trousers and that’s Mike Patton from Faith No More on vocals.)
Click here to view the embedded video.
Meghann Wilhoite is an Assistant Editor at Grove Music/Oxford Music Online, music blogger, and organist. Follow her on Twitter at @megwilhoite. Read her previous blog posts: “Saving Sibelius: Software in peril” and “The king of instruments: Scary or sleepy?”
Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.
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Subscribe to only music articles the OUPblog via email or RSS.
