Composers Datebook

On New Year's Eve, 1948, Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the first performance of the Symphony No. 5 by the American composer George Antheil. Now, in his youth, Antheil was something of a wild man, composing a "Ballet mechanicque" for a percussion ensemble that included electric bells, sirens, and airplane propellers. It earned him a reputation, and Antheil titled his colorful 1945 autobiography what many called him: "The Bad Boy of Music." But the great Depression and World War II changed Antheil's attitude. Rather than write for small, avant-garde audiences, Antheil found work in Hollywood, with enough time left over for an occasional concert work, such as his Symphony No. 5. In program notes for the premiere, Antheil wrote: "The object of my creative work is to disassociate myself from the passé modern schools and create a music for myself and those around me which has no fear of developed melody, tonality, or understandable forms." Contemporary critics were not impressed. One called Antheil's new Symphony "nothing more than motion-picture music of a very common brand" and another lamented its "triviality and lack of originality," suggesting it sounded like warmed-over Prokofiev. The year 2000 marked the centennial of Antheil's birth, and only now, after years of neglect, both Antheil's radical scores from the 1920s AND his more conservative work from the 1940s is being performed, recorded and re-appraised.