Various Artists-PIANO MUSIC IN AMERICA VOL 2: 1900-1945 (Vox Box SVBX 5303) 1976

Notes from the booklet (enclosed) by Lejaren Hiller:
This is the second of a series of three VOX BOX albums of music for solo piano written by American composers. The first, performed by Neely Bruce, contained concert and salon music or 19th Century America. the present album takes up where that one left off, roughly at the turn of the century, and continues to mid-century. The final album, to be recorded, as is this one, by Roger Shields, will contain music of the present- with emphasis on music of the avant-garde.

(Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, this projected album was never recorded-Dr I).

Specialists in the history of American music like Gilbert Chase (America's Music, McGraw-Hill) and H. Wiley Hitchcock (Music in the United States, Prentice-Hall) have found it convenient to divide the period represented here (approximately 1900-1950)
into three main periods; the years prior to WWI, the decade of the 1920's and lastly, the years of the Depression and WWII. The pre-WWI period closes a long period of musical growth in America, during which the profession of composing acquired respectability, symphony orchestras and other performance ensembles were established and the teaching of music began to be accepted as an academic discipline. The model for all this was Germany, so it was considered correct and proper that aspiring young performers and composers be sent to Germany to polish off their studies. I speak here of course of the concert world, not of popular music which flourished perfectly well on its own.This stage of music history culminates in the singular career of Charles Ives, who not only combined in his music all the diverse trends of his times, but also because of his experimental turn of mind, prophetically anticipated much of what was yet to come.

In the music of the 1920's the focus abruptly shifted away from Germany. In foreign study, France replaced Germany; also, experimentation, iconoclasm, anti-Romanticism and an interest in jazz replaced former ideals. Perhaps the most important American composer of this period was Edgard Varese, who cannot be included in this album since he wrote no piano music. Then, of course, the Depression came, and with it, artistic as well as economic retrenchment. Moreover, America became the refuge for nearly all of the most famous European composers escaping the Nazi assault. Not surprisingly, these displaced Europeans dominated American musical life in the 1940's and it wasn't until afterwards that newer and different native musical impulses began to assert themselves.

Piano Music In America Vol.2: 1900-1945

Side One:

Charles Ives:

a1-The Anti-Abolitionist Riots (before 1908)
a2-Some Southpaw Pitching (1908)
a3-"The Alcotts" from "The Concord" Piano Sonata No.2 (1909-15)

Edward MacDowell:

a4-Five Movements from "Woodland Sketches", Opus 61 (1896)

Side Two:

Henry Cowell:

b1-Exultation (1919)
b2-Invention (1950)
b3-Aeolian Harp (1923)
b4-Advertisement (1914/59)

Charles T. Griffes:

Two Movements from "Roman Sketches", Opus 7 (1915-17)
b5-The White Peacock
b6-The Fountain Of The Acqua Paola

George Antheil:

Second Sonata, "Airplane" (1922)
b7-First Movement-As fast as possible
b8-Second Movement-Andante moderato

Side Three:

George Gershwin:

Three Preludes (1926)
c1-Allegro ben ritmato e deciso
c2-Andante con moto e poco rubato
c3-Allegro ben ritmato e deciso

John Alden Carpenter:

c4-Impromptu (1913)

Wallingford Riegger:

c5-Six Movements from "New And Old" (1944)
-The Twelve Tones
-The Tritone
-Seven Times Seven
-Tone Clusters
-Twelve Upside-Down
-Fourths And Fifths

Side Four:

Carl Ruggles:

Evocations, Four Chants For Piano (1937-43, revised 1957)
d1-Largo
d2-Andante con fantasia
d3-Moderato appassionata
d4-Adagio sostenuto

Roy Harris:

d5-Piano Sonata, Opus 1 (1928)

-Prelude (Maestoso, con bravura)
-Andante Ostinato (Misterioso)
-Scherzo (Vivace)

Side Five:

Roger Sessions:

From My Diary (1939)
e1-Poco adagio
e2-Allegro con brio
e3-Larghissimo e misterioso
e4-Allegro pesante

William Schuman:

e5-Three-Score Set (1943)
-=circa 96
-=circa 40
-=circa 144

Aaron Copland:

e6-Piano Variations (1930)

Side Six:

Walter Piston:

f1-Passacaglia (1943)

Virgil Thomson:

f2-Piano Sonata No.3 (1930)
-Bold
-Softer (same speed)
-very soft and without accent (same speed)
-Gay, and getting gradually louder and gayer
-Sustained

Two Movements from Ten Etudes (1943)
f3-Parallel Chords (Tango)
f4-Ragtime Bass

Samuel Barber:

f5-Nocturne, Opus 33 (1949)
f6-Fuga, from the Piano Sonata, Opus 26 (1949)


Roger Shields-Piano
(...) Only briefly exploring the usual contest/concert circuit (winning a Busoni prize and the Kinly Award), Shields prefers the new, unusual, and seldom-played repertoire. Works of Lutoslawski, Syzmanowski, Antheil, Zez Confrey and promising young composers figure as prominently in his concerts as do the Liszt Don Juan Fantasy, Stravinsky's Petrouchka, the Hammerklavier Sonata of Beethoven and Chopin Mazurkas. During the past 5 years, Shields has worked as pianist for the Center of Creative and Performing Arts in Buffalo, New York,and has been artistic director of the East European Concert Series(...)
(notes from 1976)

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George Antheil/Henry Cowell/Leo Ornstein - THE BAD BOYS! (Hat Now) 1994

The Bad Boys! George Antheil, Henry Cowell, Leo Ornstein - Steffen Schleiermacher, piano
Hat Now 1994

Today is the 10th anniversary of the passing away of Leo Ornstein at the astonishing age of 109 years.

Notes from the booklet (enclosed):


It is Antheil- Futurist, Vorticist, self-made enfant terrible of the 1920's avant-garde who provides a name for this collection of piano works by three independently minded American composers. Indeed, Antheil wrote an autobiography at the age of 35, Bad Boy Of Music, that stands as the classical music world's equivalent to Charles Mingus's Beneath The Underdog, for sheer audacity and self-mythologization. "...I reached in under my left armpit in approved American gangster fashion," he writes of an early Eastern European performance, "and produced my ugly little automatic. Without a further word I placed it on the front desk of my Steinway and proceeded with my concert. Every note was heard, and, in a sense, I suppose I opened up the way in Hungary for modern music of a non-Bartok-Kodaly variety."
Antheil's most important work, both as a self-promoter and as a composer took shape in Europe (Berlin and Paris, especially) during the early 1920's. Travelling there in search of a lost blonde love named Anne Williams, he started playing piano professionally and soon became one of the first American students of Nadia Boulanger. Like much of the French avant-garde - Jean Cocteau, Darius Milhaud, Igor Stravinsky, Antheil's music fell under the influence of jazz, and the works presented here (both composed in 1922 or 1923) explicitly refer to that preoccupation. In 1927, impressed by the rhythmic complexity of Antheil's music, Pound wrote Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony, a book that harmony should be thought of primarily as a rhythmic, rather than a tonal, concern.
Back in the U.S in the 1930s, Antheil turned his attention to opera and Hollywood film music, but these solo piano works and his performances of them had polarized and galvanized fans. "Riots came to be the order of the day at my concerts," he recounts in Bad Boy Of Music, "because I was one of the few pianists of that period always to end a concert with a modern group, preferably of the most 'ultra' order. In fact, I invariably closed with a piece of my own, the "Mechanisms,' the 'Jazz Sonata,' 'Fireworks and the Profane Waltzers,' "Sonata Sauvage,' or something equally cacophonous. I also played works of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Milhaud, Auric, Honegger, Ornstein."

The fiery ultramodern pianist Leo Ornstein was born in Russia, , in 1892, and came to the States at age nine. Better-known to many as a player than a composer (converse of Antheil), Ornstein too loved bombastic, mechanistic rhythms and was was also influenced by jazz. His own reportedly wild and outlandish performances of "Danse Sauvage," written in 1915, earned him intense notoriety, as did a 1914 London recital of his own work that he announced as "futuristic music." Hailed by some as the leading Futurist musician, Ornstein's piano music predates Antheil's by a decade- "Suicide in an Airplane" was composed in 1913; " Impressions de Notre-Dame" in 1914- and is contemporaneous with the earliest works represented here by that other piano ultramodernist, Henry Cowell.

The centerpiece of this collection is a set of short, brilliant studies by thai baddest boy- if also the most genteel- of the three, Henry Cowell. Born in 1897, raised in San Francisco, and always a West Coaster at heart, Cowell began his influential reconsideration of the piano as an instrument when he was literally but a boy. At age 13 he composed "Adventures in Harmony," which used his newly-coined term, "tone clusters." Later Bela Bartok would write to him asking for permission for the use of his "clusters.") This piece, like many of his later works, also made use of innovative techniques such as striking the keyboard with fists, forearms, and elbows, and in 1914 he demonstrated his new technique of placing objects directly onto the strings of a piano for what must have been a completely bemused Aan Francisco Musical Society.
(...) The compilation of Cowell's piano on Bad Boys, selected and stunningly rendered by Steffen Schleiermacher, ranges in date from the early 1910's ("The Tides of Manaunaun," "Anger Dance,") to the late 1920s ("The Banshee," "Tiger"). On one hand, these compositions set a course for composers such as Cage and Nancarrow (whose piano-roll pieces bring to fruition the call for mechanization of the Futurists, first heard in Ornstein and Antheil). On the other they predict many piano developments specific to improvised music, from the energetic deployment of clusters characteristic of Cecil Taylor to the internal surgery carried out on pianos by Nick Couldry, Carlo Inderhees, and Denman Maroney. In fact, Cowell clearly had improvisation in mind with many of his extended techniques. For instance, instructions at the top of the score for "Aeolian Harp" (1923) read: "Lento.In improvisatory style."
(...) Taken together with these historically important and musically rewarding pieces by Antheil and Ornstein, Cowell's piano music looks to the future we currently occupy,. A crucial link between Scriabin and Sun Ra, his wide-eared musical mind drew on music from all over the world, particularly classical musics of China, India, and Japan, which he is said to have known far better than he did the standard Western classical repertoire.
(...) these early piano pieces are startling reminders of his singular and motivational place in the front ranks of the avant-garde.
John Corbett, Chicago, June 1994 (thanks to David Grubbs for historical assistance).

The Bad Boys! Henry Cowell, George Antheil, Leo Ornstein

Henry Cowell (1897-1965):

Three Irish Legends:
1-The Tides Of Manaunaun 1912
2-The Hero Sun 1922
3-The Voice Of Lir 1920

4-Aeolian Harp 1923
5-Banshee 1925
6-Anger Dance 1914
7-Dynamic Motion 1913

Five Encores To Dynamic Motion:
8-What's This 1913
8-Amiable Conversation 1917
10-Advertisement 1914/59
11-Antimony 1914
12-Time Table 1914/15

13-Tiger 1928

George Antheil (1900-1959):

Second Sonata ("The Airplane Sonata") 1922
14-First Movement
15-Second Movement

Sonata Sauvage 1922/23
16-First Movement
17-Second Movement
18-Third Movement

19-Jazz Sonata 1922

Leo Ornstein (1892-2002):

20-Suicide In An Airplane ca.1915
21-Impressions De Notre-Dame (Op.16 No.1 ca.1915)
22-Impressions De Notre-Dame (Op.16 No.2 ca.1815)
23-Wild Men's Dance (Op.13 No.2 ca.1914)

Steffen Schleiermacher - Piano























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George Antheil-BALLET MECANIQUE/A JAZZ SYMPHONY/VIOLIN SONATAS (Philips 6514 254) 1982?

Today is the 53rd anniversary of the passing away of George Antheil, at the age of 58 years.
He was born July 8, 1900.

Here are the cover notes in their entirety:

























Having heard some, but by no means all, of Antheil's later work, I have to strongly disagree with the beginning of the closing paragraph above. These works are, while perhaps simpler in their structure and expression,nonetheless very powerful, iconoclastic, and exciting works which have proven to have an undiminished relevance- as acknowledged later in the same paragraph- and power which many of his other, later works would seem to lack.
-Dr I

George Antheil- BALLET MECANIQUE / A JAZZ SYMPHONY / VIOLIN SONATAS

Side One:

1- Ballet Mecanique

Side Two:
2- A Jazz Symphony
Netherlands Wind Ensemble
conducted by Reinbert De Leeuw

3- Finale from Sonata No. 1 For Violin and Piano
4- Sonata No. 2 For Violin and Piano
Vera Beths- Violin
Reinbert De Leeuw- Piano
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Antheil/Brant: Modern American Music Series

George Antheil/Henry Brant - Modern American Music Series

LP format

Ballet Méchanique composed by George Antheil

performed by the New York Percussion Group conducted by Carlos Surinach

My Ballet Méchanique was composed in Paris during 1924. It had various performances in Paris during 1925, 1926, and was performed in Carnegie Hall on April 10, 1927, for the first time in the United States. Vladmir Golschmann conducted in Paris; Eugene Goosens conducted in New York.
All the concerts above were riotous in some way, the Paris performances having fist fights in the audience, and the New York performance less so, but nevertheless it is said that the New York concert was as scandalous as New York has witnessed. It therefore early became a very notorious piece, much talked about but little played.

The Ballet Méchanique as now recorded (very faithfully, and according to my every original idea of it) by Carlos Surinach, is substantially the same as the version first presented in Paris, with this exception. The original version had eight pianos and, but not played simultaneously, a player piano. I have reduced these to four pianos, which was the original number of piano parts written for; with our present technique with microphones, it was not necessary to double the pianos in order to obtain the required sonority. Also, some cuts have been made, but not many; as the work was originally written to accompany an abstract motion picture by Leger, some measures were repeated -- and these repeats, for the main part, have been eliminated in this version. A glockenspiel, also not in the original version, has been added for highlighting. Otherwise this work is, 99% exactly as it was in 1924.

To those who might wish to understand the intentions and aesthetics of Ballet Méchanique from my point of view, the most important thing I think I can say about it is that it is somewhat like modern architecture. It uses both (a) new methods of musical engineering and (b) new materials. The engineering principle (which, I believe, I was the first to originate, explore) is called TIME-SPACE and is closely aligned to the introduction of the "cantilever" principle in modern architecture. I was not the first to use purely percussive materials (Varese preceded me but, I believe, no one else); however I used these materials in a new way, in juxtaposition to one another.

People have asked me why, for instance, I have used the sound of airplane propellers. They wish to know whether I intend some sort of program, an air-raid, etc.? I wish, for sake of interest in the piece for some people, I could say "yes"; but, actually, I have only used these sounds because they are part of the musical sound of our modern life; they are part of the vast new material of sound, musical sound, as steel and aluminum are now part of the facing, material, of modern buildings; in short, the approach is abstract, not realistic.
Ballet Méchanique is an approach to a new aesthetic in music. If one has a mind to understand it, let him listen with new ears, as he must look at a piece of modern architecture with new eyes. Rhythmically, aesthetically, materially and constructively it is, I feel, aligned with our modern life. When one considers when it was written - 1924 - I believe it may also have a bit of prophecy in its pages. (George Antheil)

Signs and Alarms and Galaxy 2 composed by Henry Brant

(information below from the liner notes)

Signs and Alarms (1953) was first performed in New York under Leopold Stokowski's direction. The music, in one movement, calls for piccolo, two clarinets, two horns, solo trumpet, solo trombone, tuba, marimba and xylophone, and four timpani.
Galaxy 2 (1954), also in a single movement, was written as a companion piece to Signs and Alarms and requires piccolo, clarinet, two solo horns, trumpet, trombone, glockenspiel and six timpani.
To meet the exacting demands on individual playing made in these two works, a hand-picked virtuoso group was assemble for the present recording under the composer's direction. They are:Harry Moskovitz - piccolo
Herbert Tichman - clarinet
Thomas Parshley - clarinet
Fred Klein - horn
Tony Miranda - horn
Theodore Weis - trumpet
Frederick Snyder - trombone
Don Butterfield - tuba
Alfred Howard - timpani
Morris Goldenberg - glockenspiel, xylophone and marimba

Virgil Thomson writes of Signs and Alarms: "The piece is at once a comical joke and a highly expert study in instrumental sonorities. Every part is a piece of virtuoso writing, and the whole is an exciting extension of instrumental customs, as well as an entertaining pleasantry. Especially original and effective are its researches into the acoustical affinities of tuba with kettledrum and of xylophone with piccolo, the former duet accompanying a hair-raising trombone solo, the latter a side-splitting passage for trumpet." (New York Herald Tribune, February 23, 1953).

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. George Antheil - Ballet Méchanique {17:07}

Side 2

1. Henry Brant - Signs and Alarms {9:00}

2. Henry Brant - Galaxy 2 {5:14}

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Urania UR 134 [percussion]

various artists compilation - Urania UR 134

*That's not actually the title of this release, I don't think as this LP didn't have a title. It just posted the names of the compositions on the cover. I named the title myself as it is easier for me to manage and organize in my collection.

Ballet Mechanique composed by George Antheil; performed by the Los Angeles Contemporary Music Ensemble

Instruments: Four Pianos, two Xylophones, Glockenspiel, Timpani, Tenor and Bass Drums, Military Drum, Gong, Triangle, Cymbal, Woodblock, Large and Small Airplane Propeller, Large and Small Electric Bell

From the liner notes:

Percussion music - music expressed through rhythm instead of melody and harmony, suggesting endless variations of movement - is one of the manifestations of our restless times. It does not seem surprising, therefore, that an art form exploring the intrinsic melodiousness of drums and cymbals has become an accepted means of our musical expression. But in 1924, when the late George Antheil wrote his Ballet Mechanique, he was considered an iconoclast, an audacious experimenter. As he explained much later, the ballet was not meant to glorify the beauty and precision of machines, as was erroneously charged; it represented his personal effort to escape "the iron grip of the tonal principle" and the straightjacket of the old forms - a goal that Schoenberg and Stravinsky also had pursued each in his own special Way.
When he wrote the ballet, Antheil was developing a new principle of musical construction, based on rhythm alone. He called it "time-space" and compared it with a canvas on which tunes and chords were applied like colors and shapes. He wrote the ballet originally for an abstract motion picture, but then rewrote it for the concert hall, heard it performed in Paris (1926) and New York (1927), and made a final revision in 1954. The version on this record includes a recording of an airplane engine, two doorbells of different sizes, and four pianos (replacing the original pianolas) on which occasional tone clusters are banged with the palm of the hand. The three part piece, played without a pause, has been dubbed a "mechanistic dance of life." According to Antheil, its spiritual outline is an interpretation of the "barbaric and mystic splendor of modern civilization - mathematics of the universe in which the abstraction of 'the human soul' lives."

Sketch for Percussion composed by Ronald LoPresti; performed by the Manhattan Percussion Ensemble

Instruments: Xylophone, Marimba, Celeste, Timpani, Snare Drum, Bass Drum, Gong, Piano, Triangle, Suspended Cymbal

Next comes a work by Ronald LoPresti, of Williamstown, Massachusetts, who was 23 years old and had won considerable recognition with compositions along conventional lines, when his Sketch for Percussion won first prize in the annual contest at the Eastman School of Music, in 1956. Within the single movement of this work, contrasts are achieved by pitting delicate sounds of celeste, marimba, and piano against the clamor of xylophones, drums, gongs, triangles and cymbals.

Toccata for Percussion Instruments composed by Carlos Chavez; performed by the Manhattan Percussion Ensemble

Instruments: Xylophone, Side Drums, Indian Drums, Tenor & Bass Drums, Bells, Suspended Cymbals, Timpani, Large & Small Gongs, Chimes, Claves, Maraca

Side Two opens with a three-part Toccata for Percussion Instruments by Carlos Chavez, Mexico's most eminent musical personality. It has been described as the most academic percussion work written so far; "intellectual rather than primitive" was the concensus of opinion after its premiere in Cincinnati, 1950, despite the lavish use of Indian drums and various kinds of metallic sounds suggesting the Mexicans' predilection for bells. With the perfectionism that distinguishes all his work, the composer leaves nothing to improvisation; even the pause between the last two movements is a measured rest, just long enough to indicate the change of mood.

October Mountain composed by Alan Hovhannes; performed by the Manhattan Percussion Ensemble

Instruments: Marimba, Glockenspiel, Timpani, Tenor & Bass Drums, Gong, Tam-Tam

October Mountain by Alan Hovhannes was written in 1942, while this prolific composer was a student at Tanglewood, after having burned about 1000 earlier compositions. A New Englander of Armenian parentage, a teacher at the Boston Conservatory, he has won a considerable following by the original blending of Oriental, Indian and Armenian features which gives his style an enchanting exotic flavor. The work is in five parts, three of which are dominated by the marimba, which gives a peculiar tinge to the monodic chant that is a characteristic element in Armenian music.

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. George Antheil - Ballet Mechanique {17:34}

2. Ronald LoPresti - Sketch for Percussion {3:11}

Side 2

1. Carlos Chavez - Toccata for Percussion Instruments {10:56}

2. Alan Hovhannes - October Mountain {7:11}

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