George Antheil papers

1912-1959

George Antheil (born Trenton, New Jersey, July 8, 1900) was an American composer, pianist, author and inventor. Although Antheil repeatedly claimed to be of Polish descent, his parents Henry William and Wilhelmine Huse Antheil were both of German ancestry and he grew up speaking both German and English. Antheil began piano lessons at the age of six, and by sixteen he was traveling to Philadelphia regularly to study theory and composition under Constantin von Sternberg. In 1919, Sternberg advised Antheil to study composition with Ernest Bloch in New York. Although Bloch initially rejected Anteil as a student, describing his compositions as "pretentious" and "empty," he later was accepted by Bloch due this his new submission of Five songs, 1919-1920, for soprano and piano, after Adelaide Crapsey.

In the 1920's Antheil traveled to Europe as a concert pianist, and was involved in the avant-garde scene in Paris, composing ultra-modern music. During this time his career was financially supported by Mary Louise Curtis Bok (who founded the Curtis Institute of Music in 1924). Sternberg had helped Antheil find this patron and Bok continued to support him for a total of nineteen years. While in Europe, Antheil met his future wife, Böski Marcus, who was studying at the University of Berlin. Antheil's best known work composed during the 1920s was Ballet Mécanique, a highly rhythmic piece scored for16 pianolas, xylophones, drums, and other percussion instruments. This piece was intended to be a soundtrack to a film of the same name by the French Dadaist painter Fernand Léger and cinematographer Dudley Murphy, but because Antheil worked separately from the filmmakers, it was decided that the score and the film would be entirely separate works (the original score was twice as long as the film). Though well received in Paris, the American premiere was considered a failure, which is career as a "serious" composer never recovered from. Antheil later made arrangements of the score for more practical instrumental ensembles (as evidenced in the collection).

Convinced that composers could not make money writing symphonies, Antheil entered the motion picture music business leading to his move to Hollywood in 1936. While he was writing scores for films such as Union Pacific (1939), Specter of the Rose (1946) and Pride and Passion (1957), he continued composing symphonies.

Outside of writing music, Antheil was a critic for the magazine Modern Music from 1936 to 1940 and published his memoir Bad Boy of Music in 1945, along with writing for various other publications. He also co-invented with actress Hedy Lamarr a patented Frequency Hopping Communication System (patented August 11, 1942, patent number 2,292,387; the patent is part of this collection). Although never adopted by the U.S. military, Antheil's and Lamarr's device is one of several which contributed to spread spectrum communications used military communications systems. Towards the end of his life Antheil worked for CBS composing scores for television.

Antheil died of a heart attack on February 12, 1959, in New York, New York, at the age of 58.