The Fredösphere

First, on the topic of mechanized music, am I the last person to notice how much Philip Glass there is in the title music to the movie North By Northwest?  (And that the whole sequence is brilliantly designed.  Watch it again, today, if you don't remember it.)  This is a score from 1959, but it has everything that Glass was trying to do in his Koyaanisqatsi score -- more, really, since the music is less rigorously minimalist, and therefore more humanized.  On the other hand, Koyaanisqatsi was a triumph of the merging music and images into a coherent whole lasting 87 minutes, while the titles for North by Northwest last less than five.

Anyway, here's today's quote.  The story of the premiere of George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique is not as famous as that of Le Sacre, but it ought to be.

"The first few minutes of the Ballet went off smoothly, and the audience listened to it carefully," recalled Donald Friede, its promoter and producer.  "And then came the moment for the wind machine to be turned on -- and all hell, in a minor way, broke loose."  The propeller had mistakenly been aimed at the eleventh row, and when it gained full speed the effect was "disastrous.  People clutched their programs, and women held onto their hats with both hands.  Someone in the direct line of the wind tied a handkerchief to his cane and waved it wildly in the air in a sign of surrender."  The final roar of the siren provoked even more disruption.  "The mechanical-effects man," who had not had an opportunity to test the siren borrowed at the last minute from a fire department in New Jersey, "turned the crank wildly, while the audience, unable to contain itself any longer, burst once more into uncontrolled laughter.  But there was no sound from the siren."  After nearly a minute, the wail finally began.  By then, piece was almost over.  As Eugene Goossens, conductor of the performance, took his bows, the siren finally "reached its full force."  It succeeded in "drowning out the applause of the audience, covering the sound of the people picking up their coast and hats and leaving the auditorium."

Making Music Modern:  New York in the 1920s by Carol J. Oja