The Fredösphere

I was dismayed to read, in Making Music Modern:  New York in the 1920s, by Carol Oja, that in the original score to Ballet Mécanique, George Antheil pioneered the use of what I would call gratuitous rests.  That is, he indicated a stretch of silence in his piece with 64 consecutive eight-note rests in one 64/8 measure. 

I am dismayed precisely because this anticipates a similar use of rests -- as I now know, a not-so-pioneering use of rests -- by Der Drübermensch in his not-so-groundbreaking Drew's First Piece, which I revealed to the world with trembling joy last November.  However, my comments about the brutal difficulty of his score still stand, and I remain convinced that I and others were correct when we proclaimed the youngster "the most uncompromising artistic visionary in the history of the world."