"Ballet Mecanique" Disklavier Concert Review, 11-19-99 (Part 1 of 3)

 [ This 3-part article reviews the concert which featured 16
 [ Yamaha Disklavier pianos, performed at the University of
 [ Massachusetts, Lowell MA, on Thursday, November 18, 1999.
 [ Previous MMD articles about this topic may be found at
 [ http://mmd.foxtail.com/Archives/KWIC/B/ballet.html  -- Robbie

Hello MMD readers,  The Disklavier concert featuring George Antheil's
Ballet Mechanique lived up to my expectations.

Before commenting on last night's performance, let me mention how this
particular composer and his experimental work have been a part of my
life, in varying degrees, for almost a half-century.

Admittedly, this review of the November 18, 1999 concert at Durgin Hall
at the Universal of Massachusetts Lowell, will be a bit biased, and for
these reasons.

I have floated in and out of subjects involving composer Antheil
since the early 1950s.  Back in the days before Charles Amirkhanian
lived on my paper route I was associating with player roll enthusiasts
Dale and Sally Lawrence.  The couple eventually crossed paths with
Amirkhanian in the early 1970s, via KPFA, the Berkeley CA independent
radio station.

This meeting led to two things: (1) a presentation of Ballet Mechanique
in the San Francisco area using the truncated movie and pneumatic
player-pianos, and (2) Mr. Amirkhanian starting 'The Antheil Press'
which licensed the old original '25 Pleyel music rolls for concert
purposes, as well as other activities concerning the preservation and
publishing of the author's scores.

It was during his time that the Lawrences made open reel tape record-
ings of their Ampico player piano for Charles Amirkhanian to use for
his copyrights.  Being lifelong friends they sent copies of the tapes
to me in Maine, where I moved in the 1960s.

Nothing much came of the Ballet Mechanique subject until collector
and film enthusiast Roger Baffer invited me to his home in Woolwich,
in the very late 1960s.  He had planned on using a solenoid player (the
'Vorsetzer' version of the Pianocorder) with a print of the 8 mm movie
film he had.  That project was never completed, but he had "sound
striped" the motion picture and to it had fitted portions of the 1953
LP recording made under the auspices of the composer: a short 12-minute
version with the sounds of jet plane engines.

At the time I was very disappointed, since the movie, while synchro-
nized quite well on the 8 mm magnetic film combination, was a
'tricksy party' film and had little to do with the heavy machinery
aspects associated with the art of Leger and, a bit later on, the music
of Antheil.  However, the "time space" concept developed by Antheil, of
having repeating patterns which can be cut or stretched to 'fit' a
particular motion picture sequence, were obvious.  With the right kind
of movie the audio would complement the visual.

The Lawrences' involvement in a Pianola-plus-film presentation was
mentioned above, so we'll skip up to the late 1980s, when recuts of the
ratty and flawed French 1925 roll sets began to be produced for some
foreign stage performances.  I happened to know the people who did this
work (from having a lunch in Sedalia MO at a Ragtime Festival at the
time) and I asked about the rolls.  My impression was that the roll
duplicator screwed up his face when he heard the title.

In the late 1980s, my French representative, Douglas Heffer, acquired
rolls I and II and sent Xeroxed copy sheets of them (which I can "read"
on my equipment).  He proposed a revival of Ballet Mechanique, involv-
ing director Anders Wahlgren and the Swedish TV-Radio.  Originally they
wanted me to recut the original rolls "as is" while I had friends with
access to the '53 orchestral score; the plan was to use the Lawrences'
copyright tapes made for the Antheil Estate, a metronome, and the last
score revision to 'reconstruct' roll III.  I could have done this, but
at very great expense.

Eventually, an original roll with George Antheil's penciled-in
annotations was sent to me by the Estate.  By that time I had
discovered missing notes, wrong striking effects and a host of other
factors which made the Pleyel version rather unsatisfactory on any
pneumatic player instrument.

The main problem was that this roll was created, as was common in the
industry, by "laying out the notation" on graph paper, what I choose to
call "sheet music transfer".  Most old rolls are of this vein, and they
have contributed to the stereotype of players being droning, boring
instruments, because the pianoforte is being operated as if an organist
were pressing the keys.  (My method of cutting developed in the 1950s,
Interpretive Arranging, graduates the perforation lengths down to a
128th of a note (that's five flags on each symbol).  This, in turn,
lets me control the crispness of staccato playing, something which is
totally absent on the typical formula rolls of the past, including the
French set of Antheil's music.)

The Stockholm performance took place on March 2, 1991, using a tinted
1926 Dutch print of the movie Ballet Mechanique plus my reconstructed
roll arrangement,  being played with two matching Aeolian upright
players.  (Note: the rolls were cut to 'fit' the truncated movie of
today, in order to achieve synchronization.)  Dr. Juergen Hocker
attended this performance and wrote me shortly thereafter that "your
arrangement was electric and spine-tingling".

During my reconstruction of the composer's original intent, admittedly
slanted due to my lifelong obsession with the silent cinema, Pianolas
and Fotoplayers (made to accompany the movies), it soon became clear
to me that if the 1925 arrangement were redone _from scratch_ (not
"reworked" as was stated in last night's program), I could -- by gradu-
ating the key depression times -- create sound images for the parts of
the 4 piano solos upon which this Pianola-plus-film experimental work
was based: "Sonata Sauvage," "Mechanisms," "Aeroplane Sonata" and
"Death of the Machines".

Thus, I perforated while thinking of stamping presses, bottling
equipment, old-fashioned airplanes, newsreels of architectural
destruction during World War I, and also of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis",
which also touched, visually, upon some of these themes.  The result
is a set of rolls which can stand alone, without added-on percussion
effects and without even the 'party' movie (which never really deserved
the score, though, originally, it could have been performed in tandem
with the Pleyel rolls).

Since then, various friends and roll customers have attended Ballet
Mecanique performances (such as Richard Dearborn in the Trenton, NJ
area only a few months ago), while Dr. Hocker went on to control two
Ampico pneumatic players -- via MIDI, I understand -- for his European
performances.  (I believe he has a Boesendorfer Ampico and a J. C.
Fischer Ampico grand, though on the Antheil lecture last night it was
stated as "two Boesendorfers".  Perhaps he's upgraded since our last
communication!)

Now, having stated my connections with this unusual music -- presented
in a variety of forms over the years -- I'll return to this critique,
commenced a few paragraphs ago, while the memory of last night's
concert is still fresh in my mind.

Regards from Maine,

Douglas Henderson -- Artcraft Music Rolls
http://www.wiscasset.net/artcraft/

 [ Part 2 of 3 will appear in 991120 MMDigest. ]