Ballet mécanique
Encyclopedia
Ballet Mécanique was a project by the American composer George Antheil
and the filmmaker/artists Fernand Léger
and Dudley Murphy
. Although the film was intended to use Antheil's score as a soundtrack, the two parts were not brought together until the 1990s. As a composition, Ballet Mécanique is Antheil's best known and most enduring work. It remains famous for its radical style and instrumentation as well as its storied history.
In concert performance, the "ballet" is not a show of human dancers but of mechanical instruments. Among these, player piano
s, airplane propellers
, and electric bell
s stand prominently onstage, moving as machines do, and providing the visual side of the ballet. As the bizarre instrumentation may suggest, this was no ordinary piece of music. It was loud and percussive –- a medley of noises, much as the Italian Futurists
envisioned new music of the 20th century.
, who financed this film's French distribution. In France, Charlie Chaplin
's Little Tramp
character was also known as Charlot; the combination of the producer's name and Chaplin's screen image, represented by a Cubist-style paper puppet, is only the first of many visual puns in the film -- a seeming display of the film's sheer visual modernity, as intended by its creators from the get-go.
and Fernand Léger
, with cinematography by Man Ray
. Antheil himself was not a Dadaist, though he had many friends and supporters in that community. Unfortunately, the score ended up being between 20 and 30 minutes long while the film was only 16 minutes long. The film premiered on 24 September 1924 in Vienna
presented by Frederick Kiesler, later a world-famous architect. Meanwhile, Antheil's music for Ballet Mécanique became a concert piece, premiered by Antheil himself in Paris in 1926.
In 1927, Antheil arranged the first part of the Ballet for Welte-Mignon
. This piano-roll
was performed on 16 July 1927 at the "Deutsche Kammermusik Baden-Baden
1927". Unfortunately, these piano rolls are now thought to be lost.
The original orchestration called for 16 player piano
s (or pianolas) in four parts, 2 regular piano
s, 3 xylophone
s, at least 7 electric bell
s, 3 propeller
s, siren
, 4 bass drum
s, and 1 tam-tam. As it turned out, there was no way to keep so many pianolas synchronized, so early performances combined the four parts into a single set of pianola rolls and augmented the two human-played pianos with 6 or more additional instruments.
In 1953, Antheil wrote a shortened (and much tamer) version for four pianos, four xylophones, two electric bells, two propellers, timpani
, glockenspiel
, and other percussion. The original orchestration was first realized in 1999, when the University of Massachusetts Lowell
Percussion Ensemble performed it using MIDI-controlled Yamaha Disklavier
s.
In 1986, the film was premiered with a new score by Michael Nyman
.
The score and film were successfully combined in 2000 by Paul Lehrman, who used an edited version of the original orchestration in which he used player pianos recorded after the Lowell performance, with the rest of the instruments played electronically. This version is available in the DVD set Unseen Cinema
released in October 2005 and also in the DVD set Bad Boy Made Good, which also contains Lehrman's documentary film about Antheil and the Ballet mécanique, which was released in April 2006. The featured film print is the original version, premiered in Vienna on 24 September 1924 by Frederick Kiesler.
In November 2002, a version of the score for live ensemble (which required further editing, since live players couldn't play it as fast as electronic instruments) was premiered in Columbus, Ohio
by an ensemble from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, conducted by Julian Pellicano. This version was then performed a dozen times in Europe by the London Sinfonietta
in 2004 and 2005.
In 2005, the National Gallery of Art
in Washington, DC commissioned Lehrman and the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR), Eric Singer, director, to create a computer-driven robotic ensemble to play the Ballet mécanique. This installation was at the Gallery from March 12 to May 7, 2006. It was installed in December 2007 at the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach, FL, and again at 3-Legged Dog in New York City, where it was used to accompany a play about Antheil and Hedy Lamarr, and their invention of spread-spectrum technology, called "Frequency Hopping." During the run of the play, the Léger/Murphy film was shown, with the robotic orchestra performing the score, at two special "after-concerts."
The sonata rondo form follows an [AB] [A’C] [A’’B’’] [Coda] pattern, where A is a first theme, B is a second theme, and C is a middle section loosely related to A and B:
A – Theme 1 starts at the beginning of the piece. It is easily identified by the oscillating melody in the xylophones. It moves through rhythmic and intervallic variations until a bridge into the next theme (measure 38 in the original scoring).
B – Theme 2 (m77) features the pianolas, supported by drums. The melody is mostly built from parallel series of consonant chords, sometimes sounding pentatonic but often making no tonal sense at all. Antheil uses pianolas for things that would be difficult for human players (a 7-note chord at m142, for example).
A’ – Xylophones return in triple meter to recall Theme 1 (m187). This is not strictly a repeat of Theme 1 but another variation and development upon it. This section descends into increasing chaos (starting m283) which signals a transition into part C (m328).
C – The xylophones and pianolas play a new tune. They stay in better rhythmic agreement here and give a more ordered feel to this section. The xylophones eventually cut out to make way for a serene pianola passage.
A’’B’’ – The xylophones return (m403) with the theme from the beginning. There are differences from the original AB part, including new bitonal passage (m530) and miniature round (m622) between xylophones and pianolas. The pentatonic melody, hinted in part B, returns (m649) and gets developed in the context of the round.
Coda – A startling change occurs when all instruments cut out except for a lone bell (m1134). This signals the beginning of a very long and thinly textured coda. It alternates between irregular measures of complete silence and pianola with percussion. The measures of silence get longer until the listener begins to wonder whether the piece is already over. Finally, there is a crescendo of pianola, a flurry of percussion and a bang to mark the real ending. The score indicates the last measure of the piece to be ended with the pianos and drums only, but modern performances have the xylophones joining back in and doubling the melody of the pianolas to create a more firm, solid, and recognizable ending.
The airplane propellers were actually large electric fans, into which musicians would insert object such as wooden poles or leather straps to create sound, since the fans don't make much noise. In the Paris performances, beginning in June 1926, the fans were pointed up at the ceiling. However, at the Carnegie Hall
premiere on April 10, 1927, the fans were positioned to blow into the audience, upsetting the patrons.
George Antheil
George Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor. A self-described "Bad Boy of Music", his modernist compositions amazed and appalled listeners in Europe and the US during the 1920s with their cacophonous celebration of mechanical devices.Returning permanently to...
and the filmmaker/artists Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
and Dudley Murphy
Dudley Murphy
Dudley Murphy was an American film director. Murphy was born on July 10, 1897 in Winchester, Massachusetts...
. Although the film was intended to use Antheil's score as a soundtrack, the two parts were not brought together until the 1990s. As a composition, Ballet Mécanique is Antheil's best known and most enduring work. It remains famous for its radical style and instrumentation as well as its storied history.
In concert performance, the "ballet" is not a show of human dancers but of mechanical instruments. Among these, player piano
Player piano
A player piano is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in...
s, airplane propellers
Propeller
A propeller is a type of fan that transmits power by converting rotational motion into thrust. A pressure difference is produced between the forward and rear surfaces of the airfoil-shaped blade, and a fluid is accelerated behind the blade. Propeller dynamics can be modeled by both Bernoulli's...
, and electric bell
Electric bell
An electric bell is a mechanical bell that functions by means of an electromagnet. When an electric current is applied, it produces a repetitive buzzing or clanging sound...
s stand prominently onstage, moving as machines do, and providing the visual side of the ballet. As the bizarre instrumentation may suggest, this was no ordinary piece of music. It was loud and percussive –- a medley of noises, much as the Italian Futurists
Futurism (music)
Futurism was a 20th century movement in art which encompassed painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture and gastronomy. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti initiated the movement in his Manifesto of Futurism, published in February 1909. Futurist music rejected tradition and introduced...
envisioned new music of the 20th century.
Visual puns
In its original release, the film's French title was "Charlot présente le ballet mécanique" (as seen on the original print), referring to showman André CharlotAndré Charlot
André Eugene Maurice Charlot was a French impresario known primarily for the highly successful musical revues he staged in London between 1912 and 1937...
, who financed this film's French distribution. In France, Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
's Little Tramp
Little Tramp
Little Tramp is a musical with a book by David Pomeranz and Steven David Horwich and music and lyrics by David Pomeranz.Based on the life of comedian Charles Chaplin and named after his most famous character, it opens at the 1971 Academy Awards ceremony at which the aging star, long exiled from the...
character was also known as Charlot; the combination of the producer's name and Chaplin's screen image, represented by a Cubist-style paper puppet, is only the first of many visual puns in the film -- a seeming display of the film's sheer visual modernity, as intended by its creators from the get-go.
Ballet Mécanique as a score
Ballet Mécanique was originally written to accompany a Dadaist film of the same name, directed by Dudley MurphyDudley Murphy
Dudley Murphy was an American film director. Murphy was born on July 10, 1897 in Winchester, Massachusetts...
and Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
, with cinematography by Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
. Antheil himself was not a Dadaist, though he had many friends and supporters in that community. Unfortunately, the score ended up being between 20 and 30 minutes long while the film was only 16 minutes long. The film premiered on 24 September 1924 in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
presented by Frederick Kiesler, later a world-famous architect. Meanwhile, Antheil's music for Ballet Mécanique became a concert piece, premiered by Antheil himself in Paris in 1926.
In 1927, Antheil arranged the first part of the Ballet for Welte-Mignon
Welte-Mignon
M. Welte & Sons, Freiburg and New York was a manufacturer of orchestrions, organs and reproducing pianos, established in Vöhrenbach by Michael Welte in 1832.-Overview:...
. This piano-roll
Piano roll
A piano roll is a music storage medium used to operate a player piano, piano player or reproducing piano. A piano roll is a continuous roll of paper with perforations punched into it. The peforations represent note control data...
was performed on 16 July 1927 at the "Deutsche Kammermusik Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden is a spa town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located on the western foothills of the Black Forest, on the banks of the Oos River, in the region of Karlsruhe...
1927". Unfortunately, these piano rolls are now thought to be lost.
The original orchestration called for 16 player piano
Player piano
A player piano is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in...
s (or pianolas) in four parts, 2 regular piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
s, 3 xylophone
Xylophone
The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets...
s, at least 7 electric bell
Electric bell
An electric bell is a mechanical bell that functions by means of an electromagnet. When an electric current is applied, it produces a repetitive buzzing or clanging sound...
s, 3 propeller
Propeller
A propeller is a type of fan that transmits power by converting rotational motion into thrust. A pressure difference is produced between the forward and rear surfaces of the airfoil-shaped blade, and a fluid is accelerated behind the blade. Propeller dynamics can be modeled by both Bernoulli's...
s, siren
Siren
In Greek mythology, the Sirens were three dangerous mermaid like creatures, portrayed as seductresses who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. Roman poets placed them on an island called Sirenum scopuli...
, 4 bass drum
Bass drum
Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...
s, and 1 tam-tam. As it turned out, there was no way to keep so many pianolas synchronized, so early performances combined the four parts into a single set of pianola rolls and augmented the two human-played pianos with 6 or more additional instruments.
In 1953, Antheil wrote a shortened (and much tamer) version for four pianos, four xylophones, two electric bells, two propellers, timpani
Timpani
Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...
, glockenspiel
Glockenspiel
A glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...
, and other percussion. The original orchestration was first realized in 1999, when the University of Massachusetts Lowell
University of Massachusetts Lowell
The University of Massachusetts Lowell is a public university in Lowell, Massachusetts, and part of the University of Massachusetts system...
Percussion Ensemble performed it using MIDI-controlled Yamaha Disklavier
Disklavier
Disklavier is the brand name for a group of piano-related products made by Yamaha Corporation. It was introduced in the United States in 1987....
s.
In 1986, the film was premiered with a new score by Michael Nyman
Michael Nyman
Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE is an English composer of minimalist music, pianist, librettist and musicologist, known for the many film scores he wrote during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Greenaway, and his multi-platinum soundtrack album to Jane Campion's The Piano...
.
The score and film were successfully combined in 2000 by Paul Lehrman, who used an edited version of the original orchestration in which he used player pianos recorded after the Lowell performance, with the rest of the instruments played electronically. This version is available in the DVD set Unseen Cinema
Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941
Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941 is a 7-disc and 19-hour DVD retrospective released by Image Entertainment in October 2005, and which includes some of the earliest American experimental film. It includes the work of:...
released in October 2005 and also in the DVD set Bad Boy Made Good, which also contains Lehrman's documentary film about Antheil and the Ballet mécanique, which was released in April 2006. The featured film print is the original version, premiered in Vienna on 24 September 1924 by Frederick Kiesler.
In November 2002, a version of the score for live ensemble (which required further editing, since live players couldn't play it as fast as electronic instruments) was premiered in Columbus, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
by an ensemble from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, conducted by Julian Pellicano. This version was then performed a dozen times in Europe by the London Sinfonietta
London Sinfonietta
The London Sinfonietta is an English chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London. The ensemble specialises in contemporary music and works across a wide range of genres, performing modern classics alongside world premieres, and includes music by electronica artists as well as folk and...
in 2004 and 2005.
In 2005, the National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
in Washington, DC commissioned Lehrman and the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR), Eric Singer, director, to create a computer-driven robotic ensemble to play the Ballet mécanique. This installation was at the Gallery from March 12 to May 7, 2006. It was installed in December 2007 at the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach, FL, and again at 3-Legged Dog in New York City, where it was used to accompany a play about Antheil and Hedy Lamarr, and their invention of spread-spectrum technology, called "Frequency Hopping." During the run of the play, the Léger/Murphy film was shown, with the robotic orchestra performing the score, at two special "after-concerts."
A Musical Analysis
The Ballet is hard to surmise from just looking at the score—one must hear it to get a real sense of its chaos. It moves frighteningly quickly, up to 32nd notes at tempo (quarter = 152). It sounds like an onslaught of confusing chords, punctuated by random rings, wails, or pauses. The meter rarely stays the same for more than three measures, distracting from the larger form of the music and instead highlighting the driving rhythms. However, the piece is definitely structured in a sonata rondo.The sonata rondo form follows an [AB] [A’C] [A’’B’’] [Coda] pattern, where A is a first theme, B is a second theme, and C is a middle section loosely related to A and B:
A – Theme 1 starts at the beginning of the piece. It is easily identified by the oscillating melody in the xylophones. It moves through rhythmic and intervallic variations until a bridge into the next theme (measure 38 in the original scoring).
B – Theme 2 (m77) features the pianolas, supported by drums. The melody is mostly built from parallel series of consonant chords, sometimes sounding pentatonic but often making no tonal sense at all. Antheil uses pianolas for things that would be difficult for human players (a 7-note chord at m142, for example).
A’ – Xylophones return in triple meter to recall Theme 1 (m187). This is not strictly a repeat of Theme 1 but another variation and development upon it. This section descends into increasing chaos (starting m283) which signals a transition into part C (m328).
C – The xylophones and pianolas play a new tune. They stay in better rhythmic agreement here and give a more ordered feel to this section. The xylophones eventually cut out to make way for a serene pianola passage.
A’’B’’ – The xylophones return (m403) with the theme from the beginning. There are differences from the original AB part, including new bitonal passage (m530) and miniature round (m622) between xylophones and pianolas. The pentatonic melody, hinted in part B, returns (m649) and gets developed in the context of the round.
Coda – A startling change occurs when all instruments cut out except for a lone bell (m1134). This signals the beginning of a very long and thinly textured coda. It alternates between irregular measures of complete silence and pianola with percussion. The measures of silence get longer until the listener begins to wonder whether the piece is already over. Finally, there is a crescendo of pianola, a flurry of percussion and a bang to mark the real ending. The score indicates the last measure of the piece to be ended with the pianos and drums only, but modern performances have the xylophones joining back in and doubling the melody of the pianolas to create a more firm, solid, and recognizable ending.
The Mechanics of the Ballet
The mechanical pianos keep the tempo strictly at (quarter = 152). Interestingly, all longer rests in the pianola part are notated in 8th rests, as if to suggest the exactness of the instrument. At this rate, the 1920’s pianola played 8.5 feet per minute of paper rolls over three rolls. This logistical nightmare has been described by some scholars as being an error, and that Antheil’s suggested tempo was actually half that (quarter = 76), but in fact Antheil's 1953 Ballet Mécanique score indicates a tempo of 144-160.The airplane propellers were actually large electric fans, into which musicians would insert object such as wooden poles or leather straps to create sound, since the fans don't make much noise. In the Paris performances, beginning in June 1926, the fans were pointed up at the ceiling. However, at the Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
premiere on April 10, 1927, the fans were positioned to blow into the audience, upsetting the patrons.