This Week in Classical Music: July 7, 2025. Mahler and Antheil. There are several “semi-round” anniversaries this week, Mahler’s being the most significant: he was born on this day 165 years ago. Our readers may know how we feel and think about Gustav Mahler: not only was he one of the most important composers, he also became a litmus test of sorts – during the crazy woke days of 2020-2021, he completely disappeared from the musical scene, being singled out as the “really bad boy” of Western music. The trend was reversed a couple of years ago, and we’re happy to report that by now, Mahler has resumed his rightful place in classical repertory, both on stage and on the radio (he also never disappeared for real music lovers, who continued listening to his amazing music on streaming services and YouTube through those years).
George Antheil was born 125 years ago, on July 8th of 1900 in Trenton, NJ. Antheil had an interesting life: born into a German immigrant family, he was bilingual, started playing piano at the age of six, got involved with a modernist crowd when he was 19, and at 21 sailed to Europe, ready to make a name for himself as a “modern composer.” He spent a year in Berlin, where he met Stravinsky, and then moved to Paris. In Paris, Antheil lived in an apartment above Sylvia Beach’s bookstore, “Shakespeare and Co.” Beach took an interest in the young man and introduced him to several extraordinary Americans who lived in Paris in the 1920s, among them Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and Virgil Thomson. Antheil also became close with the Frenchmen Eric Satie and Jean Cocteau. The Paris years were a productive period for Antheil. He wrote several large piano pieces; during the premiere of one of them, Mechanisms, a riot broke out, to the composer’s delight (it made him, in his mind, equal to Stravinsky, whose premiere of the Rite of Spring was also met with a riot). Mechanisms was not the only piece that created a disturbance: Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique provoked the same reaction. The “ballet” was written as music to accompany the film by French painter Fernand Léger and American filmmaker Dudley Murphy. The effort was poorly coordinated, as Antheil’s music ran twice as long as the film, so the premiere presented the music on its own. It was scored (in its final, less extravagant form) for a pianola, several pianists, and airplane propellers that made a roaring noise when the pianos and the pianola stopped playing.
After another stint in Germany, Antheil returned to the US in 1933, pushed out by the Nazis. In 1936, he moved to Hollywood and became a very successful film composer, a far cry from his avant-garde days in Paris (the trajectory of Antheil’s life reminds us of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a child prodigy who also settled for a life of film composing after emigrating to the US). In his later days, Antheil wrote some “serious” music, tonal and “neoromantic,” very different than what he was composing in his youth. He died of a heart attack in 1959.
Antheil had many interests: he wrote novels and worked as a literary critic. A most unusual thing happened after he met the Austrian-American actress Hedy Lamarr: the two of them invented what is called “frequency-hopping” for radio-controlled torpedoes. When a single frequency is used, it can be detected and then jammed by the enemy. The Lamarr-Antheil idea was to change frequencies rapidly, based on a code shared by the ship and the torpedo. There were 88 frequencies to be used – the number equal to the number of keys on a piano keyboard. The invention was patented by the actress and composer, but never implemented by the US Navy.
Mahler, Antheil 2025
This Week in Classical Music: July 7, 2025. Mahler and Antheil. There are several “semi-round” anniversaries this week, Mahler’s being the most significant: he was born on this day 165
years ago. Our readers may know how we feel and think about Gustav Mahler: not only was he one of the most important composers, he also became a litmus test of sorts – during the crazy woke days of 2020-2021, he completely disappeared from the musical scene, being singled out as the “really bad boy” of Western music. The trend was reversed a couple of years ago, and we’re happy to report that by now, Mahler has resumed his rightful place in classical repertory, both on stage and on the radio (he also never disappeared for real music lovers, who continued listening to his amazing music on streaming services and YouTube through those years).
George Antheil was born 125 years ago, on July 8th of 1900 in Trenton, NJ. Antheil had an interesting life: born into a German immigrant family, he was bilingual, started playing piano at the age of six, got involved with a modernist crowd
when he was 19, and at 21 sailed to Europe, ready to make a name for himself as a “modern composer.” He spent a year in Berlin, where he met Stravinsky, and then moved to Paris. In Paris, Antheil lived in an apartment above Sylvia Beach’s bookstore, “Shakespeare and Co.” Beach took an interest in the young man and introduced him to several extraordinary Americans who lived in Paris in the 1920s, among them Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and Virgil Thomson. Antheil also became close with the Frenchmen Eric Satie and Jean Cocteau. The Paris years were a productive period for Antheil. He wrote several large piano pieces; during the premiere of one of them, Mechanisms, a riot broke out, to the composer’s delight (it made him, in his mind, equal to Stravinsky, whose premiere of the Rite of Spring was also met with a riot). Mechanisms was not the only piece that created a disturbance: Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique provoked the same reaction. The “ballet” was written as music to accompany the film by French painter Fernand Léger and American filmmaker Dudley Murphy. The effort was poorly coordinated, as Antheil’s music ran twice as long as the film, so the premiere presented the music on its own. It was scored (in its final, less extravagant form) for a pianola, several pianists, and airplane propellers that made a roaring noise when the pianos and the pianola stopped playing.
After another stint in Germany, Antheil returned to the US in 1933, pushed out by the Nazis. In 1936, he moved to Hollywood and became a very successful film composer, a far cry from his avant-garde days in Paris (the trajectory of Antheil’s life reminds us of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a child prodigy who also settled for a life of film composing after emigrating to the US). In his later days, Antheil wrote some “serious” music, tonal and “neoromantic,” very different than what he was composing in his youth. He died of a heart attack in 1959.
Antheil had many interests: he wrote novels and worked as a literary critic. A most unusual thing happened after he met the Austrian-American actress Hedy Lamarr: the two of them invented what is called “frequency-hopping” for radio-controlled torpedoes. When a single frequency is used, it can be detected and then jammed by the enemy. The Lamarr-Antheil idea was to change frequencies rapidly, based on a code shared by the ship and the torpedo. There were 88 frequencies to be used – the number equal to the number of keys on a piano keyboard. The invention was patented by the actress and composer, but never implemented by the US Navy.
We’ll post samples of his music later this week.