"Trenton Tough"

Vague clamorings are being heard of an art that insists it is the music of the age. It appears a freakish thing, unusual in sound as well as in mechanics. Once in a great while, a man will invent an instrument for the sake of expressing an idea better than it could be expressed in any other medium. Such an invention was the foot pedal that made Chopin's genius possible.

George Antheil believes himself on the track of such a creation. His new instrument is the percussion symphony, employing ten pianos, one mechanical piano, xylophones, airplane propeller, wind machines, electric machines, bells-- but no strings, brasses, woodwinds or reeds. He wants to express America, Africa, steel. While his Slavic blue eyes grow round with vision, he will assure the interviewer that to him a good Ford engine seems more beautiful than a mediocre painting.

Only 26 years ago, he made his first joyful noise unto the Lord from Trenton, N. J. At 6, he began composing. At 10, he was a violin virtuoso, playing with string quartets in Budapest, Warsaw, Berlin, At 13, he had written his first symphony. Since 20, he has lived abroad and astonished the world. In France, he has been called "the most important U. S. composer."

By arrangement with Donald S. Friede, vice president of Boni & Liveright, publishers, he has come to his native land to give a concert in Manhattan on April 10. With him comes his wife, niece of Austrian Playwright Arthur Schnitzler. He is accompanied also by an amazing record. Every concert of his given in Europe has been crowded. For three years people have been turned away for lack of room in the halls whence his queer sounds emanated.

His best known symphony, "Ballet Mecanique," nearly precipitated a riot in Paris. The weird whirr of wood, rubber, steel was radical enough to set the audience howling with conflicting passions of admiration and disgust. But, in addition, the propeller was placed facing them. When it started its great whirling, thereby affording the symphony a sustaining tone analogous to the bass drum, the umbrellas in the front rows, together with hats, skirts, wigs of the favorably as well as the unfavorably disposed, were whisked out of repose into strange embarrassments. The "Trenton Tough" thereupon faced his sustaining tone in the other direction, proceeded to stir the audience almost to apoplexy with sound alone. He says: "I have tried [in the "Ballet Mecanique"] to express America's tremendous power and energy without writing it in terms of jazz." Composer Antheil, first to propagate a serious appreciation of jazz in Germany, believes it is now on the wane, in form, not in spirit. Yet his favorite composers are Beethoven and Handel.