Collection context
Summary
- Title:
- George Antheil Collection
- Dates:
- 1920-1959
- Creators:
- Charles Amirkhanian
- Abstract:
- The collection consists of George Antheil?s correspondence. All, but one of the letters, are photocopies, the dates range from 1920 to 1959. The materials were collected by Charles Amirkhanian.
- Extent:
- 7 Linear Feet :(14) box(es)
- Language:
- Languages represented in the collection: English
- Preferred citation:
-
George Antheil Collection (ARS.0243). Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
Charles Amirkhanian collected photocopies of Antheils?s correspondence from several sources such as Library of Congress, Princeton University, Yale University, and from the Antheil family.
- Biographical / historical:
-
George Antheil was born on July 8, 1900 in Trenton, New Jersey. He studied briefly with Constantin von Sternberg and Ernest Bloch. In 1922, he traveled to Europe to pursue a career as a concert pianist, performing many of his own works such as Mechanisms, Airplane Sonata, and Sonata Sauvage. The riots that his music caused contributed to the composer's growing notoriety. In Berlin, he met Stravinsky who exerted the single most important influence on his compositional style.
In the 1920s the Parisian artistic community, including Joyce, Pound, Cocteau, Satie, Picasso, and others, championed Antheil as a musical spokesman for their modernist ideas. His crowning achievement during this period was the spectacular and controversial Ballet M?canique, a milestone in the literature for percussion ensemble that shattered conventions. Its 1927 American premiere in Carnegie Hall, a production complete with airplane propellers, resulted in an uproar. A couple of years before the tumultuous American premiere, he composed his chef d?oeuvre A Jazz Symphony (1925) for piano and orchestra that can be placed side by side with Gershwin?s most outstanding works.
Antheil?s late works are characterized by a neo-romantic and neo-classic style such as the Symphonie en Fa and the Piano Concerto. In 1936, he settled in Hollywood and devoted much of his time composing for the movies, and for the CBS television series "Air Power" and "Twentieth Century." The last two decades of his life were very productive; along with his over thirty film scores he composed four symphonies as well as several operas including the farcical Volpone. He also authored four books and many articles on subjects ranging from advice for the lovelorn, to endocrinology, military predictions, musical reviews, and crime novels. His autobiography Bad Boy of Music (1945) remains one of the wittiest ever written by a composer. Antheil died of heart attack on February 12th, 1959. --Dr. Mauro Piccinini
Charles Amirkhanian, born in Fresco, California on January 19, 1945 is a composer, percussionist, sound poet and radio producer. He received a BA in English (1967), an MA in interdisciplinary creative arts (1969), and an MFA in electronic music and recording media (1980). His teachers included David Behrman, Robert Ashley and Paul de Marinis. His many administrative activities have included music director for KPFA Radio in Berkeley CA (1969-92), executive director of the Djerassi Artist Program (1993-97), and artistic and executive director of the Other Minds Festival of San Francisco (from 1998). Amirkhanian?s experiences as a percussionist and radio presenter have been defining in his compositional style. His pieces make use of the spoken voice and ambient sounds. His vocal works experiment with rhythmic and timbral qualities of individual words such as in Seatbelt Seatbelt (1973). Amirkhanian has been very active promoting American composers, writing and performing their music. Fellow composers have inspired works such as the spoken word portrait of Morton Feldman, Loudspeakers (1990). Amirkhanian?s Walking Tune (A Room-Music for Percy Grainger), an important example of his recent work, was produced with the Synclavier digital synthesizer, and combines acoustic, environmental natural sounds, or "representational sounds," with traditional musical pitched sounds or "abstract sounds."
- Custodial history:
-
Formely a Stanford Music Library archival collection with id "Antheil."
- Arrangement:
-
The correspondence is organized in six different series: 1. Alphabetical: including key correspondents; 2. Chronological: correspondents of lesser importance; 3. Famous Files: presumably put together by Antheil himself; 4. Family: letters mainly from and to his wife Boeske, and his son Peter; 5. Specific projects: such as his music notation and his endocrinology theories; 6. Miscellaneous: programs, clippings, a musical sketch, and one score that were sent along with letters.
- Physical location:
- For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
- Rules or conventions:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Indexed terms
- Names:
- Antheil, George
About this collection guide
- Date Encoded:
- This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2024-05-01 12:08:30 -0700 .
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Collection is open for research. May be used onsite only. Please contact the Music Library to arrange for advance retrieval of materials.
- Terms of access:
-
Property rights reside with the repository. Literary rights reside with the creators of the documents or their heirs. To obtain permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the repository of the original documents.
- Preferred citation:
-
George Antheil Collection (ARS.0243). Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.
- Location of this collection:
-
Braun Music Center, 541 Lasuen MallStanford, CA 94305-3076, US
- Contact:
- (650) 723-9312