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As the 1920's celebrated the birth of the machine age, American composers were surprised to find that Europe was looking to them as the key to the future of music. There was so much money floating around that commissions were numerous, and composers tried to out do each other in modernist innovations. The age was summed up by George Antheil's "Ballet Mècanique," written "like a solid shaft of steel," with its worship of the machine, its decadent excess of airplane propellers, and 16 player pianos.
In this heady milieu, composers were caught completely off guard by the Great Depression. A turn toward leftist politics began to demand simple music for the proletariat. The most public and successful turnaround came from Aaron Copland, who simplified his style away from dissonance and jazz rhythms toward quotation of folk song; "I wanted to see if I couldn't say what I had to say," he wrote later, "in the simplest possible terms." Quotation of folk songs became de rigueur in the 1930's, brought to a populist climax in Virgil Thomson's works such as "The River" and "The Plow that Broke the Plains." |
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 Oh, to be popular.
An essay by music critic and author Kyle Gann.
 Ballet Mécanique and the bad boy of music
Watch a four minute clip from the 1924 film with music by George Antheil. Read an interview with Paul Lehrman who put the soundtrack and film together for the first time.
 From the Archives: Frederic Rzewski
Listen to Frederic Rzewski address the students of the University of Wisconsin, River Falls 04-17-83.
In addition to host Suzanne Vega and San Francisco Symphony Orchestra Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, this show includes the voices of these composers, performers, and scholars:
Henry Brant: "Interview" (51:41s)
Elliot Carter: Interview (67:59)
Aaron Copland: "Interview" (1977) (19:36s)
Aaron Copland: "Interview" (1977) (41:26s)
Aaron Copland: "Interview" (1977) (59:46s)
Lou Harrison: "Interview" (57:22s)
Bill McGlaughlin
Martin Bresnick: "Interview" (70:46s)
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