George Antheil's Capital of the World
A Hemingway Story Meets Spanish-influenced Melodies
May 26, 2009
George Antheil (1900-1959) was labeled the "bad boy" of music after his "Ballet Mecanique," complete with a part for airplane propellers, made its uproarious debut in 1926. During his time in Paris, he hob-nobbed with the literary luminaries of the 20th century and considered James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway personal friends. The persona mellowed by the 1940s and 1950s after his tenure as a war correspondent, and he became an accomplished symphonist and film composer.
But his music for the three-part ballet Capital of the World, based on Hemingway's ultra-gloomy short story of the same name, contains some of his best material.
The story follows Paco, an aspiring matador in Madrid, the place he calls the "capital of the world." The sprightly, riveting Spanish-tinged themes faithfully capture the atmosphere. From the opening bars it's as if being transported into a bustling marketplace. Melody after melody is vivacious, spunky and rhythmically spicy.
The quieter, more serene moments are, at times, a tense contrast. It's an almost complete departure from his style at the time, but Antheil practically sets the table for other American composers on how to write music of this genre.
New York Herald-Tribune critic Virgil Thomson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer in his own right, was a notorious tough sell. But he raved about this score, calling it "the most original, striking and powerful American ballet score with which I am acquainted."
Ballet Theatre Performance: Roy Fitzell Steals the Show
In the original 1954 mono recording of the complete music by the Ballet Theatre Orchestra, which has just been reissued by EMI, conductor Joseph Levine enlisted the help of company dancer Roy Fitzell to integrate the dance steps at the ferocious climax of Part 2, providing a mesmerizing percussive element to the recording. The mono sound is no deterrent. In fact, it adds to the journey.
Although a recent recording of the shorter suite exists with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Slovak State Symphony Orchestra played it in its entirety on the Centaur label in 1996, the intricate Spanish dancing is the one thing sorely missing from both.
Capital of the World's Legacy: Spanish Music in America
Frenchmen Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy composed their own homages to Spain in Rapsodie espagnole and Iberia, respectively. But in Antheil, they have worthy competition. Although most all of his six symphonies are available on disc, this is the place to start examining Antheil's music. In by far the most unique work of his later period, no Spanish composer could have done better to vividly and accurately immerse the listener in Hemingway's tale.
