Bad Boy of Music
By:
Sign Up Now!
Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title.
Learn about membership options,
or view our freely available titles.
- Synopsis
- The memoirs of George Antheil, 1900-1959. No musician has ever written memoirs such as these, until the much later work of Ned Rorem, perhaps partly because few musicians can write, and chiefly because no musician, not even the most wild-haired, has had a life like the one George Antheil is currently enjoying. Witty, glittering, packed full of the bizarre, these pages record the fabulous career of an extraordinary pianist, composer, and writer who got his introduction to music in plebeian Trenton when two innocent-looking old ladies covered up a jailbreak by thundering on the piano. After Trenton, nothing about George Antheil's life has been plebeian. Practicing the piano sixteen hours a day, he toured Europe, played French compositions in Germany, married a Hungarian in Paris, and there became a leader of Left Bank iconoclasts. In 1929 he returned to America for the performance of his "Ballet Mécanique" (scored for machines and airplane propeller), which caused a sensation among critics and sent him penniless back to Europe. In 1933 he returned again to America, where he led an even more checkered career, writing several books, magazine articles which have since become famous, and indulging his favorite hobby of, obviously, glandular criminology. Then he went to Hollywood, did the score for The Scoundrel, ran an advice-to-the-lovelorn column called "Boy Advises Girl," and composed a highly successful Fourth Symphony. If the mere framework of his life is colorful, the details are even more so. Like those of Oscar Levant's A Smattering of Ignorance, his pages are alive with famous personalities: the eccentric Stravinsky, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Stokowski, Dalí, Hedy Lamarr, to mention a few. But Bad Boy of Music is also a serious yet never obscure inside story of how it feels and what it takes to be a concert artist--a sober story abundant in illuminating and profound thoughts upon music and art in general.
- Copyright:
- 1945
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Excellent
- Book Size:
- 378 Pages
- Publisher:
- Doubleday & Company
- Date of Addition:
- 06/13/21
- Copyrighted By:
- George Antheil
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Music
- Submitted By:
- Terry Gorman
- Proofread By:
- Terry Gorman
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.