George Antheil quotes

George Antheil was an American composer, pianist, and author, often recognized for his avant-garde and experimental works. His most famous composition, "Ballet Mécanique," broke new ground with its use of mechanical instruments and innovative rhythms. He also collaborated with actress Hedy Lamarr to invent a pioneering technology in frequency-hopping communication. Here are 10 of his quotes:

After this was done I reached in under my left armpit in approved American gangster fashion and produced my ugly little automatic. Without a further word I placed it on the front desk of my Steinway and proceeded with my concert. Every note was heard and, in a sense, I suppose I opened up the way in Hungary for modern music of a non-Bartó k– Kodá ly variety.

George Antheil

Attendants, will you please close and lock the doors?

George Antheil

Quite a number of observers have commented on my coolness during various riotous concerts which I performed at during those first tumultuous years of the armistice between World War I and World War II. The reason is very simple: I was armed.

George Antheil

You are a concert pianist. That was my life when I was twenty-two years old.

George Antheil

Your pianos travel with you. So does your manager. You have no time for girls. Your manager sees to it that no young predatory females get very far.

George Antheil

You are twenty-two years old, trained down to the last pound like a boxer. You do not over-eat, smoke or drink and you work six to eight hours a day at a piano with a special keyboard in which the keys are so hard to press down that when you come to your concert grand at night you seem, literally, to be riding a fleecy cloud, so easy is its keyboard action. Before each concert, of course, you eat nothing at all.

George Antheil

You crawl over the onrushing piano passages in slow motion. Your fingers are in ten little steel strait-jackets....

George Antheil

The sweat-great slithering streams of it-pours down you. It runs down your legs, down the leg that is pedalling the sostenuto pedal, down the other leg. It oozes out all over your chest, flows down the binding around your middle where your full-dress pants soak it up. It flows everywhere, down your arms, down your hands.

George Antheil

From Bad Boy of Music, on dealing with unruly audiences:.

George Antheil