`Bad Boy' Antheil welcomed in Medford
George Antheil wrote film and television scores, dabbled in endocrinology, even invented a radio-controlled torpedo system with actress Hedy Lamarr. But he never saw his most celebrated composition performed as he envisioned it.
The composer's colorful life, the struggle to create ``Ballet mécanique," the sensation at its premiere in 1926, and its resurrection more than 70 years later are the subjects of the documentary ``Bad Boy Made Good," which will be featured at the Doc Kountze/Medford Film Festival on Saturday. The film was written and produced by Paul D. Lehrman, a Tufts University music technologist who was a key player in bringing the music back to life.
Antheil, born in New Jersey in 1900, became a fixture in the arts scene in Paris during the 1920s, counting Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and Picasso among his friends. He had already built a reputation as a pianist and avant-garde composer when he began work on ``Ballet mécanique" in 1924. The music was intended to accompany a film by cinematographer Dudley Murphy and cubist painter Fernand Léger.
Antheil's score called for eight percussionists, two pianos, 16 synchronized player pianos, three airplane propellers, a siren, and electric bells. Because the technology didn't exist at the time to synchronize the pianos properly, Antheil scaled back the piano player parts for the premiere in Paris. Though riots broke out at the concert hall -- or perhaps because riots broke out -- the music was hailed as a success, leading Aaron Copland to declare at the time, ``George has Paris by the ear."
The New York premiere the following year, however, was plagued by technical problems, and the piece fell into obscurity.
Almost 50 years after Antheil's death in 1959, music publisher G. Schirmer Inc. had custody of the composer's works and found Lehrman, an expert in musical instrument digital interface (or MIDI) sequencing, which enable s computers to communicate with musical instruments. MIDI enabled player pianos to play in union the avalanche of notes assigned to them.
Lehrman also recorded the propellers, bells, and siren (from the Arlington Fire Department) to complete the score. The result is a half-hour-long assault of sound (except for several long silences near the end), amply illustrating the piano's genus as a percussion instrument. With more than 600 time signature changes in 1,240 bars, and the relentless deconstruction of melodic fragments, ``Ballet mécanique" earns a documentary commentator's description of the work as ``cubism in musical form."
Lehrman's version was performed for the first time in 1999 by a student ensemble at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Since then, it has been performed about two dozen times around the world, Lehrman said, not counting a completely mechanized version that was on exhibit this spring at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. A video of this robotic performance will also be shown Saturday.
``Bad Boy Made Good" (a variation on Antheil's autobiography, ``Bad Boy of Music") will be broadcast this fall on PBS stations, and is available in a DVD package that includes a recording of the entire UMass-Lowell concert and the Léger-Murphy film.
The Medford festival is named in honor of Mabray ``Doc" Kountze, a sports reporter and writer who chronicled African-American experiences in Medford. The event is sponsored by the Medford Arts Center, which was established several years ago to acquire a building where local artists could perform and exhibit their works.
That goal is now dormant because no suitable sites are on the market, Lehrman said, but the organization annually holds an arts festival in the fall and another event in the spring. In prior years, there have been poetry, music, and dancing performances. This year, the council decided to offer a film festival, which will feature 11 fiction and nonfiction works by people who live, work, or study in Medford.
The Doc Kountze/Medford Film Festival will take place Saturday at the McGlynn Middle School, 3004 Mystic Valley Parkway, 1 to 6:30 p.m., including question-and-answer sessions with the filmmakers. Donations to the Medford Arts Center accepted at the door. A complete schedule is available at www.medfordarts.org. 
