creation : 1924/1954 (21 February) at Colombia University (1954)
duration : 15′
Ballet mécanique is the best-known work by the American composer George Antheil (1900-1959), written between 1923 and 1925, with a revision in 1953. Dudley Murphy and Fernand Léger directed the film with the homonymous title that was to accompany the ballet .
The Mechanical Ballet is a joint project of George Antheil, an American composer living in Paris, and filmmakers and artists Dudley Murphy and Fernand Léger. Although Antheil’s score was to serve as the soundtrack to the film, the two parts of the work were not brought together until the 1990s.
The work was originally written for an orchestra of sixteen mechanical pianos (pianolas), xylophone and percussion before the ensemble was extended to other, more heterogeneous instruments. Thus the orchestration of the Mechanical Ballet became very particular since the score finally included several pianos, electric timbres, an aeroplane propeller and a percussion ensemble. Its inspiration is futuristic, even Dadaist. The term “ballet” is somewhat usurped, as the composer did not plan any actual choreography to his music, which was originally supposed to be the soundtrack to a film.
The premiere took place on June 19, 1926, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées with a success that was not repeated in the United States a year later.
The work consists of a single movement and its performance lasts just over a quarter of an hour.
As much as the painter, the American composer expresses the fascination that the objects of modernity at the time exerted on him.
In its 1952-53 revised version, this one-part, nearly quarter-hour score calls for only two pianos, two mechanical pianos and eight percussionists.