First, the positive. . .
Descriptions of Antheil’s musical technique suggest the same multi-layering of complex relationships. Analyzing Antheil’s Airplane Sonata, Linda Whitesitt describes his “manipulation of ostinato patterns and his technique of divorcing metric structures from melodic constructions”:
Here, he presents two interlocking but independent ostinato patterns a minor second apart that start together but gradually go “out of phase” because of the rests inserted in the left hand. The composer has created two entirely independent levels of activity. (Bad Boy, 89-90)
The result is musical “metamorphoses [that] occur with the manifoldednessand speed of a kaleidoscope” (90), creating “a propulsive, forward driving energy” (91). Consulting Ezra Pound’s treatise/manifesto on Antheil’s music, I half suspect Pound had a hand in bringing you and Antheil together.
