“Ballet Mecanique” vs “Fantasie Mecanique”
We asked OMS to compare George Antheil’s “Ballet Mecanique” (1924) against Unsuk Chin’s “Fantasie Mecanique” (1997).
Ballet Mecanique (click here for a composer-supervised recording of the work, and much background information) is a legendary “ultra-modern” work by George Antheil “The Bad Boy of Music”. This work - which features airplane propellers, sirens, player pianos, and conventional percussion instruments - caused a riot at its Paris premiere. It is cacophonous, rebellious, and a lot of fun to listen to!
Fantasie Mecanique is a recent work by the highly-regarded contemporary composer Unsuk Chin. It was also premiered in Paris, but probably without a riot. (The premiere was by the great Ensemble Interconterporain at Cité de la Musique in Paris - a high accolade for the composer, also conferring a kind of instant legitimacy to the music). (Click here for a performance) This work is cacophonous at times, very “advanced”, and mostly fun to listen to.
OMS rated Ballet Mecanique [290] ; Fantasie Mecanique [346]. Why the difference in ratings?
Notwithstanding its reputation, Ballet Mecanique does not operate like a radical or advanced piece of music (at least not in 2007). Its effectiveness stems primarily from breadth of stimulation (but not much depth); richness and variety of sound, including plenty of novel kinds of sound; consistent use of rhythm and pulse; careful organization so that it avoids repetitiveness/boredom. But the ways in which it evokes “the mechanical” are mainly conventional and obvious. There’s not much to challenge the imagination - except for the idea that a work so percussive with such unusual instrumentation manages to come across as some pretty good music.
Fantasie Mecanique accomplishes most of the stimulation of Antheil’s work (except for “naughtiness”) but it goes considerably further. It introduces many new sonic effects that are perceived in various ways as being “mechanical”; it provides rich and novel effects involving space, time, topology, color, and poetry. Its formulation is a masterful combination of obvious and subtle, with many gradations; but it is also “transparent”, so the listener can enjoy the display of the compositional skill. Also, the variation of sound (high/low, loud/soft, sonic effect) is much broader than in Antheil’s work.
Ballet Mecanique is a very likable work; but Fantasie Mecanique incorporates more sheer compositional skill and achieves more with it.