I happened to be in Washington a few years ago and caught a performance of George Atheil’s 1924 piece Ballet Mecanique at the National Gallery of Art during their huge Dada exhibition. The piece originally called for a percussion orchestra of three xylophones, four bass drums, and a tam-tam (gong), two “live” pianists, seven or so electric bells, a siren, three airplane propellors, and 16 synchronized player pianos. For the performance at the National Art Gallery, however, the entire band was robotic. Actually, I can’t imagine it performed any other way - it seemed to perfectly fit the prevailing mood of the Dadaist works - mostly a reaction to the war machine. There seemed to be these recurring themes of mechanization and war in the Dada exhibit and to have a piece (originally written when Atheil was 24 to accompany a Dada film) that was performed completely by these cold robotic arms was just perfect. Anyway, check out the performance below. I’ll tell you the one thing it doesn’t capture is that of the power and chaos of a long row of pianos playing together like that - I mean, it really felt like a war was about to start in that gallery - it was so jarring.
Enjoy.
Ballet Mecanique by George Atheil
that’s really interesting. would’ve been cool to see in person, i’m sure.
You led me to read the Wikipedia article on dada.
This is great:
In Cologne (Köln), Max Ernst, Johannes Theodor Baargeld and Arp launched a controversial Dada exhibition in 1920 which focused on nonsense and anti-bourgeois sentiments. Cologne’s Early Spring Exhibition was set up in a pub, and required that participants walk past urinals while being read lewd poetry by a woman in a communion dress.