George Antheil

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Lore & Background

Antheil grew up in a family of German immigrants in Trenton, New Jersey, where his father owned a shoe store. He started studying the piano at age six. In 1916, he traveled regularly to Philadelphia to study under Constantine von Sternberg, a former pupil of Franz Liszt. In 1919, he began to work with the more progressive Ernest Bloch in New York. He never formally graduated from high school or college, flunking out of Trenton Central High School in 1918. According to his autobiography, *The Bad Boy of Music* (1945), he was 'so crazy about music' that his mother sent him to the countryside where no pianos were available; undeterred, he arranged for a local music store to deliver a piano. His somewhat unreliable memoir mythologized his origins as a futurist, emphasizing his upbringing near a noisy machine shop and an ominous prison. On May 30, 1922, at age 21, Antheil sailed for Europe to make his name as 'a new ultra-modern pianist composer' and a 'futurist terrible.' He spent a year in Berlin, gave concerts in Budapest, Vienna, and at the Donaueschingen Festival. He met Boski Markus, a Hungarian and niece of the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler, whom he married in 1925. The Antheils arrived in Paris in June 1923. There, they lived above Sylvia Beach's bookshop Shakespeare and Company. Beach introduced him to her circle including Erik Satie, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Virgil Thomson, and Ernest Hemingway. Pound became an extravagant supporter, publishing *Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony* in 1924. Antheil's Paris debut at the opening of the Ballets suédois sparked a riot; according to Antheil, 'People were fighting in the aisles, yelling, clapping, hooting! Pandemonium! ... the police entered, and any number of surrealists, society personages, and people of all descriptions were arrested.' He was delighted when Satie and Milhaud praised his music. Returning to the United States in the 1930s, Antheil composed music for films and television, adopting a more tonal style. In 1941, with actress Hedy Lamarr, he developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes using frequency hopping, synchronized by a code on punched paper tape. This work led to their induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

Reader's Guide

George Antheil's significance lies in his dual legacy as a radical modernist composer and a pioneering inventor. His early works, such as the 'Airplane Sonata' (1921), 'Sonata Sauvage' (1922–23), and 'Mechanisms' (c. 1923), embraced the sounds of industry and machinery, aligning with the futurist and Dadaist movements of the 1920s. His concerts in Europe, particularly the riotous Paris debut at the Ballets suédois, cemented his reputation as an avant-garde provocateur. Later, his shift to tonal film and television music reflected a pragmatic reinvention. His most enduring contribution, however, is the frequency-hopping spread spectrum system co-invented with Hedy Lamarr in 1941. The 2014 induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame recognized this work. Antheil's career exemplifies the intersection of art and technology, and his willingness to reinvent himself across disciplines—from composer to inventor to author—marks him as a uniquely versatile figure of the 20th century.

Did You Know?

• Antheil flunked out of Trenton Central High School in 1918 and never formally graduated from high school or college.
• His Paris debut at the Ballets suédois sparked a riot that was filmed for the Marcel L'Herbier movie *L'Inhumaine*.
• Antheil's autobiography, *The Bad Boy of Music* (1945), is considered somewhat unreliable and mythologized his origins as a futurist.
• He and Hedy Lamarr were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014 for their frequency-hopping torpedo guidance system.
• Antheil's younger brother, Henry W. Antheil Jr., was a diplomatic courier who died on June 14, 1940, when his plane was shot down over the Baltic Sea.