The first of three rolls in this spectacular Set has been played. Now, you are about to begin Roll II ... which introduces some wild "machine" effects, sounding as if gears, pistons and live steam were all acting in concert with each other!
The 1925 French rolls had "notes missing" alone, right from the beginning of this movie scene, designated as "TIME SPACE" #40. While it's possible that the listener or Pianolist wouldn't hear every single note in some of these rhythmic clusters, the fact remains that BALLET MECANIQUE is a structured classically-designed piece, with dramatic effects and "built up" rhythm-variations every time a familiar pattern returns. Roll II is about 100 feet long, ending with a long, long ... a musical riff so extended and complex, and which repeats so often that one might assume there were no moving paper roll! This final "TIME SPACE" section — #75 — is so riveting, so powerful and so repetitive, than when the end of the roll approaches, composer Antheil still manages to build up "a little more steam" to conclude this section of the Pianola+film extravaganza!
Sundry annotations on the handwritten Pleyel manuscript
have lines like "Give George big chord here", and so forth. "TIME
SPACE" #75 has written on the final measure: " — plus BIG CHORD!"
(The
original Pleyel rolls did not, but ARTCRAFT took up the handwritten cue
and added a crushing sForzando bass cluster to the mix, while filling-in
some details on the middle of the keyboard as well. It's pure 'Pianola
Thunder' at the end of Roll II!)
One of the essential problems with BALLET MECANIQUE, as envisoned by George Antheil, was that he didn't really know the limitations of the pneumaic Player-Piano when writing his manuscript for the Pleyel piano factory. Thus, he had a Fotoplayer© in mind: one of those multiple-roll silent movie accompaniment instruments, which combined 2 tracker bars for 2 rolls ... organ pipes and/or harmonioum reeds ... tympani ... and sound effects. His error was to write "too much" for a single music roll, so he believed that "TIME SPACE" #57 would be the 'end' of a 2-roll Set, when actually this appears in the MIDDLE of the second roll! (Scratched out instructions appear on the score at this point ... and the composer then moved the finale of this roll to passage #75, having to add a third roll to the published Set.) A Fotoplayer© could handle this easily, rewinding one roll while the other was playing, but it's obvious that BALLET MECANIQUE was designed as a "two roll" composition, when being written down originally.