"Bad Boy of Music" in Paris                          7

to his "Mechanisms" as including "fighting in the aisles, yelling, clap¬
ping, hooting! Pandemonium!" Before the police arrived to restore
order, Antheil heard the arbiter of French music, Erik Satie, applaud
and shout, "Quelle precision! Quelle precision! Bravo! Bravo! "and saw
Darius Milhaud "clapping, definitely clapping."
 

Ezra Pound and Antheil, ca. 1924; photograph by
Boski Markus (Antheil).

Antheil's remarkable concert (which, incidentally, was filmed as
part of Georgette Leblanc's L'Inhumaine) made him a sensation,
literally overnight. Many of Sylvia Beach's customers and friends were
now curious to meet her lodgers. Four-thirty tea became a custom
upstairs at the Antheils'. The composer's awe at the world in which
he now lived is evident from his recollection that "I can truthfully