Galerie Flechtheim [Mitarb.]: Der Querschnitt (5.1925)

Fernand Leger


MY BALLET MECANIQUE: WHAT IT MEANS
By
GEORGE A NT HEIL
My Ballet Mecanique is the new fourth di.mensi.on of music.
My Ballet Mecanique is the first piece of music that has been composed out
of and for machines, on earth.
My Ballet Mecanique is the first piece of music that has found the best
forms and materials lying inert in a medium that as a medium is mathemati-
cally certain of becoming the greatest moving factor of the music of future
generations.
My Ballet Mecanique is the first attaining of a form that is not tonal.
My Ballet Mecanique is the first music on earth that has its very germ of
life in the new fourth-dimensional phenomena wherein time functioning in music
dijfers from ordinäry time and the series of deductive and also purely physical
phenomena that follow it.
My Ballet Mecanique is the first time-form on earth.
My Ballet Mecanique is neither tonal, nor atonal. In fact it is of no kind of
tonality at all. It has nothing to do with tonality. It is made of time and
sound .... the two materials, fundamental materials, that music is made of.
In music there is nothing eise, except time and sound, and the physical and
psychic concept of these vibrating the human organism.
Anything eise is literary, and does not belong to pure music.
Foi’ instance my Ballet Mecanique has absolutely no “forte” or “piano”
moments. It is merely played loud enough to be heard.
My Ballet Mecanique has nothing to do with fff or ppp. That is literary,
mystical, religious, hands pressed to the heart. Music, as I repeat a thousand

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