Olga Rudge & Ezra Pound: "What Thou Lovest Well..."

52 A Marriage That Didn’t Happen
questioned him about his Russian and German visas. His appearance—
‘‘slightly Bolshy’’—was held against him. In an impeccable British accent
acquired at the convent school, Olga explained to the sergeant-major that
George was an American composer, not a jazz musician. After examining
his manuscripts and scores, the o≈cer permitted Antheil to enter the
country, and they hopped on the boat train as it was pulling out.
Ezra kept in close touch with his protégés: ‘‘Too late to instruct you
how to play, but as [it] was supposed to be written to suit you . . . the instructions
wd. have been, play it to suit yourself.’’
After the concert at Aeolian Hall, May 10, 1924, Olga was praised as
‘‘an enterprising young violinist . . . [who] showed, in a beautiful old
French lament by Gaucelm Faidit from ‘Five Troubadour Songs’ arranged
by Agnes Bedford and a Bach Gavotte, that she can produce a lovely warm
tone and has sympathetic style.’’ Another reviewer observed that ‘‘there
was humour and subtlety in the composition of the programme,’’ but
found little to praise in the ‘‘childlike pieces by the poet Ezra Pound,
who is apparently as easily pleased with the monotonous repetition of
a few rhythms . . . as an infant who arranges and rearranges his bits
of coloured glass.’’ Another noted that Pound ‘‘composes rather as he
writes . . . his material is used in the rough, and his hearers may make what
they can of it.’’ Antheil was not spared: ‘‘There were endless repetitions of
smashing chords, chords which seemed like musical skeletons . . . with no
beauty to clothe them.’’ Another viewed George’s music as ‘‘essentially
commonplace and frequently derivative, as in the unexpected intrusion
of Debussy’s delightful ‘Golliwog’s Cakewalk.’ . . . [He] contrived to
say less in the course of a four-movement work than any other person
who ever put pen to paper. . . . After the first movement of the first
sonata three people left the hall; after the Andante one retired; and
at the conclusion of the Presto, thirty-seven sought the air and did
not return.’’
Olivia Shakespear, who also was in the audience, described the concert
to Dorothy and Ezra in Rapallo as ‘‘very successful, [but] George isn’t
satisfied. . . . I think he hoped for a row! The audience was small, some
sneaked out in the middle, but those who remained were most enthusias-