“But as we came from Antheil’s ‘Ballet Méchanique’ a woman of our party, herself a musician, made this remark: ‘The subway seems sweet after that.’ ‘Good,’ I replied and went on to consider what evidences there were in myself in explanation of her remark. And this is what I noted. I felt that noise, the unrelated noise of life such as this in the subway had not been battened out as would have been the case with Beethoven still warm in the mind but it had actually been mastered, subjugated. Antheil had taken this hated thing life and rigged himself into power over it by his music. The offense had not been held, cooled, varnished over but annihilated and life itself made thereby triumphant. This is an important difference. By hearing Antheil’s music, seemingly so much noise, when I actually came upon noise in reality, I found that I had gone up over it.”

(William Carlos Williams, “George Antheil and the Cantilène Critics: A Note on the First Performance of Antheil’s Music in New York City (April 10th, 1927)” from A Novelette and Other Prose, p. 355 in Imaginations.)