The harmonic language of "Les Six"—which employs quirky chromaticism, polytonality, and other, sometimes unsettling, techniques—has led some to disparagingly refer to the composers' works as "wrong-note music." By the same standards, George Antheil's piano works of the early 1920s—infused both with American audacity and Parisian panache—positively wallow in such astringency. The Sonata for piano No. 2 (1921), subtitled "The Airplane," takes the lighthearted gestures of Milhaud and exaggerates them into grotesqueries, lining them up into a relentless series of percussive rhythmic cells à la Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The two-part Sonata begins rather oddly, announced by a deft little glissando and a subsequent not-quite-tonic chord. The piano then engages in the kind of mechanistic play that is one of the hallmarks of Antheil's early style. The melody is delightfully angular, alternating with strings of coloristic tone clusters and insistently pounding chordal passages. As the movement reaches its midpoint, it grows quieter and settles into a moment of lyrical melody with a plaintive accompaniment. This is only a momentary development, however, rudely and suddenly interrupted by a series brash block chords. A stubborn ostinato rises both in volume and dissonance level, eventually giving way to the return of the opening material. The movement ends with sudden quietude, a series of harmonically inconclusive chords echoing within a barren sonic space. While the first movement is held together by its recurring melodic material, the second is more loosely organized. A hodgepodge of short vignettes form an ethereal collage of colors and textures, and the movement finally ends with the echoing theme that closes the previous movement.

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