Although George Antheil composed Lithuanian Night at the tender age of 19, the eventual "Bad Boy of Music" was already demonstrating certain elements of the iconoclastic style that would make him (in)famous. This very brief work, spanning less than four minutes, contains two distinct sections. The opening Moderato creates an atmosphere of lyrical drunkenness, a mood which later appears, in a slightly more fermented state, in the slow sections of the composer's string quartets. Likewise, the brash, mechanistic Presto clearly prefigures Antheil's riotous Ballet mécanique. The eerie, polymetric string patterns that begin the second section also look forward, in their minimalistic application of harmony and rhythm, to works composed a half-century later. Antheil's ostinati, however, are never allowed to percolate very long, and Lithuanian Night indeed ends with a sudden rhythmic collapse.

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