on listening to babbitt



Nothing personal, but ever since I was a kid who listened to a ton of new music, the works of Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter and a few others summed up the worst in contemporary music for me. These guys were taken as the epitome of “new music,” the leading composers of the 60's and 70's if not later. And they ruined it for the rest of us for decades. This “creepy music,” as Philip Glass would term it, served as the paradigm for modern music: thorny, theoretical, very hard to play, lacking a beat, no obvious melodies, etc. Nasty, nasty stuff.

Now, I've studied Carter's scores in detail. In the late 70's he was considered the great American composer, the true heir to Aaron Copland, who was essentially MIA at that point and soon to pass away. Carter's scores are a marvel to look at, particularly works like his Double Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano with Two Chamber Orchestras, the Piano Concerto, and the Third String Quartet. Without question he had interesting ideas about rhythm, and it always amazed me that his music could be played at all, given that something like Cowell's beautiful Quartet Romantic waited so long for its premiere, and when I attended it the performers had to listen to click tracks since the rhythms were so hypercomplex. But Cowell's work is enticing, Carter's music never grabbed me at all. I'd listen to it over and over again, hoping to find something in it to keep me engaged, since he was clearly so celebrated and all that. But nothing. Maybe a few measures of his Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord. But that's it. Carter's certainly a nice guy, and it's great that he's still actively composing as he reaches his 100th birthday. But nothing works for me...sorry, Elliott. I even remember a student of his whom I knew, who shall remain nameless, who blew me off as soon as he heard me say that I wasn't a fan of Carter's music. That's all it took, and perhaps that's evidence to support my feeling that there was a cult of Carter at the time that broached no discord.

Which brings me to Milton Babbitt. Again, I'm sure he's a nice person, even if he is known to be conservative in his political views. But his works never sounded anything to me other than a bunch of notes rather than music. I've been giving it another shot recently, listening to a ton of his piano music that spans his career, along with some chamber works and his brief song Philomel that everyone under the sun seems to think is the greatest thing since tofu. Well, none of this music works for me. I can sort of get into his Three Compositions for Piano that represents the first total serial piece, preceding a far better work by Messiaen (Mode de Valeurs et d'intensities). But that's about it. Babbitt, unlike Carter, is a devoted serialist. That's fine, since I have nothing against 12-tone music or serialism in general, and indeed wrote a number of 12-tone works, some of which I still am very fond of (such as Ineffabiities). I love nearly everything Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Dallapiccola, and a few other early serialists wrote. I gave up writing 12-tone music around 1981 because I just reached a dead end with it; I had done everything I wanted to do with it, and my musical inclinations were heading much more in a postminimalist direction. And I certainly appreciated the academic rigor of serialism, being a geek and all that. But after awhile, when I want to geek out, I'll turn to something in the sciences. Music isn't something I like to partake of in an academic sense. It's much more important than making it an academic exercise.

So while the music of Ralph Shapey, which is certainly born of an academic wannabe setting, is generally compelling for the most part, that's as academic as I'm willing to have my musical listening experiences go. In other words, it's Shapey and nothing further. No Babbitt. No Carter. A small amount of Boulez can be ok (I like his piano sonatas, but the jury's still out of Le Marteau Sans Maitre, his most widely accepted piece). Even Luigi Nono can work for me. But not Babbitt. I'm giving up with my experiment and won't force myself to listen to his music over and over again in the hopes of finding something that takes me in. It's not about his writings, like the one unfortunately titled by a publisher “Who Cares if You Listen?,”or the academic papers I've read that maintain that combinatoriality and other aspects of 12-tone music are superior to all else. But it is about the music, which is all that matters.

If you like Babbitt's music, then good for you. I can respect that. Please respect my lack of interest in his music. I'm not criticizing something I'm not familiar with. I've tried to like his works. I've really tried.

Posted: Tue - January 22, 2008 at 08:55 AM          

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