To Think of Milton BabbittAuthor(s): Elliott CarterSource: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 14, No. 2, Sounds and Words. A Critical Celebrationof Milton Babbitt at 60 (Spring - Summer, 1976), pp. 29-31Published by: Perspectives of New MusicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/832622Accessed: 19/02/2009 18:01

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TO THINK OF MILTON BABBITT

ELLIOTT CARTER

There is no point in discussing here the Rameau-like contribution of Milton Babbitt to the clarification and ordering of the twelve-tone method, nor, indeed, his absorbing extensions of it. They will certainly be dealt with in these pages. His theoretical work, of course, has had inestimable influence and importance on most American composers working in this domain and even to those, like myself, who are not cen- trally involved with it. Yet to be so brilliant and articulate an ex- pounder and developer of music theory in print and in lectures has threatened to draw attention away from his most important work, his compositions, and unfortunately has left their artistic consideration to the trivial, content in their ability to go no further than to identify them as 'dodecaphonic', thereby diluting the music's true interest be- fore those not well versed in this field.

That Milton's music can be so classified is, in a way, obvious. That it is in a very real and special sense a great departure not only from the method as Schoenberg used it, but from all subsequent develop- ments by Berg, Webern, Spinner, Gerhart, Skalkottas, Apostel, Steuer- mann, Kahn and even Americans like Weiss and Perle or the post- second-war European serialists, does not seem to be generally appre- ciated. His music shares, of course, with these latter composers, the trend toward the 'emancipation of discourse' but Milton's imaginings led him to this before the second war, preceding by several years that of the Europeans. His attitude toward this has been more responsive than most to the claims of rational order based on a realistic consideration of the process of listening with its memory accumulations rather than on abstract number patterns, which he must have realized very early on was a rather primitive and random way of producing aurally chaotic, if sometimes surprising and novel, effects.

PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC

Very striking is the strong sense of integration in his work, its over-

powering concentration on the particular premises of any given work. I can remember being so struck by this quality, among others, in his

Composition for Four Instruments (first heard in 1951, I think) that I immediately persuaded New Music Edition to publish it. In all of his

work, the originality of conception and the fastidiousness with which he avoids familiar musical devices have been most intriguing and at- tractive. Such novel ways of musical thinking can be, of course, per- plexing at first, especially when performers lack an imaginative grasp of what they are playing, but it is a perplexity that disappears at later, better performances, although like many good modern works these do not lose their mysterious originality.

To one who enjoys art-works that take an imaginative effort to grasp in a serious way and who has often been rewarded for this effort by learning something unexpected, works like those of Milton are an ab-

sorbing listening adventure, particularly as they always reveal a quality of artistic imagination that encourages one to further familiarity.

Works of this sort have, of course, been frequent in twentieth-cen-

tury art, literature, and music. In the case of music, some, though by no means all, have proved to be accessible after repeated hearings and with performers that understood the music. Certainly the first Ameri- can performances of the Viennese school like that of Schoenberg's Wind Quintet played by angry, loud, and somewhat uncontrolled per- formers at Town Hall in 1925 or of the Webern Symphonie a few

years later left a very puzzling yet intriguing impression that has com-

pletely changed. What once seemed arbitrary, difficult, complex, now, due to familiarity on the part of performers and listeners no longer presents problems, indeed, if anything the Schoenberg sounds, today, a little too Regerish. Fully aware of the need to play good new works and repeat them over the years, Milton, as many of his colleagues know, generously devoted a great deal of effort during the 50's and 60's in arranging concerts of modern music for the League of Com-

posers and the ISCM in New York. During those years these concerts were the main hope of performance of many young composers. It was for the same series of concerts that Mitropoulos conducted L'Histoire du soldat and the Schoenberg Serenade, Jacques Monod gave the re- markable all-Webern concert in 1952 at the YMHA, and Steuermann

played the complete piano works of Schoenberg. The special demands of modern scores can only be solved by re-

peated efforts to play and listen to them, for their minute performing

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TO THINK OF MILTON BABBITT

indications have to be understood in the context of the music itself and are often to be taken more as indications of the underlying qualities of the score than as literal demands. The problem of Boulez's Marteau sans maitre with all its violent, sudden changes of dynamics, which to many performers seem to verge on the impossible, and are seldom, if ever, carried out consistently, is to learn how literally faithful to the markings the performer has to be to give a true and effective perfor- mance of the work. Dynamic markings in Schoenberg's Opus 23, for instance, seem, especially in the first piece, excessively extravagant and probably were not to be performed literally, but rather to suggest the 'expressionistic' character of the music.

The performance of Milton's scores, like those of many of his col- leagues, poses many such questions. This is not confined only to scores written for live performers but also to music composed for those most erratic of performers, the tape deck and the loudspeaker. Matters of dynamic inflection, balance, and rapidity of change of these, especially when they are treated as independent items of discourse as much of Milton's work does, pose serious acoustical problems in halls as well as many live-performance problems with instruments and the reactions of players. This has led some to raise the old, familiar cry that such scores are so written that a faithful performance is impossible. It is true that Milton like so many other composers has had his share of uncer- tain, even incorrect performances. But, as is now so obvious, the gen- eration of performers coming after the work was written find a con- vincing way of playing music once dismissed as impossible. As this happens, and it is now, Milton's special, highly imaginative and orig- inal work will become more widely appreciated.

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