The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt

Milton Babbitt

Milton Babbitt

The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt

Edited by: Stephen Peles , Stephen Dembski , Andrew Mead and Joseph N. Straus

Princeton University Press | 2003

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400841226

Overview
Contents

About this book

Like his compositions, Milton Babbitt's writings about music have exerted an extraordinary influence on postwar music and thinking about music. In essays and public addresses spanning fifty years, Babbitt has grappled profoundly with central questions in the composition and apprehension of music. These writings range from personal memoirs and critical reviews to closely reasoned metatheoretical speculations and technical exegesis. In the history of music theory, there has been only a small handful of figures who have produced work of comparable stature. Taken as a whole, Babbitt's writings are not only an invaluable testimony to his thinking--a priceless primary source for the intellectual and cultural history of the second half of the twentieth century--but also a remarkable achievement in their own right.

Prior to this collection, Babbitt's writings were scattered through a wide variety of journals, books, and magazines--many hard to find and some unavailable--and often contained typographical errors and editorial corruptions of various kinds. This volume of almost fifty pieces gathers, corrects, and annotates virtually everything of significance that Babbitt has written. The result is complete, authoritative, and fully accessible--the definitive source of Babbitt's influential ideas.

Author information

Milton Babbitt is William Shubael Conant Professor of Music Emeritus at Princeton University. Stephen Peles is Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Alabama School of Music. Stephen Dembski is Professor of Music Composition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Andrew Mead is Professor of Music at the University of Michigan. Joseph N. Straus is Professor of Music Theory at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Reviews

Milton Babbitt's musical world is not a simple one. . . . That's also true of Babbitt's written output. . . . But it's witty too, as you'd expect from the composer of such titles as Joy Of Sextets.---Andy Hamilton, The Wire

A car won't run unless it's engineered correctly, and the same applies to a piece of music. And Babbit always insists that the whole point of structure in music is that it can be heard: you may have to listen at full stretch, but it will be worth it. Rather like this book--difficult stuff, but intellectually rigorous and undeniably honest.---Martin Cotton, BBC Music Magazine

"The time is eminently ripe—indeed past due—for a collection of the writings of Milton Babbitt."—Elaine Barkin, University of California, Los Angeles

"Babbitt is one of the principal makers of postwar musical thought and expression, whose importance for musical composition, theory, and pedagogy in the United States is beyond that of any other individual. This anthology of his writings will stand as a major monument of late twentieth-century musical thought and history."—Benjamin Boretz, Bard College

Milton Babbitt, at eighty-nine, has been handsomely, if belatedly, served by this collection of forty-three essays testifying to his seminal presence in musical history. . . . Overall the enterprise is a fine assemblage of scattered writings which will surprise even aficionados by its range.---Jonathan Harvey, Times Literary Supplement

"Milton Babbitt's influence on American musical composition has been both enormously significant and highly controversial—two excellent reasons for assembling his writings, previously scattered and difficult to locate, into a single volume. Anyone studying or writing about twentieth-century music—in its technical, philosophical, or sociological aspects—will have to deal with parts or all of this invaluable collection."—David Hamilton, The Julliard School

It's the book's role as an encapsulation of Babbitt's formalistic way of thinking about music which matters, and this is rendered suitably ambiguous by an intriguing disparity in the types of essay included. These veer between the extremes of the coolly technical and the warmly biographical (and autobiographical). We might not get Babbitt's views on what compositions represent in terms of emotion or feeling, but there is plenty of vivid characterization when it comes to people and places.---Arnold Whittall, Musical Times

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
CONTENTS Free access PDF PDF	v
Acknowledgments Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	vii
Preface Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	ix
The String Quartets of Bartók 1949 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
Review of Schoenberg et son école and Qu’est ce que la musique de douze sons? by René Leibowitz. 1950 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	10
Review of Polyphonie—Revue musicale trimestrielle; Quatrième cahier: Le Système dodécaphonique 1950 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	16
Review of Felix Salzer, Structural Hearing: Tonal Coherence in Music 1952 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	22
Tintinnabulation of the Crochets 1953 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	31
Musical America’s Several Generations 1954 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	34
Some Aspects of Twelve-Tone Composition 1955 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	38
The Composer as Specialist 1958 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	48
Twelve-Tone Invariants as Compositional Determinants 1960 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	55
The Revolution in Sound: Electronic Music 1960 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	70
Past and Present Concepts of the Nature and Limits of Music 1961 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	78
Set Structure as a Compositional Determinant 1961 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	86
Twelve-Tone Rhythmic Structure and the Electronic Medium 1962 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	109
Reply to George Perle 1963 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	141
Remarks on the Recent Stravinsky 1964 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	147
The Synthesis, Perception, and Specification of Musical Time 1964 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	172
An Introduction to the R.C.A. Synthesizer 1964 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	178
The Structure and Function of Musical Theory 1965 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	191
The Use of Computers in Musicological Research 1965 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	202
Edgard Varèse: A Few Observations of His Music 1966 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	213
Three Essays on Schoenberg 1968 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	222
On Relata I 1970 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	237
Contribution to “The Composer in Academia: Reflections on a Theme of Stravinsky” 1970 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	259
In Memoriam: Mátyás Seiber 1970 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	263
Contribution to “Stravinsky (1882–1971): A Composer’s Memorial” 1971 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	264
Contemporary Music Composition and Music Theory as Contemporary Intellectual History [1972] Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	270
In Memoriam: Stefan Wolpe 1972 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	308
Since Schoenberg 1974 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	310
Celebrative Speech 1976 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	335
Responses: A First Approximation 1976 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	341
Introduction to Marion Bauer’s Twentieth Century Music 1978 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	367
Foreword to Beyond Orpheus 1979 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	371
Ben Weber (1916–1979) 1979 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	377
Robert Miller (1930–1981) 1981 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	380
The More than the Sounds of Music 1984 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	383
I Remember Roger (Contribution to “In Memoriam: Roger Sessions”) 1985 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	388
“All the Things They Are”: Comments on Kern 1985 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	395
Hans Keller: A Memoir 1986 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	399
Stravinsky’s Verticals and Schoenberg’s Diagonals: A Twist of Fate 1987 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	404
On Having Been and Still Being an American Composer 1989 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	428
A Life of Learning 1991 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	437
Brave New Worlds 1994 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	459
“My Vienna Triangle at Washington Square,” Revisited and Dilated 1999 Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	466
INDEX Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	489

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The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt

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