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Born in Philadelphia in
1916 and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, Milton Byron
Babbitt soon made his way to New York City, where he
was deeply excited by the musical and intellectual
culture of the 1930s. That culture was marked by lively
political, philosophical, and aesthetic debate, and by
the increasing presence of European refugees, some of
whom brought with them the Viennese ideas that shaped
Babbitt's work so decisively. Babbitt's early influences
- the music of Arnold Schoenberg, the musical theories of
Heinrich Schenker, the science-oriented philosophy of the
Vienna Circle, the literary ideas of British and American
"New Criticism" - came together into a
remarkable whole, setting an agenda that he has continued
to pursue with determination and imagination.
Schoenberg's twelve-tone music showed Babbitt some
extraordinary new possibilities of musical organization.
Schenker's theories about eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century German music showed the possibility of
insightful technical generalizations about the historical
music that mattered most to Babbitt. Far more than
Schoenberg's theoretical writings, Schenker's work
revealed the shared compositional principles of an
important musical repertoire. The philosophy of logical
empiricism, with its emphasis on testable hypotheses and
explicit formulation of scientific theories, suggested
the exciting program of recasting music-theoretical ideas
into a new no-nonsense language, unpretentious, lucid,
and useful. "New Criticism," with its
meticulous attention to individual literary texts, its
emphasis on detail and internal integration, supported a
similar approach to musical compositions, an analytical
approach that would address their internal workings and
individuality, turning away from the distractions of
biographical and historical information.
Putting these ideas together, Babbitt made himself into
an impressive composer and theorist of music. Hired to
teach at a top liberal arts school (Princeton), as well
as a top conservatory (Juilliard), he created an
imposing, influential image: the academic
composer/theorist, a new musical role that Babbitt
exemplified, would be someone whose thoughts about music
met the highest standards of academic discourse and whose
compositional projects were integrated with theoretical
and analytical work. In his writing and teaching, Babbitt
showed several generations of music theorists how to
extract a clear theory of tonality from Schenker's
writings, setting aside as irrelevant Schenker’s
nationalism, numerology, poetic metaphors, and harsh
evaluations of post-tonal music. Alongside Schenker's
cleaned-up theory Babbitt placed his own deep and
original theory of twelve-tone music; this used
mathematical models that allowed Babbitt to discover and
state many properties of twelve-tone pitch relations.
Schenkerian tonality and Babbitt’s twelve-tone
system were supposed to stand together as rich, complex
musical languages suitable for "serious music."
And, while Babbitt made these theoretical contributions,
he also insisted on attention to the individual qualities
of each composition, a concern that was especially
evident in his teaching.
Babbitt's theoretical work became the most important
influence on the new academic discipline of music theory,
increasingly visible in North America from the 1950s to
the 1970s. And he became known as the outstanding
American composer in the post-war serial
"movement" that also included well-publicized
Europeans such as Boulez and Stockhausen. Remarkable
musicians played Babbitt's compositions and sometimes
recorded them; theorists and composers studied them,
usually analyzing them in the terms provided by Babbitt's
own theoretical work.
Today, almost fifty years after Babbitt's first
theoretical publications, his ideas remain influential
for some thinkers, but their peak of acceptance has
passed. Indeed, many of his basic attitudes and
intellectual orientations have become about as
unfashionable as possible. Logical empiricism has been
attacked as a dehumanizing, acontextual discipline;
similarly, many music scholars reject the
music-theoretical work that developed under Babbitt's
influence, arguing that professional theory and analysis
have diverted scholarly attention from evocative
descriptions of musical experience and from urgent
personal, social, and political issues. (Incidentally, I
agree with many aspects of these criticisms.) No doubt
the apparent integration of Babbitt's theoretical and
compositional work helped him to become as famous as he
is. But now, admiration for his music can motivate an
opposite impulse, a desire to distinguish the various
strands of his achievements and evaluate them separately.
When Babbitt's ideas have come to seem so problematic, it
may be easier than before to approach his music in terms
different from his own.
In fact, Babbitt's theories and compositions do "go
together" in obvious ways: his general discoveries
about twelve-tone structure obviously shaped his
compositional choices. But many of his admirers have been
too impressed by this match, and have written
enthusiastically about Babbitt's pieces as though the
compositions are examples in support of his theories.
Such writing sometimes seems to imply that Babbitt's
music is a kind of advanced ear-training test - which
most of us are bound to fail!
Perhaps, all along, theorists and critics should have
paid more attention to Babbitt's emphasis on the
individuality of compositions, and his early claim that
"there is no authority of ultimate validity beyond
the formed, informed, and intelligently experienced
musical perception." What you need to do, in the
presence of Babbitt's music, is just listen, attentively;
pay close attention to the precise sounds that you hear;
let them sink in, work on you; and let the pieces emerge
as the startling individuals that they are.
This recording of recent piano music performed by Martin
Goldray provides a wonderful opportunity to hear some of
Babbitt's most attractive compositions. Like so much of
his music, these pieces are incredibly pretty,
persistently so, to the point of sustained
voluptuousness. They are extreme, even reckless, in their
delicacy and transparency. (In these ways they are
completely at odds with some people's stereotype of
Babbitt as a macho modernist.) Once you shed your
preconceptions about how music is likely to go, you can
hear every note, and as the pieces become familiar they
seem more and more melodious, with intense, idiosyncratic
lines sustained, somehow, through the blurts and
discontinuities.
Piano music has been central to Babbitt's output
throughout his career, and his music makes a marvelous
new instrument out of the piano we have inherited from
the late nineteenth century. His piano music creates a
new kind of virtuosity, dazzling in live performance and
heady enough in recorded sound. He relies especially on
the piano's clarity of articulation and the easy
accessibility of its huge registral span. And he makes
the most imaginative, dramatic, and varied use of the
timbral contrasts of different registers; often the
registers seem to interact like partners in a lively
conversation.
Like other valuable parts of the piano repertory,
Babbitt's pieces respond to the contrasting styles of
different performers, providing a sensitive medium for
communication of the performer's sensibility. Alan
Feinberg's steely sheen, almost aggressive, is utterly
different from Robert Taub's darker timbres and impetuous
rhythms. Martin Goldray's performances add a distinctive
new voice - my personal favorite for this music. In
Goldray's hands these pieces often seem delicate, almost
fragile; more than other performers, he brings out the
fascination of the quieter parts of the pieces. He has a
precision of dynamic and timbral control akin to
Schnabel's, creating stunningly diverse surfaces and
making full use of the piano's timbral richness and
differentiation. He shapes every motion, every silence,
into meaningful gesture. Listening to Goldray, you hear
the intensity of his concentration and the intensity of
his own listening. It has never been easier to be drawn
into Babbitt's music, to hang on every note, every odd,
beautiful event, from beginning to end.
- Fred Everett Maus
As a pianist, conductor
and educator, MARTIN GOLDRAY has excelled in all
styles of contemporary American music. He has appeared as
soloist and chamber musician with groups such as the
Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, The New Music Consort,
Speculum Musicae, Parnassus, the Consortium, the Group
for Contemporary Music and the League/ISCM, and has
premiered works written for him by Augusta Read Thomas,
Milton Babbitt and many others. He has been a member of
the Philip Glass Ensemble since 1983 and has performed
hundreds of concerts world-wide with that seven-member
group. He has also conducted the premieres of several of
Glass's operas.
His recordings include Elliott Carter's Duo (with
violinist Rolf Schulte), Andrew Imbrie's Roethke Songs
(with Susan Narucki), two CDs of piano music of J.K.
Randall, and numerous Philip Glass works, including
Hydrogen Jukebox, Einstein on the Beach and Music in 12
Parts. He has been a visiting artist in the Society for
the Humanities at Cornell University, and since 1991 has
been on the faculty of the Composers Conference at
Wellesley College.
Goldray received a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.M.
from the University of Illinois, and a Doctorate in Piano
from Yale University; he subsequently studied in Paris on
a Fulbright scholarship. His teachers have included
Malcolm Bilson, Carlos Buhler and Yvonne Loriod, and his
earliest musical studies were at the Dalcroze School of
Music in New York City.
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