I discovered a debate concerning Babbitt on a facebook forum page dedicated to composition. You can see the discussion here at:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2232851732&topic=5133&start=30&hash=831d6293aaa93c755262652421e324d5
I’m glad somebody posted a link to my podcast, though I thought I’d add my own response here as I don’t think I want to join Facebook yet.
I have to say, people had some insightful and interesting things to say, both Babbitt advocates and detractors, but generally I can’t relate to this kind of discussion - whether X is a ‘great composer’ or not. I will say that when people invoke ‘theory,’ with regard to Babbitt’s music, they are referring to a collection of technological innovations through which Babbitt was able to synthesize musical environments wherein patterns and associations emerge at rates and dimensionalities inaccessible through other means. Just as ultra-powerful telescopes and electron microscopes allow us to tune in to proportions of space and action wildly different than those environments accessible through the medium of the eye, Babbitt’s rhythmic and pitch operations thrust us into a musical evironment with a scope and dimensionality wildly different than any arising through linear/sequential mediums, such as ‘chord progressions’ or ‘motivic development.’ The technology is the music, I don’t see how one could think of Babbitt as a great theorist, acknowledging the sophistication and intricacy of his technological achievements, without appreciating the effects this technology works in application.
I suppose Babbitt himself may have encouraged this kind of discussion through his own published attitudes towards the supposed inaccessibility of his music. There’s that famous article, which far too many people refer to without having actually read. As a means of defense, he proposes that we should not be surprised when lay people who are unfamiliar with, or incapable of comprehending, the most recent and complex developments in musical composition are subsequently incapable of understanding the music. Naturally, this implies that some familiarity with the technical precepts of his work is critical to proper aesthetic apprehension.
I feel this is less true of Babbitt’s music than any other music I can think of and I don’t care if MB himself would disagree. Understanding the technological processes and their enactment within one of his works is about as integral to the experience of that work as understanding the chemical composition of tungsten is integral to experiencing the electric light. My initial experiences performing his music were the most shattering and awe-inspiring occasions in my musical life to date, and these took place without having the slightest idea what his methods were. After subsequently studying the theoretical/scholarly literature pertaining to these works, including MB’s own writings, perhaps I have become more fluent in discussing the works (in one particular way!), but I don’t believe this endeavor affected or informed my appreciation or performance of these works at all. In fact, while I am deeply impressed and respectful of the achievements of scholars in describing Babbitt’s technological initiatives, and thereby facilitating rational understanding of complex compositional methods in easy and general terms, I have been wholly unable to relate to the ‘listening models’ and aesthetic commentary emerging from the theorizing — they simply don’t resemble my experience of the music, nor touch on the reasons I’m devoted to it.
We have to start again with this music, discarding the notion that one needs a ‘listening guide.’
This is a good place to recall Marshall Mcluhan’s admonitions — “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future. … We approach the new with the psychological conditioning and sensory responses of the old.” I believe the biggest obstacle to actually hearing the effects of Babbitt’s music is the inflexible reliance on listening and conceptual habits that are simply not relevant or applicable to these particular environments. Theorizing a listening ‘path through the music’ or combing through complex procedures for the purpose of getting close to the spontaneous workings of ‘the composer’s intent’ (ie ‘choices and contingencies’) reflects a visual/spatial bias that is deeply rooted in 19th century realities; but here I’m just paraphrasing Mcluhan, “Understanding Media,” for example.
On the other hand, it seems to me utterly impossible to hear this music other than exactly as it is meant to be heard. Anyone with a frontal cortex can tell that: the music moves very quickly through a great variety of registral densities, that it is far less productive to try to make linear connections between adjacent material than it is to make peripatetic connections between recurring configurations (whether pitch, rhythm, dynamic, or some combination of these), that there is a great deal of recurrence but whether one is able to hear 10,15, 25%, etc… the lion’s share of these relations will go unnoticed. And if anyone can testify on this last point it’s me, as I have found it necessary to perform large portions of all of the works from memory so as to keep my eyes as much as possible on the keyboard. Even when able to reconstruct large portions of the music in memory, the complexity of interplay and relation is still far beyond what the rational mind can grasp in toto.
The best advice for listening that I have heard comes actually from that Hermetic psychonautical crackpot genius Timothy Leary. ‘Turn off your mind, relax, surf the chaos’ — sensory overload is beautiful, surrender to the ineffable. “Everything we do is neuro-ecology.”
I can’t believe I did this.. I think the last time I sang into a microphone was 8th grade, when I foolishly agreed to sing “Love Bites” (Def Leppard!) at our school’s sort of talent show. You’d think the teasing I had to endure over that one would’ve put me off it forever.
