Babbitt (1916 - 2011)

[ahinton]

As the Proms celebrates the centenary this year (this coming Tuesday, in fact) with beggar all, and the usual schedules are also not putting themselves out to mark the event, tonight's H&N is probably the most we can expect from the Beeb:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b079ltd0

This is a "must-listen (several times)" for me - Babbitt is almost certainly the composer I would name if asked to suggest which I thought was the "most neglected in terms of performance, broadcasts and recordings". I met Babbitt at MusicaNova in Glasgow in 1981 - and loathed the orchestral works that I heard. The piano works that were then played struck me as glittering powerfully with invention and humour. The anomaly was explained on the last night when one of the second violinists in one of the Scottish professional orchestras cheerfully claimed in the pub after the concert that the players hadn't bothered to spend so much time and effort on works that they were only going to perform once. (Even quintuplets defeated them.)

I've followed his work ever since, and find that the performances that do take the necessary time reveal really rewarding works - I can't think of a "better" composer working in the second half of the Twentieth Century; and there are so many great ones from this period.


The programme also includes a discussion of the work of Babbitt's exact contemporary (they were born three weeks apart) Louis Thomas Hardin, the "Viking of Sixth Avenue", also known as Moondog. I hope that we're given the opportunity to hear lots of examples of his Music: the BBC site doesn't make this clear.

Babbitt has long ago developed a reputation - no, he hasn't, he's had it thrust upon him, just as "who cares if you listen?" has been - as a difficult and thorny composer. I can't claim to have heard very much of his music but such as I have gives no such impression at all. Why he's so infrequently performed I have no idea, but then such the same could be said of his compatriot from the previous generation, Sessions. Yes, Babbitt's yet another missed anniversarial opportunity on the part of those who seem to think such things to be of scant importance when it comes to Proms programme planning.

[Richard Barrett]

Babbitt is almost certainly the composer I would name if asked to suggest which I thought was the "most neglected in terms of performance, broadcasts and recordings".

... but that goes mainly for Europe, surely. His work is very highly regarded in the USA, and has been massively influential there. Personally I don't really get it. The music seems dry as dust to me.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... but that goes mainly for Europe, surely. His work is very highly regarded in the USA, and has been massively influential there. Personally I don't really get it. The music seems dry as dust to me.

Ooh - gold dust, certainly! (And who needs wet Music?)

As for Babbitt's reputation in the US; he was certainly very influential from the '60s to the '80s, particularly in his work advancing Music Theory to levels of precision of study and discourse which it had never previously enjoyed. But it seems that his Music doesn't appear to be any more valued in the US than in the UK or Europe, if the number of performances and recordings is a criterion of regard. There is only a handful of works available on disc - a fraction of the number of pieces written (IIRC, for example, only four of the String Quartets have ever been recorded.) Wuorinen aside, are there subsequent composers whose work shows an interest in pursuing the discoveries and possibilities that Babbitt opened for them? (In contrast to those who pursue those of Cage & Feldman on one "side", or Reich and the Minimalists on the "other"?)

A shame - as this programme is amply demonstrating, there is a rich seam of expressive material leaving plenty to mine.

[Beef Oven!]

Let's agree on moist.


Edit: I think moist is an underrated word.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Let's agree on moist.

Well, that's put a dampener on things

Edit: I think moist is an underrated word.

So do I. It always makes me think of cake on a Sunday afternoon at a great-aunt's house ...

[Beef Oven!]

So do I. It always makes me think of cake on a Sunday afternoon at a great-aunt's house ...

I hope that's a euphemism for something more racy!

[Richard Barrett]

(And who needs wet Music?)

You know perfectly well what I meant!

I would say that very few of the less commercially-oriented American composers, apart from the "minimalists", are as amply recorded as their European colleagues unless (like Cage, Feldman and Carter, for example) their music gained admirers and currency in Europe. So Babbitt is hardly an exception in that regard: how often do you come across recordings of music by James Tenney or David Behrman or Ben Johnston (etc. etc. all of who are much more interesting than Babbitt in my opinion)? Babbitt's influence runs very deep through his years of teaching at Princeton, and his particular development of serial composition technique is still taught and practised quite widely, not to mention the influence of his work in electronic music (essentially using synthetic sounds as substitutes for instrumental ones).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I hope that's a euphemism for something more racy!

This was in Lancashire in the '70s - there was nothing "more racy"!

[Beef Oven!]

This was in Lancashire in the '70s - there was nothing "more racy"!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You know perfectly well what I meant!

- of course I do: it's an opinion that, like ahinton, I've frequently encountered, to my bafflement: it just doesn't sound a bit like that to me.

But thanks for the comments about Babbitt's continuing influence in the States - I didn't know this (I'd thought that, with Steve Mackey as a more recent Music Prof at Princeton, such things had been sidelined). And point taken about Tenney, Behrman & Johnston - but, as you've said, Babbitt had a much bigger national and international "presence" than those and others? With such influence, it's frustrating that so little of the Music has reached recording studios.

Still - good for Brighton! Two concerts to commemorate the centenary - respect!

[Richard Barrett]

point taken about Tenney, Behrman & Johnston - but, as you've said, Babbitt had a much bigger national and international "presence" than those and others?

I wouldn't know how to quantify that, but I know plenty of people who would speak of Tenney or Johnston in particular in awed tones. Anyway, I thought I would find myself some Babbitt to see if I wasn't relying too much on imperfect memories, and I listened this evening to these:

Ensembles for Synthesizer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5n1pZn4izI
Composition for Four Instruments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fkx5IYfiPs
String Quartet no.4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkB_qJW0JR8

... and I'm no closer to understanding what people see in this music. Maybe these were the wrong examples, but I've heard quite a lot of his music over the years as well as being intrigued by Paul Griffiths' description of some of his techniques in the first edition of his Music since 1945 (I don't think this bit made it into subsequent editions).

[Quarky]

It was a very interesting programme, contrasting these two composers, with different philosophies and very different musical results.
It may boil down to personal tastes - but that's giving the game away.

Intrigued to hear about Moondog's affinity with very early European music, I'm not sure how that was expressed in his music.

Other than that, I wish I had something sensible to say ......

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wouldn't know how to quantify that, but I know plenty of people who would speak of Tenney or Johnston in particular in awed tones. Anyway, I thought I would find myself some Babbitt to see if I wasn't relying too much on imperfect memories, and I listened this evening to these:

Ensembles for Synthesizer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5n1pZn4izI
Composition for Four Instruments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fkx5IYfiPs
String Quartet no.4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkB_qJW0JR8

... and I'm no closer to understanding what people see in this music. Maybe these were the wrong examples, but I've heard quite a lot of his music over the years as well as being intrigued by Paul Griffiths' description of some of his techniques in the first edition of his Music since 1945 (I don't think this bit made it into subsequent editions).

Griffiths also spoke eloquently about Babbitt's Second String Quartet in his A Concise History of Modern Music, a - then - very cheap paperback that I got when I was about eighteen: for about three years the quotation was the only access I had to any of his Music - Griffiths' description of the techniques, and imagining the quotation had a great and positive effect on my awareness of how Music (and not just Babbitt's) might work.

I don't know what to say - my perplexity at people's failure to see the point of Babbitt's Music is probably the match of your own distance from understanding what other people see in it. The Ensembles always delights me (I was chuckling throughout) and again, the only way I can describe it is to use words like "sparkling" and descriptions of the "sheer richness and generosity of the sound colours"; the "vocoder" effect around the 8min mark, for example. A bit "stoppy-starty", perhaps? A bit "hyperactive"? I didn't think so: any more than I think that Feldman needs to be a bit more "eventful" - the timing of the Ensembles - and the brief but frequent contrasting fragments of lyricism - "permitted" the extended "juggling" of agile Music. The recorded sound on the youTube video was very harsh at times - if that is an aspect of the composition intended by the composer (rather than an unsympathetic uploading of the source recording) I can see that I'd have difficulties listening repeatedly to it - but I would really look out for a recording that reproduced the "warmer" sound quality I'm imagining would be what was intended.

I've known the Composition for 4 for quite a long time. A lyrical complement (in this context) to the Ensembles - a "natural" successor to the harmonic/textual soundworlds brought into being by Webern and Schoenberg, but reimagined in terms entirely of Babbitt's own imagining. I might criticize the predictability of the structure - as soon as we get to the 'cello solo, it becomes clear that the piece is a sequence of ensembles each prefaced by a solo cantilena: I sort-of hoped he'd puill the rug from under my expectations and begin a solo on the violin/flute and then transform it into a duet with the flute/violin. There was something similar: the violin solo was eventually joined by the 'cello - but then you knew that there's be a corresponding duet between the two woodwinds (which there was). That is a potential danger of multi-layered Serialism - the more features are subject to serial procedures, the more general details can be foreseen. (I think Babbitt became aware of this danger - his later works avoid it more successfully, imo.) But "general details" aside - the specific, moment-to-moment details weren't predictable; and I loved listening to them. (A niggling point of "interpretations" - I'd prefer if the staccatos in the opening Clarinet solo were a little more staccato to contrast more playfully with the longer notes surrounding them. The performer did a sort-of "do-do-do": I imagine more of a "pom-pom-pom" - but what do I know?!)

I thought I'd heard the Fourth S4tet before, but I didn't recognize it when I was listening, so I have only my immediate impressions to base any comments on. And I just really enjoyed listening to it ("lyricism", "drama", "variety" - empty words to anyone who doesn't get it) and want to hear it again.

These three pieces and the works in last night's H&N I found entirely enthralling and a real joy. So, I suppose, it goes.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It was a very interesting programme, contrasting these two composers, with different philosophies and very different musical results.
It may boil down to personal tastes - but that's giving the game away.

I agree - I often find that works that I'd imagined wouldn't "work" in the same programme turn out to be perfectly suited for each other. I first experienced this in the RFH concert that paired Ferneyhough's Transit with Reich's Music for 18 Musicians: the sense of being "spent" at the end of the Ferneyhough made for the perfect frame of mind (for me) to accept and enjoy the Reich. Feldman and Carter make similarly unpredictably successful pairings. The Moondog pieces gave me great pleasure.

Intrigued to hear about Moondog's affinity with very early European music, I'm not sure how that was expressed in his music.

Other than that, I wish I had something sensible to say ......

Made perfect sense to me - not that that should put you off!

[ahinton]

Feldman and Carter make similarly unpredictably successful pairings

Somehow I don't think that the latter would have been especially happy at such a prospect! Someone who knew Carter well and Feldman less so told me recently that they were both at some do or other in which Felman was holding forth about certain of Carter's processes, with ill-concealed contempt, stating that they always resulted in "20 minute pieces" as though they could do nothing else - and that Carter was as hurt as he was infuriated about this and resolved never to speak to Feldman again which, as far as I know, he didn't. OK, gossip only, but...