When American Composer Milton Babbitt wrote his ‘The Composer as Specialist’ in 1958, he had no idea that the editor of the journal in which the article was to be published would disregard his intended title and replace it with one far more incendiary: ‘Who Cares if You Listen?’[1] Regardless of the title that is pinned on Babbitt’s work, the ideas set forth in the article are cause enough for a musical and academic riot: Babbitt, using a teleological philosophy of history, makes the argument that music has become so ‘serious’ and ‘advanced,’[2] understandable only by an elite group of scholars (much like a ‘pure science’[3]), that ‘isolation is advantageous to both the composer and music.’[4] What exactly is this ‘serious’ music that Babbitt says should only be played for the elite (if at all), without any regard to the public? More importantly, why does Babbitt push for this isolation?
I must admit, I don’t find Babbitt’s arguments entirely convincing concerning the last question—although there are several observations Babbitt makes that I have run into during my experience of music, I do not agree with his push for isolation. Before I break down Babbitt’s points one by one, I feel that I should make my ‘musical credentials’ known: while not a composer, I have performed music for upwards of thirteen years, studied both ‘traditional’ and set theory, having also performed music a variety of new music. While I do not have the Doctorate in Music Theory that Babbitt seems to think is necessary for critique of this ‘new’ music, I do feel that these qualifications put me far outside Babbitt’s scorn for the ‘layperson’ that critiques negatively simply because they ‘didn’t like it.’[5]
Babbitt opens his argument by painting a picture of the then-current atmosphere that received new music—compositions shunned by audiences and performers alike, resulting in ‘poorly attended concerts’ attended only by ‘fellow’ professionals.[6] Babbitt then makes his first statement that isolation, both ‘societal and musical,’ is ‘not only inevitable’ (the first hinting of a teleological philosophy of history) but ‘advantageous’ to the composer and his music.[7] It is here that Babbitt makes his first misstep—it seems a little childish to justify something as being ‘advantageous’ simply because it is ‘inevitable.’ This particular statement also calls to mind the image of a petulant child who, upon being denied something, responds with an ‘I didn’t want it anyway!’
Following this outburst, Babbitt returns to his ‘logical’ argument, beginning to draw stronger ties between ‘advanced’ music and theoretical physics (with yet another nod to a teleological philosophy of history): the divergence between ‘advanced’ music followers and ‘traditional’ music followers stems from a ‘half-century of revolution in musical thought,’ which compares to a ‘mid-nineteenth century revolution’ in theoretical physics.[8] This is a connection that Babbitt relies very heavily upon for the duration of his argument—the new music, explains Babbitt, has four general characteristics, each of which requires far more of the listener than those of the ‘antiquated’ music: it exists in ‘five-dimensional space’[9] (pitch class, register, dynamic, duration, and timbre), has structural characteristics that are ‘unique to the work,’[10] employs a new, ‘efficient’[11] tonal vocabulary, and references other (perhaps older) types of musics.[12] Babbitt, by using such technical vocabulary, is trying to turn music into a science, something which, in my mind, it is decidedly not. His argument, at this point, can easily be simplified into the following idea: the nature of things is to progress—science has progressed, and thus music must do the same.
Babbitt continues to equate music to physics through his commentary regarding the public’s opinion of the ‘new’ music, comparing a concert of new music to a lecture in theoretical physics—the layperson present in either situation, if they dislike the work presented, dislikes it for insufficient reasons: in the case of the lecture, ‘the hall [was] chilly’ or ‘the lecturer’s voice was unpleasant’; of the concert, the music was ‘inexpressive,’ ‘undramatic,’ or ‘lacking in poetry.’[13] Babbitt considers these objections to be exactly the same in nature, but I do not: the comments from the ‘layperson’ sitting in the lecture have nothing to do with physics, theoretical or otherwise; those from the ‘layperson’ in the concert deal with an ‘antiquated’ expectation of an art that, until very recently, had been at the beck and call of the public. Because Babbitt believes the public completely incapable of understanding, he calls for isolation.
I do not disagree that the music is undoubtedly ‘new,’ or that it makes more demands upon the ear, nor do I disagree that some of the public declines to view certain works ‘as music’ simply because it does not conform to their conception of what it should be—these are all things that I have noticed during my studies of the ‘new’ music. I believe it is a fair statement to say that, in general, one appreciates something like music far more after having gained a more intricate knowledge if it—I know this rings true with me, even with certain pieces of what Babbitt would deem to be ‘traditional’ music. What I do disagree with, what pains me to hear Babbitt say, is that this ‘new’ music should be isolated—by all means, no! We should be (as Babbitt scornfully called them) the ‘well-meaning souls who exhort the public “just to listen to more contemporary music,”’ not promoting ‘passive acceptance’ through familiarity as Babbitt would suggest, but an understanding (maybe promoted through pre-concert lectures or informative program notes).[14] According to Babbitt (and his teleological philosophy of history), if this ‘new’ music is not removed from the public sphere, it ‘will cease to evolve, and, in that important sense, will cease to live.’[15]
Perhaps I have the benefit of living almost sixty years after the work was written, or perhaps it is because I was introduced to this very music at a university (Babbitt’s proposed home for this new ‘complex’ and ‘difficult’[16] music), that I have found this ‘new’ music, as well as music that is far more recent, to be widely accepted and performed regularly in concerts, well attended by the scholarly elite and the layperson, alike. The music has not been isolated, as Babbitt suggested that it should be, but promoted, and it has continued to evolve—a clear difference from the future predicted by Babbitt if the ‘new’ music was not pulled out of the public eye.
Bibliography
Babbit, Milton. ‘Who Cares if You Listen?’. Source Readings In Music History. Eds. Oliver Strunk and Leo Treitler. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998). 1305-1311.
[1] Milton Babbitt, ‘Who Cares if You Listen?,’ Source Readings In Music History, eds. Oliver Strunk and Leo Treitler (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998), 1305.
[2] Babbitt, 1305.
[3] Babbitt, 1308.
[4] Babbitt, 1305.
[5] Babbitt, 1309.
[6] Babbitt, 1305.
[7] Babbitt, 1306.
[8] Babbitt, 1306.
[9] Babbitt, 1306.
[10] Babbitt, 1307.
[11] Babbit, 1306.
[12] Babbitt, 1307.
[13] Babbitt, 1309.
[14] Babbitt, 1310.
[15] Babbitt, 1311.
[16] Babbitt, 1310.
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