Modernist Arch-Fiend Milton Babbitt defends Serialism

[BWV 1080]

On the canard about non-serialist composers being denied tenure and "oppressed" by serialist composers:


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MILTON BABBITT: Well, mainly lies of course about the fact that people were denied tenure because they didn't write serial music. I can name two extremely well-known composers who were denied tenure because they did: Don Martino and Charles Wuorinen. The Charles Wuorinen thing became something of a local if not a national scandal. One was Columbia, the other was Yale and, when I was chair, there was a critic of a paper I shan't mention (it was not the national paper), who said this to me at a panel on a stage in Trenton. This critic again pulled out this old saw that if you weren't a serial composer, you couldn't get a job. And I challenged him. Where are the so-called serial composers at the prestigious universities? Not Harvard. Not Columbia, not Yale. Where? A couple of guys at Princeton, that's all it really amounted to. And this is preposterous nonsense. I mean, I just decided to pay no attention to it, frankly.



On hearing serial music:

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Well, you do have to learn how to hear it. You learn it informally as well as formally. I'm not saying you take ear-training courses, but when you grow into the music, I mean after all, all you have to hear are intervals—the fundamental building blocks of any music. Stravinsky showed tremendous insight in that respect. When somebody said, "How could you have deserted us? How could you be such an infidel?" Well, I shouldn't use that word. "How could you have done this? How could you desert us and become a twelve-tone, serial composer?" He said, "But I've always composed with intervals." And that was remarkable, because he recognized something that most people, even who regarded themselves as being quite friendly to twelve-tone music...We're not talking about notes, we're not talking about pitch class, we're talking mainly about the relationship between the two; that marvelous relation that we call an interval that is unique almost entirely to the perception of sound and nothing else. So that he certainly used them in a particularly singular and remarkable way.

On critics:

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They don't recognize the music. They don't recognize the beginning of the Schoenberg Orchestral Variations. Look, after all in my generation, no one was to the twelve-tone manner born. I mean, we suddenly encountered it, we were interested in learning the music, learning what was going on in the music, or we didn't. You know, so many different people came to it for so many different reasons. When Aaron Copland, I don't know how many people are even aware that now, ended up writing so-called serial—I'm saying so-called because the term is so misunderstood—but when he wrote serial music, I'll never forget, Aaron, and I'll call him Aaron, because I did call him Aaron, Aaron once said, you know, "twelve-tone music is this mathematical thing, no, it's not for me," and he said that. He said that publicly. And then, about ten years later, he began writing music, in fact to such an extent, I'll say in all lack of modesty, that he wanted me to write an article about his Piano Fantasy, which I did, but the magazine that asked for it went out of existence, the IMA magazine from England, which you probably never saw. But Aaron then said, "Oh my God, I discovered that by playing with these twelve-tone [whatever he called them, rows, probably], I found chords that I had never imagined before." Some people criticize, "What a superficial view of twelve-tone, he found chords he had never found before…" but I thought that was fine. For him, to satisfy the kind of interest that he would have. After all, he went to the Boulangerie, where you learn to slice and package and label chords, and here were chords that were not sliced and packaged and labeled in the Boulangerie! For him that was important; it wasn't important for some of us. So it has fulfilled all of these different needs for people as unlike as Copland and Sessions and Stravinsky. And that people could presume to be off-handed about anything that had this attraction for people of that caliber…don't ask.

[pizza]

I don't think he's defending serialism. Why should any kind of music require a defense? If it appeals to people, that's reason enough for it to be written. He's pointing out the lack of understanding, superficiality and absurd politics of some of its critics.

[BWV 1080]

He's pointing out the lack of understanding, superficiality and absurd politics of some of its critics.

Don't have too look much further than the "abandon the past thread" for that

[Jack Kelso]

Years ago I read that both Hindemith and Schostakowitsch decried 12-tone serial music, saying that most--if not all--composers who write it do so because they lack natural creative talent.

I believe they were right. Many would-be great composers get on that bandwagon (pun intended) feeling that if they don't compose that stuff people/critics will think they're unoriginal. Quite the opposite. Here in Germany, classical radio stations are hurling new works at us by these younger "serialists", explaining the techniques and form involved---10 to 15 minutes---and then play the work, which lasts less time than the analyses!! Invariably, the work turns out to be composed of "intervals"---a beep here, then a long silence, then two squeaks and a thud; no discernible rhythm or melody.

Of the serial composers I've heard, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Henze and Penderecki offer (me!) the most. Also, Egon Wellesz and Humphrey Searle did some good things with it....

Otherwise, I just don't have the spare time to devote to listening to soulless technique, when there's sooo much great stuff out there.

Jack

[pizza]

.......I just don't have the spare time to devote to listening to soulless technique, when there's sooo much great stuff out there.

Jack

There are many people whose souls enjoy 12 tone music and who find real pleasure in it. Strange how we're not all the same, isn't it?