The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt (ebook)

Argumento de The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt (ebook)

"A car won't run unless it's engineered correctly, and the same applies to a piece of music. And Babbit always insists that the whole point of structure in music is that it can be heard: you may have to listen at full stretch, but it will be worth it. Rather like this book--difficult stuff, but intellectually rigorous and undeniably honest."--Martin Cotton, BBC Music Magazine

"The time is eminently ripe--indeed past due--for a collection of the writings of Milton Babbitt."--Elaine Barkin, University of California, Los Angeles

"Babbitt is one of the principal makers of postwar musical thought and expression, whose importance for musical composition, theory, and pedagogy in the United States is beyond that of any other individual. This anthology of his writings will stand as a major monument of late twentieth-century musical thought and history."--Benjamin Boretz, Bard College

"Milton Babbitt's influence on American musical composition has been both enormously significant and highly controversial--two excellent reasons for assembling his writings, previously scattered and difficult to locate, into a single volume. Anyone studying or writing about twentieth-century music--in its technical, philosophical, or sociological aspects--will have to deal with parts or all of this invaluable collection."--David Hamilton, The Julliard School

"Milton Babbitt, at eighty-nine, has been handsomely, if belatedly, served by this collection of forty-three essays testifying to his seminal presence in musical history. . . . Overall the enterprise is a fine assemblage of scattered writings which will surprise even aficionados by its range."--Jonathan Harvey, Times Literary Supplement

"Milton Babbitt's musical world is not a simple one. . . . That's also true of Babbitt's written output. . . . But it's witty too, as you'd expect from the composer of such titles as Joy Of Sextets."--Andy Hamilton, The Wire

"It's the book's role as an encapsulation of Babbitt's formalistic way of thinking about music which matters, and this is rendered suitably ambiguous by an intriguing disparity in the types of essay included. These veer between the extremes of the coolly technical and the warmly biographical (and autobiographical). We might not get Babbitt's views on what compositions represent in terms of emotion or feeling, but there is plenty of vivid characterization when it comes to people and places."--Arnold Whittall, Musical Times0Acknowledgments vii
Preface ix
The String Quartets of Bartók (1949) 1
Review of Leibowitz, Schoenberg et son école (1950) 10
Review of Le Système
Dodécaphonique (1950) 16
Review of Salzer, Structural Hearing (1952) 22
Tintinnabulation of the Crochets (Review of Halsey Stevens, The Life and Music of Bartók) (1953) 31
Musical America's Several Generations (1954) 34
Some Aspects of Twelve-Tone Composition (1955) 38
The Composer as Specialist (1958) 48
Twelve-Tone Invariants as Compositional Determinants (1960) 55
The Revolution in Sound: Electronic Music (1960) 70
Past and Present Concepts of the Nature and Limits of Music (1961) 78
Set Structure as a Compositional Determinant (1961) 86
Twelve-Tone Rhythmic Structure and the Electronic Medium (1962) 109
Reply to George Perle's "Babbitt, Lewin, and Schoenberg: A Critique" (1963) 141
Remarks on the Recent Stravinsky (1964) 147
The Synthesis, Perception, and Specification of Musical Time (1964) 172
An Introduction to the R.C.A. Synthesizer (1964) 178
The Structure and Function of Musical Theory (1965) 191
The Uses of Computers in Musicological Research (1965) 202
Edgard Varèse: A Few Observations of His Music (1966) 213
Three Essays on Schoenberg (1968) 222
On Relata I (1970) 237
Contribution to "The Composer in Academia: Reflections on a Theme of Stravinsky" (1970) 259
Memorial for Mátyás Seiber (1970) 263
Stravinsky Memorial (1971) 264
Contemporary Musical Composition and Musical Theory as Contemporary Intellectual History (1972) 270
Memorial for Stefan Wolpe (1972) 308
Since Schoenberg (1974) 310
Celebrative Speech for the Schoenberg Centennial (1976) 335
Responses: A First Approximation (1976) 341
Introduction to Marion Bauer, Twentieth Century Music (1978) 367
Foreword to David Epstein, Beyond Orpheus (1979) 371
Memorial for Ben Weber (1979) 377
Memorial for Robert Miller (1981) 380
The More than the Sounds of Music (1984) 383
I Remember Roger (1985) 388
"All the Things They Are": Comments on Kern (1985) 395
Memorial for Hans Keller (1986) 399
Stravinsky's Verticals and Schoenberg's Diagonal: A Twist of Fate (1987) 404
On Having Been and Still Being an American Composer (1989) 428
A Life of Learning (1991) 437
Brave New Worlds (1994) 459
My Vienna Triangle (1999) 466
Index 489