The Grand Old Man of American contemporary music, Elliot Carter, recently described minimalism as "death", but the old rivalry that used to exist between Uptown and Downtown (i.e. academia/serialism/old school vs. trendy/minimal/crossover) is practically non-existent these days. Proof, if any were needed, comes with the release of this album featuring the über-Uptown music of Princeton's eminent professor Milton Babbitt (at 87 also a Grand Old Man) on John Zorn's Tzadik imprint. Reissue, to be more precise, as the Composers Quartet classic reading of Babbitt's 1952 "String Quartet No.2" was originally released in 1973 on Nonesuch, and both the "Composition for Guitar" (1984) and the title track, which Babbitt realized on his trusty RCA Mark II Synthesizer between 1968 and 1971, were issued by the Composers Guild of New Jersey in 1990 (even if you own the original releases, though, the Tzadik disc is worth the price of admission for Scott Hull's outstanding mastering alone). New stuff comes in the form of Babbitt's "String Quartet No.6", dating from 1993, in a spirited reading by the Sherry Quartet.
"If these are variations for an occasion, they are also only occasionally variations of the same degree of variational explicitness, induced by the same modes of musical mutation, although the procession from the local detail to the total composition eventually clearly discloses a distinct articulation of the one-movement work into three manifestly and mutual 'parallel' sections (each itself variationally bifurcated): 'parallel' presentations of the same complete succession of twelve-tone aggregates, identical to within the traditional means of transpositional, registral, contour, timbral, and temporal variation in their non-traditional, uniquely electronic extensions." So writes the composer of "Occasional Variations" – and listening to Babbitt's music requires the same effort as reading his prose. It's not that he spouts incomprehensible pretentious jargon – far from it – but what he has to say needs careful and concentrated attention to yield up its secrets.
For over half a century Milton Babbitt has dedicated his life as a composer to the exploration and elaboration of the principles of serial composition, working patiently and painstakingly on the extensions of serial technique in the domains of timbre and rhythm (his time-point system, originally formalized in the 1962 article "Twelve-Tone Rhythmic Structure and the Electronic Medium," remains the most theoretically coherent adaptation of serial pitch procedures to the parameter of duration). As the above-quoted sentence makes abundantly clear, Babbitt is hardly given to soundbites, but two of his more memorable utterances are worth mentioning in this context. "Nothing grows old faster than a new sound," he once stated, a maxim that goes some way to explaining his uncompromising commitment to serialism and the theoretical system that grew from it in post-War America, set theory (if you think that explanatory sentence on "Occasional Variations" is heavy going, try "Past and Present Concepts of the Nature and Limits of Music"). Drop the needle – well, it's a CD so you can't, but you see what I mean – anywhere in either the Second or the Sixth quartet and you'd be hard pressed to say which is which; Babbitt has consistently avoided the fads and fancies of so-called extended techniques when it comes to writing for standard instruments, and the timbres he opted for in his seminal works using the RCA synthesizer were selected primarily with a view to elucidating the serial structure of the musical argument, not as weird and wonderful sounds for their own sake. So it was that Morton Subotnick became hip and Babbitt never did.
Which brings us to the second oft-quoted remark: when asked once who he might like to be – as a musician – if he weren't Milton Babbitt, he answered: "Stephen Sondheim." (This might explain the inclusion by the good folks at Tzadik of a cute photo of ten-year old Milton brandishing a saxophone.) One imagines that Babbitt might concur in part with Anton Webern's celebrated statement of faith that one day the milkman would be able to whistle his music, but as both composer and theorist he's nothing if not pragmatic – make no mistake, this is difficult music. Its density is mesmerizing: the title track lasts just under ten minutes, but feels like twenty. In terms of sheer volume of concentrated information, Cecil Taylor often comes to mind. Difficult, but not unprepossessing: William Anderson's spirited reading of the "Composition for Guitar" almost swings, and anyone familiar with Derek Bailey's work – who isn't, these days? – should have no difficulty latching on to some of Babbitt's pitch procedures. The two string quartets are tougher nuts to crack, but compared to Carter and Ferneyhough's works for the medium, far from forbidding. The one regret one might have is that, as mentioned above, three of these four works have been released before, and while their reappearance is cause for celebration, one wonders why other unreleased compositions could not have been issued instead. Babbitt might not be as unstoppably prolific as Carter, but he has produced a significant body of work, much of which hasn't been heard outside of the intellectual hotbeds of American academia. That the music should appear on Tzadik, however, is most definitely good news: Zorn's championship of American pioneers such as Ives, Partch and Wuorinen is not only consistent with his own recent concentration on "composing with a capital C," but with his desire to share the music he loves with the widest possible audience. There's still a long way to go, though: perhaps when places like Tonic start programming evenings of Babbitt chamber music, things will start to change. In the meantime, check out Occasional Variations.
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