milton babbitt 'who cares if you listen?' also s/d

the babbitt I like is definitely thirty-cups-of-coffee music and not comforting-evening-with-a-bottle-of-red-wine music

for years all I had was the New World disc with 'Philomel', liked it okay but I get worn down by traditional soprano delivery. it's an obstacle for me with _all_ 20th century concert music, I prefer instrumental Webern & Schoenberg, philistine like that

I like 'Ensembles for Synthesizer' from 64, pure electronic music, classic boopy soundset lights my geek awake & the way the tambres shift constantly with the chisled melodic lines is convincing.

also like the 'Piano Works' disc performed by Robert Taub... and immersed myself for a few days... liked it! relentless pure information, but... once again, convincing

out of print but I see it used a lot. sounds excellent mixed loudly over strict tempo music that would otherwise be too repetitive.

have it on now but gotta say there's a Free Design record next in the stack, and it's calling

so that reminded me of what you said abt Babbitt not being that interested in the way his music sounds.

[Bridge Records BCD9008]
Spinoff (violin, bass, percussion)
Highly charged, lots of rhythmic appeal

[Tzadik TZ 8101]
Third Piano Concerto
cool opening movement, great transition from manic first movement to sudden stasis in second movement

[Koch International Classics 3-7123-2]
Horn Trio; Horn Trio Continued (amazing pieces)
Trio for Bass Instruments
Trombone Trio
(to clarify: Horn Trio = violin/horn/piano, as is standard; Trombone Trio = trombone/mallet percussion/piano)

[New World Records NW 385-2]
Sonata for Violin and Piano
gorgeous piece that makes very effective use of recognizable thematic returns

[Koch International Classics 3-7121-2]
Second String Quartet
more of a "texture" piece than is typical for Wuorinen

[Koch International Classics 3-7110-2]
Five (concerto for amplified cello and orchestra)
I especially like the second movement (and so does Wuorinen or his webmaster, evidently -- it's a listening clip for this disc at http://www.charleswuorinen.com/discography.html)

anyway, i like some wuorinen, so i thought i'd try some babbitt out and then i felt like posting my immediate impressions.

so, just listened to "whirled series", which i thought "jumpy" enough not to be boring (correctly within the various scales, not sloppy nor pedantic). Actally, some babbitt piano i listened to last night made me think of cecil taylor.

yeah i like the almost "minimalist" repetition of the possibilities presented with the artful illusion of thoroughness and necessity, as though existing just on the point-ful side of completeness. I also like the forward momentum, not "too jazzy".

as though it's official, it's a statistically useable sample

I came across the dbl CD on Koch I remember liking it quite a bit although i've not spent the time I wanted on it to post more. I thought that many of the compositions had a (as gg says) jump to it. Its funny how, despite not wanting to "express", he ends up evoking what he listened to. That is part of what constitutes expression to me..

So now I'm interested in hearing 'all set' as i've come across this "history of jazz" essay while browsing at the library that mentioned it as an early link between classical and jazz.

Can't really add much that Paul in SC hasn't said, but Babbitt has been getting a lot of plays here recently.

So far my favorite pieces have been the five string quartets (No. 1 is withdrawn). Nos. 2 and 6 are on the Tzadik release with two other pieces, the others are OOP but rather easy to find in LP rips if you're looking in the right place.

The quartets have a sort of "radical traditionalism" that I like — like he has absorbed and sublimated an entire century of quartet writing rather than any kind of self-conscious break with tradition like Lachenmann and others.

Relata I for orchestra is a bracing quasi-Varèsian sound experience. It's pointless to try and accurately describe this music, but I'll say that it has a "thousand points of light" feel that I love.

Much prefer his brand of American music to Cage et. al. There's just more "there" there.

R.I.P.

"I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition. By so doing, the separation between the domains would be defined beyond any possibility of confusion of categories, and the composer would be free to pursue a private life of professional achievement, as opposed to a public life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism."

and, thus, chillwave was born...

ah, you can always trust the old serialists to deliver when it comes to quotes about how appalling wider society is. But dude was a bro, or at least his music was good. RIP.

RIP

RIP. I've said before that his "A Solo Requiem" for soprano and two pianos was Babbitt's neglected masterpiece. It was written to grieve the early death of Godfrey Winham, his brilliant student and dear friend, and is one of Babbitt's most lyrical and moving works. I hope his death will at least provide an occasion to revive this work and reissue the wonderful Beardslee/Continuum recording.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gpKea02bjA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8B0edBXM8w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=063s1WW7P2Y

^ Great post. RIP.

24 hour tribute on WKCR coming up at 1AM Eastern Time.

RIP

Reminiscences at New Music Box by

Judith Bettina - David Rakowski

A flac of the Solo Requiem is available in lovingly vinylripped form on the Wolf Fifth blog, as are a couple of other Babbitt works (and an ocean of further goodness). Just click the composer name in the bar on the right.

I just watched this NPR documentary on the man -- guy seemed like a fun dude! :D

Been babbitting quite a bit the past week actually; have really liked the early Composition for four instruments, the Correspondences for orchestra and electronics, and the fifth string quartet. Repeated listening is indeed u&k.

Wolf Fifth recently went down due to © hasslez. :( Am downloading stuff at top speed from the Avant Garde Project in case it is similarly afflicted...

Loving ALL the MB SQs I've heard so far! With #2 it seems one can choose any point between a) yow this is some music wtf hurrah and b) I am now listening to a very well-made <babbittvoicefromthatdocumentary> beginner's lesson on how to listen to, and construe in one's listening mind, a serial composition</babbittvoicefromthatdocumentary>, and thus have great fun in only about 13 minutes!

Hammered "Philomel" a few times today, and really do not get what milton upthread meant by "liked it okay but I get worn down by traditional soprano delivery". I have some troubles with trad-sop-delivery as well, but this doesn't register with me as that at all -- maybe more like the musical-theatre tradition, but obviously not *like* that either. Dunno. Maybe Pierrot has confused it all.

Woah ten years.

Have I got so old that I suck at searching, have I got so old that all search functionality has been wingclipped, or is the second string quartet actually impossible to stream on like Spotify and YouTube? I have a local copy, but.

Documentary mentioned on 2012-11-02 still works though! :D

(possibly 2012-11-01 for usonian time zones?)

It's good that doc is still working!

milton babbitt is the part in the serialism bible where i go grab a beer

I laughed to read this. I’m a huge fan of Darmstadt serialism, and I own a vast library of not only Boulez, Nono, Berio etc. recordings but also lesser-known serialists like Paavo Heininen or Gunnar Berg. But I never did get around to checking out Babbitt, and I wonder if the reputation he developed has subconsciously discouraged me.

Berio’s not really a serialist, is he?

I totally get you, Melomane, in that I sense not a great deal of commonality between eg Boulez(ians) and Babbitt(ians) re approach to serialism. I guess the Book on this says that the US was more directly downstream from Schönberg (as he moved there), while the Euros worshipped Webern to a possible fault – but that certainly doesn't explain it all. I suspect the (Schönberg -> ) Sessions? -> Babbitt axis may be an actual Thing unrelated *in principle* to the Boulez/Stockhausen/Maderna/Nono tradition... but then again, I read this post over, and realize I do not actually have any clue. Would love be able to read 22nd-century music historians on this. :-D

lesser-known serialists like Paavo Heininen or Gunnar Berg.

ooh thanks for tips! Years ago, a friend of mine sent me a youtube of an extremely beautiful orchestral (or chamber?) composition by Bo Nilsson, which I now cannot seem to find. Also, Karel Goeyvaerts.

(xp) He was in the 50s.

Lesser known serialists I like include Nikos Skalkottas. I also like when composers who weren't serialists dabbled in it, like Britten or Ginastera.

Berio was definitely a serialist. His 1950s works like the String Quartet and Alleluja are almost doctrinaire examples of Darmstadt serialism. Even if later works feature considerably more varied approaches, Points on the Curve to Find, for example, famously uses a repeating ten-tone row.

the documentary was fantastic

I also like when composers who weren't serialists dabbled in it, like Britten or Ginastera.

Yes! Not to mention the biggest fish of them all, Stravinsky!