Marking the sixth anniversary of American serialist standard-bearer Milton Babbitt's passing with an episode dedicated to his unshakable spirit and kind heart.

 

To many, the present day music seems to break completely with the past, to have no logical connection with former accepted methods. While it must be acknowledged that we are in a stage of transitional upheaval, the change when reviewed step by step is not mere chaos, but presents a front of progressive and reasonable evolution.

Marion Bauer (1933)

 

A fervent torch-bearer of the 12-tone serialist Second Viennese School and pioneer of the function of synthesized music, Babbitt sought to refine music's function. His goal wasn't to alienate audiences, but to encourage them to open their musical minds.

He didn't start out as a rabble-rouser. It was Mendelssohn's violin concerto that first whetted his appetite for that instrument. He played clarinet and saxophone and was quite fond of the jazz and dixieland. In his adolescence, he made his own arrangements of popular songs he heard on the radio and even wrote a few of his own. He has a particular fondness for All The Things You Are and Dream A Little Dream Of Me.

Then he happened upon a book called Twentieth Century Music: How it Developed, How to Listen to It written by journalist/composer Marion Bauer.

It was Bauer's book (and later, her tutelage), and his adventurous uncles who introduced him to early Schoenberg piano works and Honegger's First Symphony that blasted open the floodgates of Milton Babbitt's musical (and mathematical) imagination.

Is it really a surprise that this composer obsessed with systems was a mathematician? Perhaps not. But it is pretty cool that he did a bunch of research in Washington, DC during WWII... We still don't know what exactly he did. It was THAT kind of work... And you know what they say about loose lips.

Babbitt fed from the stream of "highly contextual... self-referential puzzles" that define the musical ideology of Bach and Brahms just as well as it does Schoenberg's (albeit in disparate musical dialects). He attempted to restore the ancient philosophical integrity of music as an intellectual discipline. As a science. Pushing the boundaries of the discriminatory limits of the human ear, often challenging the audience as intensely as the performers.

Knowing his music is exceptionally difficult to interpret (without panicking about the next irregular interval or rhythm), Babbitt alludes to a level of disappointment with many live ensembles who choose to perform his works. He laments that ensembles seldom budget enough rehearsal time to successfully realize his works. On a personal note, the only time I felt good about performing one of Babbitt's song cycles was after studying it for about three years.

THREE. YEARS.

He wasn't just a master of compositional systems, he was also a notoriously generous pedagogue and empathetic mentor. On the faculty at Princeton and Juilliard, his path intersected with the likes of Stephen Sondheim and Stanley Jordan.

It was another of Babbitt's students, musician/journalist/filmmaker Robert Hilferty, who resolved to paint a polychromatic portrait of Babbitt's life and legacy. A collage of candidly charming interviews with Babbitt, his wife, colleagues and students; Hilferty illuminates the brilliance and compassionate character of this all-too-often misunderstood musical mind. Unfortunately, Hilferty left the film unfinished at the time of his death in 2009. It was another of Babbitt's students, four-time Emmy Award winning composer Laura Karpman, who finished putting the pieces together.

What is distinctly evident in this film, started by Hilferty and finished by Karpman, is how much Babbitt cared about his students' journeys into their own creative identities (as variegated as they were) AND their humanity. He loved a lot. And his students loved him. 

 

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