Chapter 2 - Some Things I Learned (Didn’t Learn) from Milton Babbitt, or Why I Am (Am Not) a Serial Composer

Summary

Like the Cage essay, this text was also written for the Open Space Magazine at the insistence of Ben Boretz. While written in the first person, it is somewhat dialogical; the two sides of the conversation are what I learned from Babbitt solely from his music and writings and what that meant to my own growth as composer and musical inventor. Unlike many of the other writings in this book, this essay stands on its own since whatever contextualization I felt was necessary to frame its issues and content is written directly into it, including autobiography and anecdotes. Therefore, I will devote the remainder of these comments to my views on Babbitt vis-à-vis Cage.

The reader may be surprised (or not) by my enthusiasm and admiration for both Cage and Babbitt. On one hand, these two American composers have often been considered polar opposites—Cage representing change and caprice and Babbitt representing rationality and choice. On the other hand, some writers on twentieth-century music had asserted that chance music and serial music sound alike—equally “random” and “static.” Both of these views are glib and highly misleading. For me, Cage and Babbitt are both supremely imaginative in their own spheres; the difference is the domains in which their imaginations operate. In the case of Babbitt, we have a composer who has continued to evolve one of the major directions of new music, serialism, leading more or less continuously to completely unprecedented conceptions of music and musical discourse. In addition, Babbitt “Americanized” twelve-tone and serial thought. Cage has imagined and created a body of music that has little or no connection with any musical tradition whatsoever; his project was to build music and related arts from the ground up. Both composers have been universally celebrated for their intelligence, wit, and power of verbal and written expression. However, their music has not always been so admired, and usually not in the same degree. I find myself among a small, but perhaps growing, circle of composers who appreciate the music of both composers. This has been possible for me since I don’t hear their music as comparable, but as vastly different—of two very different musical languages or paradigms.