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UPON THE OCCASION OF THE MILTON BABBITT (1916–2011) CENTENARY: AN INTERVIEW WITH BENJAMIN BORETZ

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2016

Joshua Banks Mailman
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Abstract

This edited transcript of a public pre-concert discussion with composer, theorist and critic Benjamin Boretz not only touches on early personal encounters with Babbitt but also ranges over issues of reception of his music, listening experiences, transformations of music's temporality, connections to Schoenberg, Webern, Cage, and postmodernism, stylistic changes over Babbitt's career and composerly poetics, as well as motivations and consequences for precompositional structures and systems. The discussion took place on 22 November 2015, at the first of three recitals during the 2015–16 concert season at Spectrum, in New York City, in which Augustus Arnone for the second time performed all of Milton Babbitt's solo piano works, this time in honour of the composer's centenary.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Information
Tempo , Volume 70 , Issue 278 , October 2016 , pp. 29 - 44
Creative Commons
This is a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States.
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016

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References

1 Arnone's centenary presentation of the complete set of Babbitt solo piano works was spread over three concerts in the 2015–16 concert season. Arnone's first tour through these works was spread over two concerts in 2007, at Merkin Hall, in NYC.

2 Boretz's compositions are recently celebrated in ‘9x9’, a 537-page Festschrift comprising essays, compositions and other documents, as well as a three-CD set of contributed recordings, published as Open Space Magazine, 19/20 (2015/2016)Google Scholar.

3 Boretz, Benjamin, ‘What did Milton mean by his music?’, Perspectives of New Music, 49:2 (2012), pp. 372–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 This included Barclay Brown and David Burrows, fellow composer-grad students at Brandeis.

5 Boretz, Benjamin, ‘What did Milton mean by his music?’ Perspectives of New Music, 49:2 (2012), pp. 372–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 372.

6 Kostelanetz, Richard, ‘Milton Babbitt and John Cage: The Two Extremes of Avant-Garde Music (1967)’, in On Innovative Musicians (New York: Limelight Editions, 1989)Google Scholar.

7 See note 6.

8 Boretz, Benjamin, ‘Regretting John Cage and Kenneth Gaburo: A Gathering of Texts’, Perspectives of New Music, 31:2 (1993), pp. 118–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Hasty, Christopher, Meter as Rhythm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar

10 Benjamin Boretz, ‘What did Milton mean by his music?’, p. 373.

11 Robert D. Morris's compositions were recently celebrated in ‘Robert Morris at 70’, a Festschrift comprising essays, compositions, and other documents, as well as a three-CD set, published as Perspectives of New Music, 52:2 (2014)Google Scholar.

12 The composition was published with a brief article on the structure of the work by the composer in Morris, Robert, ‘Some Remarks on “Odds and Ends”’, Perspectives of New Music, 35:2 (1997), pp. 237–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Sandow, Greg, ‘A Fine Madness’ Village Voice, March 16 (1982)Google Scholar; Mackey, Steven, ‘…  What Surfaces’, Perspectives of New Music, 25:1/2 (1987), pp. 258–79Google Scholar; Lester, Joel, ‘Notated and Heard Meter’ Perspectives of New Music, 24:2 (1986), pp. 116–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Boretz, Benjamin, ‘Whose Time, What Space’, Open Space Magazine, 4 (2002), pp. 136–48Google Scholar.

15 The title sent to High Fidelity was ‘The Composer as Specialist’ for publishing a lecture ‘Off the Cuff’. As later explained by Babbitt, the editor without permission changed the title to ‘Who Cares if You Listen’. See Milton Babbitt. ‘A Life of Learning: Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 1991’. ACLS Occasional Paper 17 (New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1991); Gabrielle Zuckermann, ‘An Interview with Milton Babbitt’. American Mavericks on American Public Media (July 2002). http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/interview_babbitt.html; Rodney Lister, Review of The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, edited by Stephen Peles, with Stephen Dembski, Andrew Mead, and Joseph N. Straus. Princeton University Press. TEMPO Vol. 59, no. 233 (2005), pp. 67–9Google Scholar. Babbitt, Milton, ‘Who Cares If You Listen?’ High Fidelity, Vol. 8, no. 2, (1958), pp. 38–40, 126–7Google Scholar; reprinted in Schwartz, Elliott and Childs, Barney, eds, Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), pp. 243–50Google Scholar.