his piano music is rather likeable though. Unless it's an exercise (which this seems to be) there's not much point writing music which duplicates the past unless you can add your own sensibility to it.
@@MorganHayes_Composer.Pianist They all do. They have no motives, no sense of pacing, not even rhythmic consistency. Babbitt frequently and proudly described his music as "pattern free". Mozart said the essence of music is melody. I would say he is essentially right, which is why I can even take Webern only in moderation. But if we were to stretch the tenor of Mozart's quote, we might say that at the very least, PATTERN is the essence of music. You'll find it in Gesualdo, you'll find it in Schubert, you'll find it even in late Schoenberg and Stravinsky. However, this is exactly what Babbitt excised from his compositional process. The result? His "music" sounds, to the surprise of nobody, just as soulless and unimaginative as the mathematical chugging and churning by which it was derived. But it's worse than that, it's not even simply pleasant on some primordial level, in the way a fractal is, or maybe Ligeti's Lux Aeterna. Compositions like Babbitt's are just a total assault on one's humanity, providing nourishment neither to the body, nor to the spirit. One has to completely debase themselves to listen to composers like Babbitt and Cage, who represent two approaches to the same aural mire; one of pride and self-assured conceit on one hand and one of sloth and brash contempt on the other. Babbitt for all his meticulous craftsmanship sounds no more comprehensible than a "performing monkey" arbitrarily mapping notes to stars. In either case the human element is removed and supplanted by a crude algorithm. Contrarily, atonal music at it's best, like the Schoenberg Piano Concerto, could be described as "giving the body a black eye" in order to press towards the mark of higher spiritual truth; a music that is distilled into pure idea, shedding the material adulterates, the ear-coddling of the overtone series (even in approximation) in favor of form, theme and it's development, brightness and darkness of tone, and the interplay of rhythm harmony and melody to produce the full range of human emotion and experience. Far from being corrupt music, this may well be the purest kind of music we have, which probably has something to do with why so precious few have actually pursued it. Babbitt meanwhile represents the worst of all possible worlds; the lack of creative ambition and the soulless procedural generation of poppy minimalism, combined with the caustic effects of extreme dissonance (an actual musical hell). It is not spiritually edifying music in the least.
@@coreylapinas1000 thanks :an interesting rebuttal but sometimes i think you're mixing your own personal response and assuming it's fact? A few things occurred to me : Babbitt's Three Compositions for piano (1948) are very conspicuously pattern based. You bundle Cage together with Babbitt. The pieces I know by Cage are often very charming and melodic: Dream, String Quartet, Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano etc. His output was quite wide ranging.
A spiritual and inspirational work by the great, irreplaceable Milton Babbitt.
Yesssssssssssssssssss
This is rather consonant for Babbitt.
quite delicious.....
Milton, MILTON!! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GO SERIAL!!
his piano music is rather likeable though. Unless it's an exercise (which this seems to be) there's not much point writing music which duplicates the past unless you can add your own sensibility to it.
@@MorganHayes_Composer.Pianist better than writing radio static
@@coreylapinas1000 radio static? which piece sounds like that! none that i know :)
@@MorganHayes_Composer.Pianist They all do. They have no motives, no sense of pacing, not even rhythmic consistency. Babbitt frequently and proudly described his music as "pattern free". Mozart said the essence of music is melody. I would say he is essentially right, which is why I can even take Webern only in moderation. But if we were to stretch the tenor of Mozart's quote, we might say that at the very least, PATTERN is the essence of music. You'll find it in Gesualdo, you'll find it in Schubert, you'll find it even in late Schoenberg and Stravinsky. However, this is exactly what Babbitt excised from his compositional process. The result? His "music" sounds, to the surprise of nobody, just as soulless and unimaginative as the mathematical chugging and churning by which it was derived. But it's worse than that, it's not even simply pleasant on some primordial level, in the way a fractal is, or maybe Ligeti's Lux Aeterna. Compositions like Babbitt's are just a total assault on one's humanity, providing nourishment neither to the body, nor to the spirit. One has to completely debase themselves to listen to composers like Babbitt and Cage, who represent two approaches to the same aural mire; one of pride and self-assured conceit on one hand and one of sloth and brash contempt on the other. Babbitt for all his meticulous craftsmanship sounds no more comprehensible than a "performing monkey" arbitrarily mapping notes to stars. In either case the human element is removed and supplanted by a crude algorithm. Contrarily, atonal music at it's best, like the Schoenberg Piano Concerto, could be described as "giving the body a black eye" in order to press towards the mark of higher spiritual truth; a music that is distilled into pure idea, shedding the material adulterates, the ear-coddling of the overtone series (even in approximation) in favor of form, theme and it's development, brightness and darkness of tone, and the interplay of rhythm harmony and melody to produce the full range of human emotion and experience. Far from being corrupt music, this may well be the purest kind of music we have, which probably has something to do with why so precious few have actually pursued it. Babbitt meanwhile represents the worst of all possible worlds; the lack of creative ambition and the soulless procedural generation of poppy minimalism, combined with the caustic effects of extreme dissonance (an actual musical hell). It is not spiritually edifying music in the least.
@@coreylapinas1000 thanks :an interesting rebuttal but sometimes i think you're mixing your own personal response and assuming it's fact? A few things occurred to me : Babbitt's Three Compositions for piano (1948) are very conspicuously pattern based.
You bundle Cage together with Babbitt. The pieces I know by Cage are often very charming and melodic: Dream, String Quartet, Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano etc. His output was quite wide ranging.