University of Virginia Library

Meeting Music Halfway

By TERI TOWE

Some years ago, Harold
Schonberg, the senior music critic
of the New York Times, wrote that
he doubted that the name Milton
Babbitt would ever be a household
word. The passing years and the
parade of honors and commissions
have proven Mr. Schonberg a poor
oracle, and Milton Babbitt is,
without a doubt, the single most
influential and important force in
the development of serious music in
the last 15 years.

I must admit, though, that Mr.
Babbitt doesn't look the part. I first
met him nearly five years ago while
I was an undergraduate at Princeton
where he holds the William Shubael
Conant Professorship of Music, and
I remember thinking, as I shook the
hand of this extremely friendly,
rather gnome-like little man who
always seems to wear a slightly
rumpled jacket, a narrow tie, and
"hush puppies", that, physically, he
was not what I expected him to be.

Intellectual Force

When we began to talk,
however, I fast realized that I was
indeed in the presence of one of the
great minds of our age. At the
outset, I was so overwhelmed by
the intellectual force, the
inexorable logic, and the wide
knowledge of the man that I
doubted that I would be able to
keep up with him, much less
understand him. It soon became
apparent, however, that Mr.
Babbitt's mind is so clear and so
well organized that he is able to
make the most difficult and
complex concepts in music
understandable to even those with
the most rudimentary knowledge of
the art. He doesn't "spoon feed" his
listeners, though: he requires that
the listener concentrate as
completely and as thoroughly on
the topic under scrutiny as he does,
with the result that one leaves one
of his lectures or a conversation
with him with much the same
feeling of exhilarated exhaustion
that is usually the product of two
or three sets of tennis.

Stretching Ears

Many have criticized Babbitt by
saying that he and his fellow
exponents of electronic music have
dehumanized the art. Quite the
contrary, for, as Babbitt is the first
to point out, the composer no
longer has to be concerned with the
limitations of the instruments and
instrumentalists for whom he is
writing now his major concern is
the limits of human perception.
Herein, perhaps, lies a key to the
phenomenon of electronic music.
The listener has to meet the music
halfway. As Charles Ives's father
said in defense of his practise of
making his children sing in one key
while accompanying themselves in
another. "Everyone needs to have
his ears stretched." While I have
never asked him. I imagine that Mr.
Babbitt might agree with this
analysis. Great music is rarely
"easy" and there is more to it than
the simple ability of being able "to
go in one ear and out the other."

After all, twentieth century
composers are not the first to
stretch the ears of their listeners.
One only has to consider the
reactions of contemporary
audiences to Bach's chorale
improvisations. Beethoven's Erotica
Symphony and Wagner's Tristan
und Isolde. Electronic music is in
good company.

To many of his detractors,
Milton Babbitt seems to live and
work in a rarefied, hothouse
atmosphere, but that is one of the
qualities of a genius. A genius
always seems "rarefied" to his
contemporaries who are much less
gifted than he.