Thinking In and About Music: Analytical Reflections on Milton Babbitt's Music and Thought

Milton Babbitt (1916-2011) was, at once, one of the century's foremost composers and a founder of American music theory. These two aspects of his creative life--"thinking in" and "thinking about" music, as he would put it--nourished each other. Theory and analysis inspired fresh compositional ideas, and compositional concerns focused theoretical and analytical inquiry. Accordingly, this book undertakes an excavation of the sources of his theorizing as a guide to analysis of his music. In Thinking In and About Music, author Zachary Bernstein shows how Babbitt's idiosyncratic synthesis of ideas from Heinrich Schenker, analytic philosophy, and cognitive science--at least as much as more obviously relevant predecessors such as Arnold Schoenberg--provide insight into his aesthetics and compositional technique. At the same time, a close look at his music reveals a host of concerns unaccounted for in his theories, some of which seem to directly contradict theoretical expectations. Bernstein argues, therefore, that new analytical models are needed to complement those suggested by Babbitt's theories. Departing from the serial logic of most previous work on the subject--and in an attempt to discuss Babbitt's music as it is actually heard rather than just deciphered--the book brings to bear theories of gesture and embodiment, rhetoric, text setting, and temporality. The result is a richly multi-faceted look at one of the twentieth century's most fascinating musical minds.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgments Permissions About the companion website Chapter 1 On Milton Babbitt, Schenkerian Introduction Goethe, Schenker, and Hierarchical Organicism Babbitt and Schenker The Implications of the Series Analepsis and Prolepsis Conclusion Chapter 2 Construction, Cognition, and the Role of the Surface A Way into Emblems Rudolf Carnap and Phenomenalistic Construction George Miller, Information Processing, and Memory Babbitt's Cognitively Informed Compositional Techniques Organicism as Cognitive Heuristic: The "Schenker Memorative Approach" "The Requirements"--and Responsibilities--"of Cognitive Communication" Conclusion: Babbitt's Psychology and the Analysis of His Music Chapter 3 The Seam in Babbitt's Compositional Development: Composition for Tenor and Six Instruments "My Most Difficult Piece" Trichordal and All-Partition Arrays "Nearly Divine" Proportions Generative Polyvocality Extending the Trichordal Array The Arrays of Composition for Tenor and Six Instruments "Invariants of Order Embedded in Invariants of Content" Chapter 4 The Surface and the Series in Composition for Four Instruments Chapter 5 Poetic Form and Psychological Portraiture in Babbitt's Early Texted Works Introduction "The Widow's Lament in Springtime" Du Two Sonnets Vision and Prayer Philomel Conclusion Chapter 6 Completeness and Temporality Introduction Over-, Under-, and Multiple Completeness Signals and Verticality Conclusion: "Sounds of Relations" Chapter 7 Babbitt's Gestural Dialectics Introduction: The First Measure of Post-Partitions Sources of Embodied Energetics: Kinesthetic Empathy and Musical Forces The Gestural Function of Virtuosity Liminal Periodicity and the Threat of Discontinuity Serial Anomalies and Text Setting Rhetorical Closing Gestures in Three Late Piano Pieces Conclusion: Babbitt's Gestural Music and Formalist Discourse Afterword: "Anything Vital is Problematical" Glossary References

About the Author :
Zachary Bernstein is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music. His writings on twentieth-century music have appeared in Music Theory Spectrum, Journal of Music Theory, Perspectives of New Music, Music Theory Online, Theory and Practice, and Oxford Bibliographies Online.

Review :
"Milton Babbitt's music and his theories (his thinking in and about music) are central to the history of American music and music theory in the postwar period, but the relationship between them is challengingly complicated. Zack Bernstein knows both the music and the theories as well as anyone ever has and he is a superb explainer, with a remarkable gift for making complicated things easily comprehensible. In this engagingly and beautifully written study, Bernstein opens our ears to aspects of Babbitt's music DL including its rhetoric and its troubled relationship to completeness and closure DL that lie beyond the twelve-tone designs that have preoccupied most earlier studies." -- Joseph Straus, Distinguished Professor of Music, Graduate Center, City University of New York "Deeply grounded in Babbitt's own words about music, his and others', and finding further foundation in a thorough understanding of Babbitt's musical and philosophical roots, the book offers fresh insights into a major figure in late 20th Century American music." -- Andrew Mead, Professor of Music, Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University