# Babbitt String Quartets



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

I'd been listening to these a while ago and thought it was worth making a thread about.

I think I still prefer the lyrical second quartet, which is first period Babbitt, but the supple timbral variety of the fourth quartet is close behind.

You can listen to them here.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

sorry wrong thread!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Okay, for a change, let's take an example of a composer who might be seen as the ultimate objectivist, Milton Babbitt. A recently posted thread asks us, "What is your favorite Milton Babbitt string quartet?" just as if Babbitt were to be considered like any other composer of string quartets.

Babbitt was a different breed of composer, as the title of his infamous essay indicates: "Who Cares If You Listen?" This was not Babbitt's title, but demonstrates the point regardless.

Babbitt has said that his interest was in certain forms of tone rows (sets) called "all interval rows" which exhibited certain symmetries and similarities when subjected to the transformation procedures of retrograde, inversion, and the other standard serial procedures.

So, when he wrote a string quartet, or any other music, his concern was with finding and exploiting these symmetries, and expressing them in musical form.

Does this mean he was not using music as a way of communicating his subjective experience to us? In many ways, yes. For Babbitt, music was not a language of emotions or subjective feelings, but of his purely musical goals: to exploit the inherent symmetries in all-interval sets, which is a purely musical, structural, and objective goal.

Thus, whatever "subjective" or reaction to this art we might have is really, by default, coincidental, since that purpose was not really the motivation for the work.

However, there are some inescapable "givens" which allow these string quartets to be experienced as art:

1. Milton Babbitt was human, so we share with him all human attributes.

2. Babbitt chose to be a composer, not a mathematician, so his goal was to express his ideas about symmetry through the medium of music and real instruments (string quartets, pianists).

3. Since it apparently amused Babbitt to express these ideas as music, then by default, we can also hear the sounds and be amused if we please.

In other words, all the "artistic" elements of Babbitt's work are coincidental to his being a human being with ears as the creator, and our also being human beings with ears. There are probably all sorts of other correspondences.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

I don't think those were his real objectives.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Babbitt has said that his interest was in certain forms of tone rows (sets) called "all interval rows" which exhibited certain symmetries and similarities when subjected to the transformation procedures of retrograde, inversion, and the other standard serial procedures.
> 
> So, when he wrote a string quartet, or any other music, his concern was with finding and exploiting these symmetries, and expressing them in musical form.
> 
> ...




These are his ends, but his ends are only his beginnings


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> I don't think those were his real objectives.


Well, all his theoretical writings were about this, and this is why he is considered America's most important serialist thinker. I would reiterate that this was his main goal, and the rest was subsidiary. Subsidiary to the degree that it alienates average listeners.


(1960). "Twelve-Tone Invariants as Compositional Determinants," _The Musical Quarterly_ 46/2.
(1961). "Set Structure as Compositional Determinant," _Journal of Music Theory_ 5/1.
(1965). "The Structure and Function of Musical Theory," _College Music Symposium_ 5.
(1992) "The Function of Set Structure in the Twelve-Tone System." PhD Dissertation. Princeton: Princeton University.


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