# A discussion of Milton Babbitt's famous article



## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

In February 1958 High Fidelity magazine published this article: Who Cares If You Listen?

(NB: Babbitt's did not authorize this title)

Please discuss any aspects of the article.

I'll begin with this: Babbitt's desire was that 'serious' composers should be free to concentrate on composing rather than teaching in their university posts in the same way that other academics do so in the scientific fields. Has it happened?

_But how, it may be asked, will this serve to secure the means of survival or the composer and his music? One answer is that after all such a private life is what the university provides the scholar and the scientist. It is only proper that the university, which-significantly-has provided so many contemporary composers with their professional training and general education, should provide a home for the "complex," "difficult," and "problematical" in music. Indeed, the process has begun; and if it appears to proceed too slowly, I take consolation in the knowledge that in this respect, too, music seems to be in historically retarded parallel with now sacrosanct fields of endeavour. In E. T. Bell's Men of Mathematics, we read: "In the eighteenth century the universities were not the principal centres of research in Europe. hey might have become such sooner than they did but for the classical tradition and its understandable hostility to science. Mathematics was close enough to antiquity to be respectable, but physics, being more recent, was suspect. Further, a mathematician in a university of the time would have been expected to put much of his effort on elementary teaching; his research, if any, would have been an unprofitable luxury..." A simple substitution of "musical composition" for "research," of "academic" for "classical," of "music" for "physics," and of "composer" for "mathematician," provides a strikingly accurate picture of the current situation. And as long as the confusion I have described continues to exist, how can the university and its community assume other than that the composer welcomes and courts public competition with the historically certified products of the past, and the commercially certified products of the present?_


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

> Babbitt's desire was that 'serious' composers should be free to concentrate on composing rather than teaching in their university posts in the same way that other academics do so in the scientific fields. Has it happened?


I don't think he is saying this at all. He is just asking for parity where other disciplines engage in 'research' of the new alongside teaching the subject.

The assumption that he is asking for subsidised facilities in a university where he can just compose is what causes people to constantly reference this essay as they do.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I posted this in another thread but perhaps it fits better here:

It is always interesting to read what composers wrote or said. But we also need to remember that they are composers of music and it is music that they are known for. What composers say in words may or may not be rationalisation, attempts to understand what their own music is about, intended as provocative, theory (that they may or may not actually follow) .... but it is by their music that we will know them. Academics do, of course, use words and we can learn about their academic position or approach by reading their words. If I want to know what Babbit, for example, is like as a teacher and researcher then I will read his essays. But if I want to know about his music I will have to make the effort to listen to it sufficiently to get an idea about it. Composers words are, IMO, most interesting when you know their music well.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

eugeneonagain said:


> I don't think he is saying this at all. He is just asking for parity where other disciplines engage in 'research' of the new alongside teaching the subject.
> 
> The assumption that he is asking for subsidised facilities in a university where he can just compose is what causes people to constantly reference this essay as they do.


You have a point but are there any examples of any teachers in academies being subsidised for their time composing?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

janxharris said:


> You have a point but are there any examples of any teachers in academies being subsidised for their time composing?


University staff, off course, are employed to do things other than teach. Research, for example. I can see a composer writing music as a kind of research and a valid occupation.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

DavidA said:


> University staff, off course, are employed to do things other than teach. Research, for example. I can see a composer writing music as a kind of research and a valid occupation.


I'm not saying it doesn't happen - I'm just wondering if there are any explicit occurrences?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I am no musician but from the times I have been a (British) university student of other subjects it was clear that the faculty staff were expected to excel in getting published (as theorists or researchers or both), getting hired as consultants and as teachers. It seemed to me that the trend was towards an ever stronger requirement to do the first two with their teaching taking a third place. Many teaching duties were often passed on to PhD students. I don't see why music professors will be any different. Of course, many composers are also talented players or conductors.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

janxharris said:


> You have a point but are there any examples of any teachers in academies being subsidised for their time composing?


The way you have framed the question is a bit warped. Composers in a university setting tend to teach music composition and, depending on the size of the department, upper level theory courses like counterpoint, orchestration, and analysis, or even the undergraduate music theory sequence. Their one-on-one teaching of composition students is treated like the applied teaching performers do on their instrument. Just as professors in the sciences are expected to do research and publish in their field in addition to their teaching duties, so composers are expected to produce musical works and get them performed and published. It is part of what they are paid for. Ideally, both researchers and composers are left with ample time to do their research and composition, but calling this subsidization makes no sense. It is just part of what they are paid for.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

DavidA said:


> University staff, off course, are employed to do things other than teach. Research, for example. I can see a composer writing music as a kind of research and a valid occupation.


I assume that you mean as part of a valid occupation, and not that research alone is a valid occupation (at least not in an artistic endeavor). There are positions at research universities where scientists almost exclusively do research, although even they generally have at least some nominal teaching or lecturing duties. And in any case, I don't think are talking about some lavish waste of university money (plenty of which is wasted, especially on sports programs).


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

A key factor--perhaps well-concealed though actually obvious--is that unlike, say, the more abstruse reaches of mathematics or other scientific disciplines, the average person considers him/herself perfectly qualified to evaluate and pass judgement upon music, even while denying that this is their right in an academic setting. This will predispose people--administrators of time and money--to take a more skeptical view of avant-garde music and its subsidizing than they would of research in obscure mathematical theory.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> The way you have framed the question is a bit warped. Composers in a university setting tend to teach music composition and, depending on the size of the department, upper level theory courses like counterpoint, orchestration, and analysis, or even the undergraduate music theory sequence. Their one-on-one teaching of composition students is treated like the applied teaching performers do on their instrument. Just as professors in the sciences are expected to do research and publish in their field in addition to their teaching duties, so composers are expected to produce musical works and get them performed and published. It is part of what they are paid for. Ideally, both researchers and composers are left with ample time to do their research and composition, but calling this subsidization makes no sense. It is just part of what they are paid for.


May I ask how you know this please? I'm not suggesting you are in any way wrong.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

janxharris said:


> May I ask how you know this please? I'm not suggesting you are in any way wrong.


Your question is not directed at me, but I think this is simply common knowledge with anyone who has some contact with the workings of a college or university. I was aware of it even when I was a student (although it is probably more obvious at the graduate level), and it is certainly how it works with people I know who teach in literary fields. Some universities have hired well-known writers specifically because they have reputations. And although it is somewhat less common these days, in tight budgetary times, professors could historically arrange sabbaticals (generally for one or two sessions) and get paid specifically to work on projects that, in theory, promote their understanding of matters related to their subjects. (I personally know several professors who took sabbaticals, usually at a reduced rate of pay, but continuing benefits and seniority and/or chaired positions, specifically to write or complete a book in their given field of study. The idea is that these professors are improving their ability to teach, and also adding to the luster of the institution's reputation and enhance its ability to attract students.) Are you suggesting some problem here?


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> I am no musician but from the times I have been a (British) university student of other subjects it was clear that the faculty staff were expected to excel in getting published (as theorists or researchers or both), getting hired as consultants and as teachers. It seemed to me that the trend was towards an ever stronger requirement to do the first two with their teaching taking a third place. Many teaching duties were often passed on to PhD students. I don't see why music professors will be any different. Of course, many composers are also talented players or conductors.


I think the opposite is the case at universities in Denmark, and has been so for many years - professors were complaining that teaching meant a serious hinder for doing research and publications. PhD students working as teachers had a single research subject, making their teaching more limited in scope and subject. The above-mentioned sabbaticals were also available to some extent for professors.

This was in the humanistic field, composing and musical teaching though is perhaps-perhaps a bit different, more craft-based.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Strange Magic said:


> A key factor--perhaps well-concealed though actually obvious--is that unlike, say, the more abstruse reaches of mathematics or other scientific disciplines, the average person considers him/herself perfectly qualified to evaluate and pass judgement upon music, even while denying that this is their right in an academic setting. This will predispose people--administrators of time and money--to take a more skeptical view of avant-garde music and its subsidizing than they would of research in obscure mathematical theory.


I don't know that this is precisely true. Is there skepticism of avant-garde music in universities? If there is now, has that always been the case? I certainly know that a number of what I would consider really crazy literary theories thrive precisely because they are strikingly original (often a measure of how crazy they are) or seen as having social relevance (which is very big in arts departments these days).


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I always thought he pushes the analogy with the practice in mathematics too much. Art is really sufficiently different to the degree in which this makes such quasi-literal analogies misleading. The effort that a listener, when confronted with an unfamiliar, to him, musical language, has to do in order to understand it is much, much less than the analogous situation regarding the comparison of different mathematical topics. To understand a different field of mathematics can take you years of study, often a complete PhD equivalent, on that topic, in effort. That's why sub-fields in mathematics are so radically compartmentalized, to the degree in which two Fields medalists in different topics may not even have the slightest idea regarding what's the merit of his colleague due to complete unfamiliarity with the topic (a recent Fields medalist actually said this pretty much in the way I wrote it). On the other hand, art is primarily visceral, and rational only at a secondary level. Thus, the listener only needs to expose himself to the art for some time and, secondarily, maybe do some general reading on the ideas behind the aesthetics in question (not necessarily technical-level reading). That's all. If after this he still dislikes the art, at least he will have better tools to express why that's the case, even to himself. Not much effort beyond this little gymnastics is needed, really.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Strange Magic said:


> A key factor--perhaps well-concealed though actually obvious--is that unlike, say, the more abstruse reaches of mathematics or other scientific disciplines, the average person considers him/herself perfectly qualified to evaluate and pass judgement upon music, even while denying that this is their right in an academic setting. This will predispose people--administrators of time and money--to take a more skeptical view of avant-garde music and its subsidizing than they would of research in obscure mathematical theory.


It's my impression (which may be wrong) that both music and mathematics faculty are receiving less and less funding (and fewer faculty positions) as a result of perceived irrelevance and declining student enrollment, especially by comparison with ostensibly more practical disciplines like economics. Administrators like to see a bang for their buck (to cite a saying with a troubling, but relevant, history).


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> It's my impression (which may be wrong) that both music and mathematics faculty are receiving less and less funding (and fewer faculty positions) as a result of perceived irrelevance and declining student enrollment, especially by comparison with ostensibly more practical disciplines like economics. Administrators like to see a bang for their buck (to cite a saying with a troubling, but relevant, history).


I would not be surprised if this is true for music, or any of the arts and humanities, but am very surprised to hear it suggested about math departments. Everything in education these days is about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). The chief beneficiaries seem to be biology (since medical is the only really growing fields at the moment) and technology. At one time, big investment firms were hiring physicists and math students to develop software for modeling trends for buying and selling stocks and options. (The result of their efforts can often be seen in the huge swings in the stock market, exacerbated and sometimes caused by micro-trading and automated processes.) Humanities departments are definitely suffering in budget cutbacks. Although I am in the US, I hear the same complaints from teachers pretty much all over the world.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I don't blame Babbitt for wanting to push back on the populist arguments against his kind of music, but he was totally mistaken in positing any kind of analogy between music and math or science.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

JAS said:


> I would not be surprised if this is true for music, or any of the arts and humanities, but am very surprised to hear it suggested about math departments. Everything in education these days is about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). The chief beneficiaries seem to be biology (since medical is the only really growing fields at the moment) and technology. At one time, big investment firms were hiring physicists and math students to develop software for modeling trends for buying and selling stocks and options. Humanities departments are definitely suffering in budget cutbacks.


The decline in humanities funding goes without saying. I believe that math as "pure theory" is declining due to competition for scarce funding from analogous subjects like computer science and economics; they're still using math, but less for its own sake. (Again, I could be wrong.)

The trend within music departments seems similar: there are fewer positions for specialists in music theory by comparison with those involved in cultural or interdisciplinary approaches.

The high-theory emphasis of the Babbitt/serialism era yielded to a pendulum shift (as all academic trends seem to).

p.s. Though maybe this is changing again due to recent generally increased interest in digital modeling and analysis.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> The decline in humanities funding goes without saying. I believe that math as "pure theory" is declining due to competition for scarce funding from analogous subjects like computer science and economics. (Again, I could be wrong.)
> 
> The trend within music departments seems similar: there are fewer positions for specialists in music theory by comparison with those involved in cultural or interdisciplinary approaches.
> 
> The high-theory emphasis of the Babbitt/serialism era yielded to a pendulum shift (as all academic trends seem to).


These days, most if not all (or nearly all) colleges and universities have been converted into money making enterprises. The idea that there is any more noble cause than raking in the dough has surely been squelched. I think that this is a very sad state of affairs. If there is no money in "pure theory" mathematics, I should not surprised if it is suffering a similar effect.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

janxharris said:


> May I ask how you know this please? I'm not suggesting you are in any way wrong.


By earning masters and doctoral degrees in music, studying composition at the masters level, teaching music at a couple of universities, and hobnobbing with colleagues at professional conferences and at online forums for the American Musicological Society and Society for Music Theory.

To pick up on something JAS wrote above - truly eminent composers, like eminent scientists, because they are such a draw and asset to the university, are often given lighter course loads than their colleagues and not asked to teach basic courses, leaving more time for research or composition. That wouldn't be called subsidizing either.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

In English departments, almost no one wants to teach Freshman Composition courses. As a core requirement, most of the students really don't like the course, and are there only under duress (augmented by the fact that most students really do not like writing, especially in any extended form . . . although they love their texting and tweeting). It is a demanding course to teach, and evaluating projects and papers is time-consuming and hard to do, especially if one is actually trying to make useful comments and suggestions for improvement. For a long time, it was seen as the first badge of recognition when a professor no longer had to teach that course. Indeed, it was so loathed that it became relegated to adjuncts and graduate students as part of their work requirement. But recently, I know of several instances where current faculty were required to take on the teaching of these courses, and for no additional pay. (The market for moving to another institution is bad enough that most teachers accept the additional burden, and the attendant insult, with little more than grumbling.)


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

isorhythm said:


> I don't blame Babbitt for wanting to push back on the populist arguments against his kind of music, but he was totally mistaken in positing any kind of analogy between music and math or science.


I'm not so sure about that, but it is a big and complex subject. Obviously, humanistic science plays a part in the broader, cultural picture of a given time, influencing its cultural production and also music. Musical dadaism, surrealism and expressionism were influenced by Freudian thinking, for example. But Schönberg made a parallel to his own musical investigations and Einstein´s discoveries 
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg etc.). 
Another fashionable subject has been that of fractals (https://axilleassourlas.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/composing-with-fractals-an-introduction/ etc.). Per Nørgård has been inspired by the mathematical Fibonacci row. Technical advances based on science have meant the creation of new instruments, such as the electronic ones, computerized sequences and handling, etc. I guess a future quantum computer can also result in some new musical options, that will have to be investigated, via a good deal of research.

Btw, influence from various scientific discoveries have of course also been identified quite convincingly as regards the visual arts. For example concerning Turner´s interest in meteorology and geology, or by Wamberg, concerning the developments in Western landscape scenes generally http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons...re(76158f50-7f71-11de-b4c2-000ea68e967b).html, or in several sources also linking Cubism and Picasso with Einstein´s theories.

But creating visual representation is perhaps a bit more immediately sensitive to the general "world-view" of its times, than distributing a set of tones in the composition process, and the various cultural concepts associated with that.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

joen_cph said:


> I'm not so sure about that, but it is a big and complex subject. Obviously, humanistic science plays a part in the broader, cultural picture of a given time, influencing its cultural production and also music. Musical dadaism, surrealism and expressionism were influenced by Freudian thinking, for example. But Schönberg made a parallel to his own musical investigations and Einstein´s discoveries
> ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg etc.).
> Another fashionable subject has been that of fractals (https://axilleassourlas.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/composing-with-fractals-an-introduction/ etc.). Per Nørgård has been inspired by the mathematical Fibonacci row. Technical advances based on science have meant the creation of new instruments, such as the electronic ones, computerized sequences and handling, etc. I guess a future quantum computer can also result in some new musical options, that will have to be investigated, via a good deal of research.
> 
> ...


I think the examples you mention, rather than having to do with some intrinsic and profound analogy between music and math, simply show the natural cross fertilization between human activties and fields of knowledge that is always bound to appear when something novel appears in one of those fields. I mentioned more about this in this comment in another thread.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

I am a bit surprised that some folks here are not familiar with how the composers-teaching-at-the-college-level set up works. EdwardBasts' explanation is on-the-nose:

"Composers in a university setting tend to teach music composition and, depending on the size of the department, upper level theory courses like counterpoint, orchestration, and analysis, or even the undergraduate music theory sequence. Their one-on-one teaching of composition students is treated like the applied teaching performers do on their instrument. Just as professors in the sciences are expected to do research and publish in their field in addition to their teaching duties, so composers are expected to produce musical works and get them performed and published. It is part of what they are paid for. Ideally, both researchers and composers are left with ample time to do their research and composition, but calling this subsidization makes no sense. It is just part of what they are paid for."

What they are paid for...exactly!

And I know this as not only did I receive my PhD in composition then went on to do some teaching at the college level but before that I saw how the system as described by EdwardBast worked as a student!

There are very few composers of classical music in the USA, well-known and relatively well-known composers that is, that do not have a college teaching position.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

JAS said:


> In English departments, almost no one wants to teach Freshman Composition courses. As a core requirement, most of the students really don't like the course, and are there only under duress (augmented by the fact that most students really do not like writing, especially in any extended form . . . although they love their texting and tweeting). It is a demanding course to teach, and evaluating projects and papers is time-consuming and hard to do, especially if one is actually trying to make useful comments and suggestions for improvement. For a long time, it was seen as the first badge of recognition when a professor no longer had to teach that course. Indeed, it was so loathed that it became relegated to adjuncts and graduate students as part of their work requirement. But recently, I know of several instances where current faculty were required to take on the teaching of these courses, and for no additional pay. (The market for moving to another institution is bad enough that most teachers accept the additional burden, and the attendant insult, with little more than grumbling.)


My primary composition teachers, one at the undergraduate level, the other graduate, were both fairly renowned composers, each the 'big name' at their respective schools. Both taught undergraduate courses and, in the case of one of them, freshman theory courses. They weren't paid extra for that...it was just part of their teaching load. Given that, I know that both would have preferred to teach only upper division undergrad and graduate courses but they had to do the work assigned to them...and for no extra money.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

aleazk said:


> I think the examples you mention, rather than having to do with some intrinsic and profound analogy between music and math, simply show the natural cross fertilization between human activties and fields of knowledge that is always bound to appear when something novel appears in one of those fields. I mentioned more about this in this comment in another thread.


 You may be right, that for example Schönberg and Einstein both saw themselves as pioneers, and that they were both seen as strange birds and iconoclasts by a good deal among the general public in those days, thus inspiring a lot of the creative poetical wordings and parallels, that language is capable of. But that some relations or resonance between the thinking in science and math to important composers can be established, is at least different from that there isn´t any kind of it.

I think the Schönberg-Einstein question is quite important here, due to Schönberg´s lasting influence. Quite a few sources point to a relation in their creative thinking (obviously, they corresponded, knew and met each other, though it wasn´t in their earliest years), but I haven´t been able to study this in depth (and I would have problems understanding the technical arguments too, naturally).

- https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11250.html (review in Spanish https://elcultural.com/revista/letras/La-musica-y-los-numeros-De-Pitagoras-a-Schonberg/41427)
- http://lmhsbd.oicrm.org/media/ART-KRE-1944-01.pdf (a bit like the Spanish review)
- https://www.researchgate.net/public..._Einstein_and_Arnold_Schonberg_Correspondence
- p.2 http://jkornfeld.net/schoenberg.pdf
- http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,797017,00.html
- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Arnold-Schoenberg-Albert-Einstein-relationship/dp/B00071H4GU

etc.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

ArsMusica said:


> My primary composition teachers, one at the undergraduate level, the other graduate, were both fairly renowned composers, each the 'big name' at their respective schools. Both taught undergraduate courses and, in the case of one of them, freshman theory courses. They weren't paid extra for that...it was just part of their teaching load. Given that, I know that both would have preferred to teach only upper division undergrad and graduate courses but they had to do the work assigned to them...and for no extra money.


This has been my experience too. As an academic administrator I had direct knowledge of course loads and department budgets. I worked for a "State" school were work practices were normed across dozens of institutions. No one in my State was being paid to write compositions. Full time profs in composition as in any other field are expected to:

Teach a full load
Keep State mandated office hours
Serve on committees and give their time gratis
Perform (sometimes gratis) to benefit the University and surrounding community

In addition, neither institution of higher learning were I was employed allowed for stipends for music composition. Sabbaticals were allowed, rarely, and then for only those proven instructors who wished to obtain a terminal degree. To obtain a sabbatical, an instructor had to sign a contract stipulating to continue to work for his present institution for a minimum of three years after graduation.

I'll admit, I have never worked for a private institution so maybe money is handed out for composition in that realm. If so, I have about twenty music friends who would like to know where they can apply for that job.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

From Wikipedia: "Babbitt's father was a mathematician, and it was mathematics that Babbitt intended to study when he entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1931.......During the Second World War, Babbitt divided his time between mathematical research in Washington, D.C., and Princeton, where he became a member of the mathematics faculty from 1943 to 1945."

This helps explain Babbitt's ease with the idea of a strong parallelism between music and mathematics/science in making time and resources available to faculty to pursue cutting-edge work in their respective fields.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

joen_cph said:


> I'm not so sure about that, but it is a big and complex subject. Obviously, humanistic science plays a part in the broader, cultural picture of a given time, influencing its cultural production and also music. Musical dadaism, surrealism and expressionism were influenced by Freudian thinking, for example. But Schönberg made a parallel to his own musical investigations and Einstein´s discoveries
> ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schoenberg etc.).
> Another fashionable subject has been that of fractals (https://axilleassourlas.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/composing-with-fractals-an-introduction/ etc.). Per Nørgård has been inspired by the mathematical Fibonacci row. Technical advances based on science have meant the creation of new instruments, such as the electronic ones, computerized sequences and handling, etc. I guess a future quantum computer can also result in some new musical options, that will have to be investigated, via a good deal of research.
> 
> ...


I agree that there can be fruitful exchange between music and other disciplines. What I disagree with is that they are the same kind of thing.

I think the easiest way to explain what I mean is by reference to Einstein: his theory of gravity was an advance over Newton's because it correctly predicted observations where Newton's failed to do so.

There's no analogous sense in which Schoenberg's music is an advance over earlier music. Of course every new contribution to music is an advance in the sense that it expands the universe of materials available to composers in a particular tradition, but there's no equivalent to a scientific theory's correspondence with observation.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

> I agree that there can be fruitful exchange between music and other disciplines. What I disagree with is that they are the same kind of thing.
> 
> I think the easiest way to explain what I mean is by reference to Einstein: his theory of gravity was an advance over Newton's because it correctly predicted observations where Newton's failed to do so.
> 
> There's no analogous sense in which Schoenberg's music is an advance over earlier music. Of course every new contribution to music is an advance in the sense that it expands the universe of materials available to composers in a particular tradition, but there's no equivalent to a scientific theory's correspondence with observation.


I think that a general, objective difference in the radicality of the two´s work is also what a couple of the texts above are mentioning. Yet on a subjective level Schönberg is still one of the more controversial composers, that some feel alienated from. Subjectively-culturally, he is still often seen as a strange bird by parts of the general public; one could perhaps say: for whom he also enlarged the observable 
field ...

There are various ways to characterize the two´s work and its implications. In another summary, Eli Maior calls Schönberg´s music "relativistic", guided by "complete democracy", and "the result of a mathematical system". Maybe however, he is over-emphasizing some details in it. 
https://aeon.co/essays/ringing-the-chords-of-the-universe-how-music-influenced-science


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

The populist versus modernist split chatacterised much music theory and criticism during the 1950s. Even though its an idelogical argument, Babbitt's view isn't so extreme if we take into account institutions like IRCAM in Paris. Having said that, the scientific determinism which also typical of others of that time (eg. Leibowitz, Boulez) proved divisive and in retrospect was like a storm in a teacup. We can try learning from the mistakes of the past. Nevertheless, its all just history now.


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## Ras (Oct 6, 2017)

I saw a quote by Glenn Branca the other day:

*



I'll sell out anytime anybody wants me too, but there are no buyers!

Click to expand...

*


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Sid James said:


> The populist versus modernist split chatacterised much music theory and criticism during the 1950s. Even though its an idelogical argument, Babbitt's view isn't so extreme if we take into account institutions like IRCAM in Paris. Having said that, the scientific determinism which also typical of others of that time (eg. Leibowitz, Boulez) proved divisive and in retrospect was like a storm in a teacup. We can try learning from the mistakes of the past. Nevertheless, its all just history now.


In what way does scientific determinism relate here?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

With all due respect to Mr. Babbitt, I usually find myself asking when I'll be in the mood to hear something like this, and I usually don't get an answer. It seems that I can only listen at the moment I've found it without planning anything at all.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

janxharris said:


> In what way does scientific determinism relate here?


Relating the ultimate value of music to progress, dismissing the role of the non-expert audience, and completely ignoring aesthetics. Its at the core of modernist thinking of the 1950's, including Babbitt.

The flip side is a more Romantic notion of music elevating and uniting humanity (Menschwerdung). During the post WWII era, this was not only the old rational versus idealist debate reframed but also related to conflicting ideologies of the Cold War.

Both approaches have proven to be inadequate in the long run. Music exists for different purposes and its unlikely to solve the world's problems.


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