Where else but on The Classical Network will you hear Milton Babbitt and Léo Delibes within a single afternoon?

Today’s noontime concert will bring you Babbitt’s “All Set” for jazz ensemble, alongside works by Wolfgang Rihm, David Rakowski, Curt Cacioppo, Ingrid Arauco, and Robert Capanna, all performed by the Philadelphia-based Network for New Music.

Babbitt, a longtime faculty member at Princeton University, was born in Philadelphia in 1916. A pioneer of integral serial and electronic music, he became one of the most controversial of composers when an editor at High Fidelity magazine changed the title on an article he had submitted from “The Composer as Specialist” to the more inflammatory “Who Cares If You Listen?” Babbitt was incensed (the article was also aggressively edited), and his critics invoked the title whenever they sought an easy cudgel for the remainder of his career. Though not always easily understood, Babbitt was obviously brilliant and inspirational to generations of rising composers. He received numerous honors, including a Pulitzer Prize citation in 1982. Network for New Music did not shy away from celebrating Babbitt’s centenary during its 2015-2016 season.

The next program of Network for New Music, now in its 32nd season, will be presented on two concerts, on Sunday at 3 p.m., at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, and on March 5 at 3 p.m., at Delaware County Community College’s Large Auditorium, located in the campus’ Academic Building. “Poetry through Music” will include works inspired by Friedrich Hölderlin’s novel “Hyperion,” either directly or by way of a new poem by Susan Stewart, with musical contributions by Georg Friedrich Haas, Gerald Levinson, Andrew Rudin, Eliza Brown, Benjamin Krause, Robert Capanna, and Ke-Chia Chen.

Following the noon concert we’ll do a one-eighty and listen to one of the most ingratiatingly melodic ballets in the repertoire, a complete recording of Léo Delibes’ “Coppélia,” on this, Delibes’ birthday. Sure, “Coppélia” is overflowing with earworms that will ruin the rest of your day (and boy, do I hate the term earworm), but in actuality it is a terrible adaptation of one of the most effective of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s weird tales of mechanism and madness, a story called “The Sandman.” I prefer good old fashioned paper to reading online, but here’s a link, if you think it won’t take something away from it for you to read it on your computer.

http://germanstories.vcu.edu/hoffmann/sand_e.html

The anodyne libretto, by Charles-Louis-Étienne Nuitter, completely Disneyfies the subject matter, but Nuttier must have been on to something. 100 of his 500 libretti were produced, taken up by composers such as Offenbach, Lalo, and Lecocq. His opera translations from German and Italian into French were praised by Wagner and Verdi. He also worked as an archivist, though at the end of the day, it was the law that really paid the bills.

I hope you’ll join me this afternoon for new music and mindless enjoyment, from 12 to 4 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

It will be Babbitt and ballet today on The Classical Network