The headline read “Who Cares if You Listen?” And the notoriety was instant and long-lasting.
All at once, Milton Babbitt was a musical monster.
Babbitt, a staple at Princeton University for many years, was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1916. He received lasting blowback from angry villagers wielding torches and pitchforks for an essay he wrote for High Fidelity magazine, which bore the title stated above.
Unfortunately, the headline wasn’t Babbitt’s. It was actually an editorial decision. Babbitt’s original title had been “The Composer as Specialist” – not nearly as eye-catching or provocative. Today, we might describe it as clickbait. But it stuck like Karloff’s neck-bolts, as both a source of animation and a signal of abnormality, branding him in the eyes of the superstitious rabble as an outcast to be feared.
Also, it is kind of arrogant.
While it’s true that Babbitt frequently composed in a serial style, which might be off-putting to some coming to it for the first time, his music is often fairly lucid, without undo congestion and with a minimum of soul-crushing dissonances. On the contrary, he often achieved a paradoxical simplicity under the guise of complexity.
In the 1960s, Babbitt became interested in electronic music, apparently for its rhythmic precision, as opposed to any unusual timbral considerations. I find it endearing that he was also fond of jazz and musical theater and that late in life he enjoyed a friendship of sorts with film composer John Williams. (They bonded over Bernard Herrmann.) His one-time student, Stephen Sondheim, characterized him as “a frustrated show composer.”
Babbitt himself was a saxophonist. In 1946, he penned a musical, “Fabulous Voyage,” a retelling of Homer’s “The Odyssey.”
Yes, we all have our off-days, but the lasting impression Babbitt left on his students and colleagues seems to be that he was largely a warm and personable human being. He loved Broadway, beer, and football. Simple pleasures for someone portrayed as so lofty, he didn’t give a hang if you listened.
Babbitt was the recipient of an honorary Pulitzer Prize in 1982. He died in Princeton in 2011, at the age of 94.
Listen to “Penelope’s Night Song” from “Fabulous Voyage” and tell me if it seems to you like the product of a rampaging monster.
“Composition for Twelve Instruments” (1948):
“Reflections” (1974) for piano and synthesized tape:
Milton Babbitt on electronic music:
John Williams talks Babbitt in The New Yorker
If you’re interested in learning more about Princeton’s important role in the history of computer music and haven’t done so yet, do check out this podcast, produced by the Princeton University Engineering Department.
I profiled the podcast’s creator, Aaron Nathans, in September for the Princeton weekly U.S. 1.
A refresher on “Milton the Monster”
Happy birthday, Milton Babbitt!
