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.

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.

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