Taking Up Arms With the Warrior Bard

Before reading this, read this.

This is such dogmatically dangerous ground on which to be treading and yet, as a willing heretical participant, there’s so much to say. Where does one begin?

First let us be fair to Milton Babbitt. He didn’t title his article “Who cares if you listen?” That was the editor of the magazine that did that. Okay, that’s it.

I still don’t put much stock in the subject matter of the article. Is composition a highly specific field? Yes. Does that mean it shouldn’t be accessible? No. Even Schoenberg knew that if he was going to write his music using the system he devised that he still had to place an emphasis on clarity. No matter how abstract, his music should be comprehensible to more than just the most highly trained of all composers (about 6 people). One would also be remiss not to mention the incorporation of the human element into Schoenberg’s music. And Webern shouldn’t be blamed, either. His music is incredibly inspired and well crafted. It was the post-WWII serialists who took Webern’s work and codified it to its utmost extremes.

“The sad thing is, this school of thought has become dogmatic for any scholarly composer. If you disagree, you're narrow-minded…what's the point of discussing, if we're not going to really discuss anything? They don't want discussion; they want conformity.” - Tim

"Any attempt to codify musical reality into a kind of imitation grammar (I refer mainly to the efforts associated with the Twelve-Tone System) is a brand of fetishism which shares with Fascism and racism the tendency to reduce live processes to immobile, labeled objects, the tendency to deal with formalities rather than substance. Claude Levi-Strauss describes (though to illustrate a different point) a captain at sea, his ship reduced to a frail raft without sails, who, by enforcing a meticulous protocol on his crew, is able to distract them from nostalgia for a safe harbor and from the desire for a destination.”
-Luciano Berio, Meditation on a Twelve-Tone Horse

I understand that the older generation grew up with this method. We get it. There was no other way. Beyond all this, though, is something that is much more subversive and sinister. Whilst the strictures of academia have loosened in recent years there is still this frighteningly dogmatic adherence to the music/teachings of Babbitt, Cage, Stockhausen and Boulez, even if only in theoretical form, in the upper echelons of academia. I’ve been thinking about this for years. Literally. I have thought for a long time now that the kind of conformity that came to be expected of composers after World War II is dangerous and fascist. You will do it this way! Isn’t this the kind of thinking that started that war in the first place? You will not question. You will acquiesce. The perfect society is a conformist society.

What’s worse is that this attitude developed (and, to a point, persists today) in a time where a lot of interesting things were happening musically outside of Darmstadt. That school basically turned a blind eye to all of it. There is no dialogue between proponents of total serialism and other musics. None. What does exist is merely a monologue which places no value on the influence of popular forms. Are you going to tell me that the likes of Miles Davis, George Gershwin, John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk don’t deserve to be placed with the most brilliant of their academic counterparts? If that’s the case I beg to differ. Furthermore I’m not sure if I would want to be associated with those that might actually think this.

I respect serialism, just as any thoroughly trained composer who learned how to utilize it should. I even enjoy incorporating serial elements into my own compositions from time to time. But I can’t bring myself to surrender all creative control (not to mention my humanity) to a formula that merely expresses one’s intellect and totally discounts one’s personal experiences. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that Babbitt’s music has no value. Like all previous music, it has historical and theoretical value when taken into the whole of musical history. To me total serialism is largely empty and devoid of meaning.

The faculty nearly bit the heads off of anyone who remotely insinuated anything anti-Babbitt. So... what's the point of discussing, if we're not going to really discuss anything? They don't want discussion; they want conformity.

When the subject of Babbitt and his teachings comes up there is no discussion. You accept everything or you are a heretic. When our teachers talk about him all of a sudden there is this reverential tone and he is spoken of as if he were some kind of Promethean figure bringing fire and knowledge to we mere mortals.

Now here's my two cents:

The conformity demanded by the proponents of total serialism amounts to little more than the dogmatic practices of musical terrorists who would rather blow up the entire world for the sake of their empty god than admit that there might be other paths to musical expression that are capable of coexisting. - Brad Fowler

“Alas, this industrialized twelve-tone horse, dull on the outside and empty inside, constantly being perfected and dragged to a new Troy in shadow of an ideological war long since fought and won by responsible minds like Schoenberg, with neither systems nor scholarship for armor!"
-Berio, “Meditations…”