«Being in Time: an experiment in listening to Milton Babbitt» 1 The First Step 1 Babbitt was just eighteen when he first met Schoenberg, in 1934, soon after the great man had stepped off the boat from Europe. 2 Schoenberg s music he had encountered at an even younger age, thanks to his teacher Marion Bauer, and he followed with keen interest how Schoenberg would make his way as a composer in the U.S.: Schoenberg s Fourth Quartet (1937) has remained for him a key work. Indeed, we can measure the richness of the implications and challenges he began finding in it by the length of time that passed a full decade before he produced his op.1, the Three Compositions for piano (1947). During that period, and after, he established a comprehensive understanding of serialism as a musical system, comparable with diatonic tonality in the power and range of relationships it could generate, but quite unlike that earlier system in having no universal principles (such as the function of the dominant seventh chord). In the serial system, rather, relationships are set by the choice and use of the series; they are created by the immediate context. Central to Babbitt s serial practice, as to Schoenberg s, is the treatment of the twelve-note row as a pair of hexachords almost invariably of hexachords such that the second of one row form can be combined with the first of an inverted form to yield a complete twelve-note succession. That is the case here. The six notes above C-D?-D-G?-G-A?, ignoring their order make up a symmetrical group, where one three-note chromatic segment is combined with its transposition through a tritone. Because of this symmetry, the group will furnish an exactly complementary group (E?-E-F-A-B?-B) when it is inverted and transposed through a minor third or a major sixth, or when it is simply transposed through either of those intervals. It is thus a very 1 Bars 1-3. 2 See Milton Babbitt: Words About Music (Madison and London, University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), p.7; this 1
characteristic Babbitt hexachord. One should only add that its placement in this instance, at the very opening of the piece, is not essential. Babbitt s serial operations are concerned not so much with the surface of his music as with the deep background. It is not a matter of using serial techniques to manipulate a motif in open space (as Boulez might do, for instance) but instead of creating a bounded space within which the music can unfold, of defining the basic rules and conditions. Hence Babbitt s disappointment when, having heard that Boulez and other Europeans were exploring ramifications of serialism in the fifties, he discovered that the nature of their work was contrary to his own. However, the serial matrix is not the principal issue here. 3 If we set aside all questions of how Babbitt s serial structures are to be construed, we may, quite naively, attempt to trace a line through a piece, guided only by the musical data immediately to hand. The present piece for solo flute seems appropriate for this exercice, being quite short (about six minutes long) and monophonic, therefore relatively easy to grasp. What follows is an attempt to find a way through the piece, stopping to consider possible meanings and references at certain moments. 4 In this first case we may note, right at the start, the use of extreme registers, which works to line up pitches not as points in a melody but rather as different levels of intensity almost to make pitch a kind of colour. From middle C, the flute s fundamental, there is an immediate lift through more than two and a half octaves to a note, perhaps not incidentally, which is one of the opening note s partials, and which thereby seems to speak from the same source. Apart from middle C, the only note here in a moderate range in the central range of human voices is the D?, which is similarly emphasized by extension. The basic gesture might appear to be a chromatic rise interrupted by a flurry though such a trail would have to be a false one, since the next note, D, does not arrive until the tenth bar, and then without accentuation. Our interpretation, we may be warned, will be by way of mis-steps as well as more positive judgements. But perhaps the mis-steps in some cases will be positive judgements. book is also the source of other biographical details. 3 See Daphne Leong and Elizabeth McNutt: Virtuosity in Babbitt s Lonely Flute, Music Theory Online (www.societymusictheory.org/mto/issues/mto.05.11.1/mto.05.11.1.leong_mcnutt.html). 4 The recording played was that by Rachel Rudich (Koch). 2
2 The Little Souvenir 5 It is time to reveal the title of this little piece: None but the Lonely Flute. That title is, of course, on one level merely descriptive. Nothing is playing here but the flute, which may be judged lonely because it lacks the companions it normally has in an orchestra or ensemble (though it should not forget and in Babbitt s piece does not forget that it also some history as a loner, in works by Debussy and Varèse, with those of Berio and Ferneyhough perhaps less in the forefront of its memory as it plays Babbitt). At the same time, loneliness of a different sort is built into the flute, which can produce only one note at a time (leaving aside, as Babbitt does, multiphonic effects). A piece for solo flute is necessarily monophonic a single line, a line of sound which might even seem to be inviting us to draw through it a line of understanding. Beyond all these literal meanings, however, is the obvious reference to Tchaikovsky s song None but the Lonely Heart a reference that is not just verbal but also musical. For Babbitt to find a kindred spirit in the composer of Eugene Onegin and the Pathétique Symphony might seem surprising, but right at the start of None but the Lonely Heart comes a motif B?-C-C, falling through a minor seventh in the baritone range (minim-crotchet-crotchet in a 4/4 bar) that has distinctly Babbittian qualities, such as have already been noted, of registral leap and note repetition. Raised three octaves, and with its 2-1-1 durational pattern replaced by the rather more irregular 2-5-9, the motif fits in unobtrusively. Indeed, it might have gone unnoticed if the composer had not pointed it out. But there it is. 5 Bar 9. 3
3 The Insistent (and The Secret) 6 There are times when the repetition of single notes, or more often of intervals, goes far beyond the modest Tchaikovskian prototype, as here, where the same high B? is involved. Since Babbitt confines himself almost exclusively to a range of just under three octaves, from middle C to top B (which flautists might judge to be enough, though some go higher), this B? is almost the piece s highest note, a peep at the peak. Its repetitions cannot be ignored, but perhaps the effect is less of repetition (of another, and another) than of return, of switching back (of the same, and the same). It is as if the music snags, catches itself on something and cannot continue its progress (however disorderly) through time. Or to think of it another way, we are jumped back to the same instant before we can go on. The effect is quite different from that of note repetition in, say, Webern s Symphony, Op.21, or Boulez s Second Sonata, or Barraqué s Sonata. Repeating notes in Webern draw lines in crystal boxes; in the Boulez and Barraqué examples they convey, rather, frustration. (Yet notice too, within this sharp storm of time, a stealthy interloper from another past.) 4 That Bb Moment 7 All notes are equal, but some are more equal than others. The importance of Bb of Bb the note, and especially of the highest register Bb has already appeared. Leaving aside the matter of Babbitt s musical initial, we may note that Bb minor is the key of the Tchaikovsky song. And 6 Bars 25-6. 4
now here again is a Bb moment: a phrase that ends twice on the note, in its highly conspicuous treble-staff register, and that, from the upper Bb in the middle bar, includes no note foreign to the key of Bb minor. Moreover, this harmonic smoothening is accompanied by something similar in the rhythmic domain. This may not be too soon to observe that Babbitt s rhythm is rigid with regard to tempo (no accelerandos or ritardandos are marked in the entire piece, as in many others by the composer) but extremely supple in how the beats are marked and subdivided. Such fluidity is virtually a condition of his time-point system, which he developed as a parallel to the twelvenote pitch system: in the simplest instance, a 3/4 bar is considered to contain twelve time-points, at semiquaver intervals, numbered from 0 to 11, just as an octave contains twelve notes. But though Babbitt is indeed following time-point structures in this piece, 8 the system is complicated by the frequent changes of time signature and the many irrational divisions. In addition, notionally strong beats are often unsounded. Questions arise, of course, as to how the marked meters on which the whole time-point system depends are to be defined by the performer, if at all, and how they may be understood by the listener, if at all. But any such understanding can only come after, and through, the experience of the rhythmic surface is highly unstable as unstable as the pitch surface is. Nevertheless, moments of greater stability occur, as here, where a semiquaver pulsation is maintained through four and a half crotchet beats (albeit with some occasional quickening into 3:2 triplets or 5:4 quintuplets), and where at least every other crotchet beat is marked by an attack. There are these drifts where progress through time becomes a little more organized. Just before this example of such a moment, the fluttertongue direction is a rarity in this piece. We are at the furthest remove from Helmut Lachenmann, and again this is typical of Babbitt, this timbral restraint. It is a feature even of his electronic music, in which he uses the new medium not for its freedom but for its precision, and especially for its rhythmic precision. This brings us back to the matter of performance, and of how accurately a real-time musician (as opposed to the composer in the electronic studio) is supposed to realize the notated rhythm. There are implications, too, on the social level. Babbitt took to electronic music as an alternative to the orchestra, given the inability of U.S. orchestras to provide rehearsal time 7 Bars 40-42. 8 See the analysis by Leong and McNutt. 5
sufficient for his music. His abundant output more recently for soloists (by no means only lonely flautists) and small ensembles reflects his discovery of a new musical community in the many expert musicians who, particularly in New York, have been eager to devote themselves to challenging music. 5 Le Chant d Oiseau (hommage à Messiaen) 9 Apart from the quick figurations so typical of the French master, this passage exemplifies again the arrival of a more clearly pulsed, metrical movement through time ( striated time, in Boulez s terms). The birds count in regular values. 6 The Interrupted Serenade 10 Here, not least with the break of pure E minor arpeggiation, is another passage where the music settles into quasi-tonal configurations, within a moderate register (excepting the high E). A rapid, dynamically accentuated three-note figure leaping down through the registers interrupts the melody, but then the song returns. There will be more from that quick fall. 9 Bars 57-60. 10 Bars 80-83. 6
7 The Dance and the End 11 This repetition of the registral tumble, more emphatic, rounds off yet another sequence in which familiar elements melodic gestures leaning towards tonality, plays of notes within a consistent register, approaches to regular pulse and metre come forward. 8 The Shimmering Series 12 Once again, about two-thirds of the way into the piece, the music is limited to a particular 11 Bars 94-6. 7
register, but now to the super-treble, well above normal vocal ranges. Nothing like this happens anywhere else; the moment is a lonely one. To make it still lonelier, it has the exacting dynamic marking of pp this in a range where flautists would expect to be playing loudly, intensely. The effect is ghostly, and does not depend on the ear s ability to count to twelve. Of course, once that count has been made, one may guess that this twelve-note succession is structurally important, as indeed it is. (This is not the place to discuss the role in musical listening of extra-aural information, whether gained from examining the printed music, reading a programme note or whatever. It is enough to note that identifying the series here is different from identifying an F minor triad, which itself is different from noticing a note repetition.) 9 The Outsider 13 Then, after so much time within which this line has bounced up and down within a space having middle C at the bottom, comes this single low B, another instance of loneliness. Even if we have not read the analysis by Leong and McNutt, a lone note may strike us as puzzling. A serial system and so much the more so Babbitt s serial system depends on relationships among entities (pitch classes, time-points, dynamic levels, etc) that remain in constant circulation. An exception can have no meaning in such a system. Yet perhaps here is this note s meaning, in being an exception. And so we may continue to the end, where we will find, as we might have anticipated, the three-note, three-register downward rush. As we do so, we may reflect that this tour has drawn attention to just two dozen bars in a composition of a hundred and sixty. There are more such signal moments that could have been chosen, and, of course, increasing exposure to the music will reveal others yet, and perhaps even link them. Here, though, we should pause. Babbitt has described his music and twelve-note music generally as contextual, yielding its meanings 12 Bars 104-8. 13 Bar 116. 8
only in relation to its own serially created structure and substance. In this treatment, however, we have freely referred to quite other contexts, from the major-minor system, from vocal writing, even from the work of a composer (Messiaen) quite distant from Babbitt. And we have done so from a belief that musical meanings those gained in the experience of listening will be derived so multifariously. We cannot listen to this Babbitt piece in isolation. The flute cannot be so very lonely. To go further, we may find the non-intrinsic meanings coming at us more powerfully and more immediately than those that the music is expressing in and of itself. We may, indeed, hear much of the piece as a dispersed present, a cloud within which meaning remains hidden. Out of this come the moments of recognition. But the tragic irony is that these moments are, to use the terms already introduced, false trails. An F minor triad is meaningless within the system embodied in this work. Yet how can we not hear it? Babbitt, in this piece, creates a universe in which we can make out certain objects, but these turn out to be shadows brilliant, humorous shadows, it may be in a reality whose contours and dimensions remain far less distinct. The sense of being in a new world, but with only old compasses in our hands, may be familiar. So may the sense of being in a system whose rules are opaque. Babbitt wrote this piece in the summer between the First Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The music s liveliness has its sombre side. Paul Griffiths 9