ON THE PURPOSE OF COMPOSITION

a reaction to Milton Babbitt's article, "Who Cares if You Listen?"

Christopher Palestrant, D.M.A.

From the very title of his article - added by an editor, but apropos - Milton
Babbitt has, at best, demonstrated that his field is not the one in which I work. At
worst, he shows an utter negligence for the fundamental purpose of his art.
What is the nature of music? What distinguishes it from the other arts? Unlike a
painting, a work of music cannot be perceived instantly as a whole. It is a
duration-sensitive art, and must be experienced through a given period of time.
Unlike literature or theatre, music is predominantly a nonverbal art. Language is,
inherently, a reduction of thought. To "put an idea into words" is to reduce it to a
process of reason. Music allows us to connect directly with human passion. This
statement will alienate all musicologists: analysis of music is also a reduction.
Once we return a piece to its compositional elements, we lose some of its
emotional power in favor of gaining intellectual power. True, understanding the
structure of a piece may allow us to "appreciate" it more. It may connect a piece
to its historical ancestry, showing the influence of previous work. It allows us to
know when a composer is deviating purposefully from a formula. It may even
allow us to rationalize that the complex structure of a piece compensates for its
lack of visceral impact, but it cannot replace that transcendent connection a
listener may have with the performance of a piece. A listener need not know the
root movement of a deceptive cadence or a German sixth chord to be surprised
by the deviation from harmonic expectations. The effect is the same with or
without the knowledge of why it works. Babbitt is wrong in touting the
advantages of being able to make "heavier demands upon the training of the
listener"- the emotional affect of music both precedes and transcends its analysis.
Furthermore, music is inherently a collaborative art. A composer is dependent
upon the performer as cocreator. Does a piece of music "exist" wholly on the
page? Music lives only in the duration of its performance. When a skilled
musician reads the music, they might "hear" it in their head- but they are still
providing an internal realization of the score. The experience of music is different
in each performance. In Japan, the Waki actor in a Noh play will have the
traditional lines, music and blocking memorized for a play, and present a given
piece with a given cast only once in their lifetime, predominantly unrehearsed,
for a given audience. They understand that each performance is truly unique, a
product of that gathering of people. Music is the same. Its effect is dependent
upon the performers and the audience as much as upon the composer. Even in
electronic music, where the composer and their medium may all be the creative

process of a single person- the listener is a cocreator. The experience of a piece of

music will differ upon each realization- even if it is a single person listening to a
prerecorded tape.
Babbitt implies that in popular song, the qualities of dynamics, timbre- in fact
everything but melodic interval- are "not germane." In this, he is especially
wrong. Though these qualities may vary between performances of a certain piece,
they are integral to the impact of the music. In Babbitt's own work, he includes
passages where the dynamic shifts from note to note. Unlike metronome
markings, which are specific to the tenth of a second, dynamic marking are
entirely relative to a live performer, based as much on the performer's perception
of the "mood" of a piece as upon the other dynamic marks surrounding it. More
simply: your mezzo-piano will inevitably be different from mine.
Babbitt resents critics who dismiss the categories "popular" and "serious" music.
If he examined the purpose of music, he might embrace the argument. Music is
an artistic form of human expression. Its purpose is to be a catalyst for
communication. If the layman, as Babbitt disdains, is unfit to dislike a piece of
"serious" music, then Babbitt is closing off the communicative process- and
should not have an audience to begin with. Babbitt's crisis, like that of many of
his multiserialist contemporaries, is that he usually fails to communicate on the
visceral level at all. True, he uses many complex mathematical algorithms to
derive core elements of his music: rhythm, dynamic, pitch. However, by adhering
to "the formula," he has actually relinquished artistic control over the final
product. By using his time-point system, for example, the metrical attack of his
notes is given to the equation. If his ear told him that, emotionally, the piece
needed to arrive at a downbeat there, he would have to (a) ignore the instinct, (b)
rewrite the formula, changing the score preceding the moment, and likely
dissolving the need for that downbeat, or (c) abandon the system. The latter,
Babbitt, who can justify every note in every serialist piece that he has written,
would not do.
What, then, is a composer's task? Is he to create a process for creating music?
Surely, that is a creative act by itself. Or, is the composer responsible for the
completion of a piece, including its emotional impact from measure to measure?
Without this, is the process not an exercise, a self-indulgent exploration of what
music might be, without regard to what it is? Do we not call the finding of a
structure, a generative formula, precomposition? A composer must be humble.
Without both a medium and a listener, they are like an incomplete circuit: the
energy has been spent, but it has no effect. Compromise is not unprofessional in a
composer, as he suggests, but essential to the art.

We face a world rapidly losing patience for new music. Orchestras rarely
program a premiere in their season. Those that do survive are small works:
overtures or even fanfares. Chamber groups have divided into the traditional and
the "new music" groups, with little meeting ground. The new-music procurers
deny, even scorn their roots; the traditionalists cannot fathom their descendants.
The audience has left us, retreating almost one hundred years to find music that
speaks to them. This is, at least in part, our own doing. Twelve-tonalists,
atonalists, serialists and multiserialists have treated their audience most
contemptuously, assuming that any disfavor is a shortcoming. They cry out for
music that moves them, surprises them, connects to their own passions. We must
return to them: they are our partners. We have lived far too long in the void.