Babbitt: Composition for Twelve Instruments

Composition for Twelve Instruments

Milton Babbitt (1916- )

A native of Philadelphia, Milton Babbitt was brought up in Jackson, Mississippi. As a teen ager he learned several instruments, and was active in jazz ensembles, as well as showing skills as a composer of popular songs. At the age of fifteen he entered the University of Pennsylvania, intending to study mathematics (reflecting an influence from his father’s work as an actuary), but soon transferred to New York University, where he studied composition. A unique aspect of Babbitt’s coming of age as a musician in the 1930s was his interest in the 12-tone works of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern in an era when American musicians took little note of those composers, when performances of their works were rare, recordings non-existent, and even published scores were hard to come by. Babbitt’s lifetime association with Princeton dates from three years’ study under Roger Sessions which led to an appointment to the music faculty at the university in 1938. (He also was a member of the Mathematics faculty from 1942-45.) His career as a composer of distinction dates from the late 1940s, when his preoccupation with serial composition led Babbitt to write some of the earliest studies in English on the subject. In 1947 appeared his landmark “Three Compositions for Piano,” in which there is not only a structured tonal element (the “twelve tones”), but likewise a rigorous organization of other elements (rhythm and durations, for example). Always a multi-faceted musician, Babbitt wrote some film scores in the late 1940s, and even an unsuccessful Broadway musical. (He has never been ashamed of the “pop music” side of his musical activities….and he is happy to number among his pupils no less a figure than Stephen Sondheim!)

Babbitt has been the recipient of countless awards and honors, has been a prolific lecturer and writer on music, and is perhaps best known, even to those who have never heard his music, as a pioneer figure in the area of so-called “electronic” (or “synthesised”) music, especially in the 1950s when RCA invited him to take the lead in developing what became the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Center in New York. In 1961 he composed “Vision and Prayer” for soprano voice and synthesiser (using recorded tape), followed in 1964 by one of his best-known compositions, “Philomel,” composed for the same resources. More recent works include several important chamber works, and a Second Piano Concerto, given its premiere by Robert Taub with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under the direction of James Levine, which will be heard again during the coming year.

The Composition for Twelve Instruments is described by the composer himself in a characteristically brisk and tartly humourous commentary:

“Composition for Twelve Instruments was composed in 1948, and was scheduled for a succession of performances, all of which were canceled due to the presence of a guitar in the work, and an absence of any guitarist who, in those pre-Starobin days, could follow a conductor, for although the guitar part in itself was not difficult, its position in the ongoing rhythmic ensemble required a guitarist who could at least respond correctly to the cues of a conductor . Finally, in 1954, I substituted a harp for the guitar, but the difference in the capacities of the harp from those of the guitar led me to revise the work to the extent that it became a recomposition. This version was performed without incident and subsequently recorded. This is the version being heard at this performance; the original version has never been performed.

The seven minute, one movement work may be perceived as consisting of two complementary
“sections,” in that the “foreground”, immediate materials of one constitute the “background”, latent elements of the other. More informally, the work may be heard as a composition for a single instrument possessing a variety of timbral resources.

For some listeners a point of reference in approaching this composition may be the pointillistic textures found in the later works of Anton Webern---works which the musical world at large was just beginning to comprehend at the time when the Composition for 12 Instruments was written. The work sets out a fascinating array of instrumental colors, in a succession of individual tones passing from one player to another, always with its own dynamic marking. There are a great range of registers, attacks and shadings, such as the use of mutes, tremolo strings, flutter-tonguing in the winds---and a highly original treatment of silence in counterpoint with sound. The spiraling effect of single pitches begins to lead to overlapping instrumental entries, with quickening activity, and increasing intensity. Repeated notes begin to appear, followed by longer, sustained pitches, and a quieting of the musical atmosphere. By mid-point a thickening of sonority, with longer, layered, sustained tones leads to the first of several brief moments of “tutti” (with all 12 instruments heard together), gaining ever more in intensity. This ebb and flow of instrumental timbres becomes a “tapestry” in which (as the composer suggests) the contrasting elements may be heard as if becoming a “single instrument,” moving forward to achieve a full-throated conclusion.