Who Cares If You Listen?

Excerpts from the famous 1958 article by Milton Babbitt, "Who Cares If You Listen?" accompanied by Babbitt's 1987 snare drum solo, "Homily", performed here by Peter Jarvis.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• drum
• solo
• High
• Fidelity
• new
• music
• who
• cares
• if
• you
• listen
• Babbitt

[maraboov]

I'm not completely pleased with my previous comments. They kind of made me even more confused than I was in the first place. Sorry about the rant...

Anyway, another thing I wanted to say, is that thanks to youtube, contemporary music has gained a much larger audience than before. I actually posted a video of a brand new composition by a student from the school I go to, and it's already been viewed by about 30 people. I wonder what Babbitt would think of that!

I guess I'll shut up now :P

[NewMusicXX]

I think your comments are very insightful! Babbitt's article is provacative and thought-provoking, and seems to generate a lot of comments. My sense is that he is simply reacting to critics who dismiss his music because audiences generally don't (or didn't at that time) seem to like it. I think in the intervening years have increased the appreciation for his and all kinds of modern music.

[NewMusicXX]

I was reading the liner notes for a Miles Davis CD recently. The author noted that Davis frequently turned his back on the audience, almost never announced the songs, and in general seemed to show disdain and contempt for his audience. The conclusion drawn by the writer of the liner notes was that Davis was expressing the attitude that the artist should "do as he pleased", indifferent to the desires or needs of the audience. I think Babbitt is basically conveying the same sentiment.

[NGS712]

NewMusic: It's interesting you say, 'the attitude that the artist should "do as he pleased", 'cause it seems that whenever an artist [whether composer, filmmaker, writer, etc.] does so there are complaints of 'pretentiousness' and 'self-indulgence'.

I'm not an expert in any of these fields, but I'd say that to be a great artist it almost requires a bit of 'indulgence'. Afterall, why shouldn't one try to use their talent to the best of their ability?

I apologize if this is a bit random. :D

[NewMusicXX]

Thanks - I agree completely. Well said.

[lorenzarthur91]

-the second reason is, i think, that new music is veeeeeery different to everything we hear outside a concert hall. There is rarely atonal filmmusic, for example.

- probably, an interest of new music (for example, works with noises) does not occur if you are not spending quite a lot of time in music. It something which occurs if you want to deal with the extrems. new music is extreme music, often as extreme as possible. That is a logical consequence of the evolevement of music.

[NewMusicXX]

2. The broader point is that, to the extent that there is a "crisis" in new music due to its failure to attract a wider audience, it is not because the audience fails to understand modern music (they don't understand the music they like). The uninformed listener generally likes only what is familiar. As Ives rightly observed, listeners want to put their ears "in an easy chair" and go to sleep.

[threviatghei]

I don't think a person needs a musical preparation to understand "new music". I have no idea of what the compositions methods are, but i find pieces like "Dammerschein" by Xenakis as moving as something by Chopin might be.

[Barbapippo]

The comparison with mathematics seems to me completely out of point, for two reasons: 1) it's false that the layman of, say, XIX century understood maths, he didn't; but he appreciated Brahms; 2) appreciating art is not just a matter of knowledge, otherwise Saint Saens would have not totally misunderstood and scorned Stravinsky and Debussy as he did.

[alexandergreenb]

I think his contention that the music is produced at negative monetary gain is only true if you believe it to be the case that professorships are extrinsic to the profession of composer. Since the people who make this music tend to have lecturer positions or (less often) tenure-track jobs, I would say that their music is making them money, just not directly. If it were left entirely to the market, there would be no experimental music anymore.

[Caramellatta]

"Understand" and "enjoy" are not entirely synonymous, although the former can really aid the latter. I don't think music is purely only a science or that its evolution should be guided by progressiveness alone. The greatest works of music (which often happen to be the best-loved) were inspired, I believe (maybe wrongly), by the desire to express something- an idea, a sound, an image, an emotion, or a purely musical thought. New forms/ tonalities/ methods of playing are just tools to get there.

[DerangedRanger1]

@LesbianStraightGay That is a simplistic and ideologically biased analysis. There were many reasons that the USSR failed: it was a fascist totalitarian state that repressed people. According to the Reagan mythology, it was the arms race and the loss in Afghanistan.

You also make the mistake of pretending you know "reality."

Do you know that it is possible to have communist economy within a democracy? Czechoslovakia was to be the first until the Soviet Army repressed that in 1968.

[LesbianStraightGay]

@DerangedRanger1 The idea of competition is the law of the market economy. Competition may not seem to be humanistic, but we have to face the reality. The Soviet Union failed because they tried to remove competition. Mankind is not mature enough yet to appeal to some high moral standards.

[DarkwingScooter]

@Barbapippo Maybe the correct term for "musicians music" should be "eye music", since that is the correct historical correlate.

[DarkwingScooter]

@Barbapippo I think the comparison between Babbit-esque art music and pure mathematics IS apt. But an average 19th century educated person could understand the physics of the day just as he could understand Brahms.

What is pathological is the substitution of pure mathematics for applied, musical experiment of Babbit's kind, for art music.

Both pure and applied math have their place, and both "musicians music" and art music. But they are not interchangeable.

[DerangedRanger1]

@LesbianStraightGay I disagree with most of what you say there. I do not think that competition is necessarily good - or maybe you prefer developing war technologies so that we can kill each other. I think you ned to reappraise your value system.

[LesbianStraightGay]

@AyumuVanguard I didn't say that the US government was terrible.I just said that greed was not always a primal drive behind the government. But of course, if we generalize our life then almost every person is more or less greedy.

[LesbianStraightGay]

@DerangedRanger1 Well, maybe you are right to a certain degree but I still think that it's much better than nothing. At least the situation is better than almost anywhere else. Let alone the fact, that science gives a competetive advantage to the country.

[DerangedRanger1]

@LesbianStraightGay You seem to be quite naive. Governments are about power and the want of power is a greedy act. Moreover, most Western governments seem to be controlled largely by businesses and this is especially true in the United States. You understand what lobbyists do correct? You understand that large corporations fund our major party political candidates and advertise them for free on their "news?" You understand the concept of the military-industrial complex as outlined by Eisenhower?