Milton Babbitt, Composition for 12 instruments, ensemble conducted by Ralph Shapey

Completed in 1948, this is one of Babbitt's earliest works in which the formation and transformation principles of the 12-tone pitch class system were applied to other musical dimensions, particularly the temporal. Other pieces notable for the same reason are his "Three Compositions for Piano" and "Composition for Four Instruments." Although in a single movement, "Composition for 12 instruments" divides obviously and externally into two sections, which are complimentary insofar as the explicitly presented materials of one function as the source material for the other.

Milton Babbitt, Professor of Music at Princeton University, also has been a member of the faculties of the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, The Berkshire Music Center (Tanglewood), and the Princeton Seminar in Advanced Musical Studies. His honors include a Joseph Barnes Prize, a New York Music Critics' Circle Citation, an Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a member of the Committee of Direction of the Electronic Music Center of Columbia and Princeton Universities.

[Notes adapted from the son-nova LP release]

Conductor Ralph Shapey was well known both as composer and conductor. He studied composition with Stefan Wolpe and violin with Emanuel Zeitlin. As a composer, his honors included honorable mention for the George Gershwin Award, a Frank Huntington Beebe Award, an Italian Government Grant, and a Brandeis University Creative Arts Award.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Milton
• Babbitt
• twelve
• Ralph
• Shapey

[tdsthomas]

organman52 - bitter again. 

[musicmaven6]

I'm sorry I wasn't clear..the opening sequence of the first 5 or so paintings are what I'm interested in....

[musicmaven6]

This is so beautiful. Can you tell me who did the paintings.

[PJinBston]

"Milton Babbit, Protessor . . . . " That says it all. This is academic exercise. As opposed to an artistic endeavor. Call it a sonic construction if you like. It's not music. Never will a professor give us any music of value.

[matchboxmatt]

But no, go ahead and ignore what I have to say because I actually invested myself in the scores and found out for myself. People have dedicated their lives to studying the scores and the history and outlined it for us, and you're calling it bullshit because it's in a book and you can't accept that music that challenges the formulas you find so beautiful have some significance.

Hilarious that you even have Messiaen on your page since he wrote the first integral serialist piece in existence.

[matchboxmatt]

@organman52 Ha, so I'm the fool for actually making an effort to know what I'm talking about? How about you do yourself a favor, practice what you preach and study the music yourself. It's visible any of the music you call "the Masters": you can see experimentation and growth from a lifetime of work. I'm hardly saying anything radical. Anyone with half a brain knows that progress isn't spontaneous in ANY medium. People didn't just wake up and have inherent knowledge of counterpoint.

[organman52]

@matchboxmatt You sound as if you were THERE. The only 'place' you have been is as an adherent to what OTHERS have asserted - however, flimsy their assertions are.

[organman52]

@matchboxmatt Again, you are simply parroting what those awful history books spew. LISTEN to the music, STUDY its structure. STOP repeating what others have said. TRUST the composers. Do NOT trust the 'experts.'

[matchboxmatt]

The only person you probably have described is Mozart because he was a child prodigy. Everyone else worked rigorously in order to achieve any semblance of success. Brahms was obsessed with Beethoven in his early career and took several years to write his first symphony because he thought Beethoven already perfected it. It was only after copious amounts of writing that he was able to get out of that mindset and produce music with his own voice. Debussy, Wagner: they didn't happen overnight.

[matchboxmatt]

@organman52 Wait, what? Are you aware of music history at all? Haydn didn't just magically become a master composer of symphonies, he was literally isolated with an orchestra most of his life and contracted to write hundreds of pieces for the string orchestra and baryton. Listen to his early music and you'll realize how it was basically copy & pasted Baroque. It was his experimentation over several years that began the Classical era.