Cygnus Ensemble

Of course, this is a silly line of questioning because Babbitt is a practical musician, I conclude in the end. It was Mr. Babbitt himself who encourages us to think about positivism, and I oblige.

Positivism in the arts is perhaps a reaction to antinaturalism. And a second, more ferocious wave of antipositivism followed Milton Babbitt. However we might characterize Babbitt’s music, the reactions to it seem antipositivistic in one way or another. If positivism is a reaction to antinaturalism, one might take Babbitt for a naturalist, yet I remember a conversation I had with Mr. Babbitt that suggests that he is not a naturalist. We were at his favorite Princeton hamburger joint, The Annex. I was yaking about fractals and Mr. Babbitt made a point of saying that his music is not fractal. He is interested in the relationships between big things and small things. This does not make his music fractal. He said Jon Dawe’s music is fractal. For fractal music I should go to Dawe, and I did. Charles Wuorinen’s music is also fractal. I remember Mr. Wuorinen saying that he’s not at all a mystical type, but he does get excited about fractals because the world is fractal, the universe is fractal (insofar as we are convinced by Mandelbrot’s stunning work in this area). This is a naturalist stance, and my conversation with Mr. Babbitt suggests that he opts out of it. Perhaps he is wary of the inflation that attends the embrace of nature, that shallow introjection that can often be seen.

All of my conversations with Mr. Babbitt suggest that he is not interested in extramusical dialogues. (I’ll recount some other conversations below.) Why should a contextualist need extramusical dialogues? Here lies the tension between contextualists and antinaturalist/antipositivists. The latter thrive in culture, and their music loves to make cultural and other references. Contextualists create the culture of avoiding (reference to) culture.

There is a mystery here. Somehow Babbitt behaves like a naturalist. He is a primary thinker, not an antithetical one, which is to say he does not try to go against the grain. Perhaps when he was younger he got a kick out of being difficult, but overall, he goes with the grain, even if he has a taste for rich (dense) textures. The new complexity movement is antithetical. It seems to thrive on doing the impossible, and going against the grain. It is more a rebour than Babbitt by a long shot. Babbitt is like Goethe or Tolstoy (before his religious conversion), Ferneyhough is like Schiller or Dostoyevsky. (This analogy adapted from from Mann’s essays on Goethe.) I am asserting that Babbitt’s music is grounded. You’ll say his music is grounded in positivism, but I say no, it’s grounded in a sound musical sensibility, and a great understanding of the musical possibilities that can be found in combinatorial arrays. Music is the ground wherein the positivistic faculties may unite and be made one with the human, if you wish. I’m sure the notion of being grounded in a musical sensibility is a formal tautology, but I don’t know how to avoid it.

Musical craft is broadly positivistic, yet it has always been applied toward musical ends, which cannot be reduced to anything so simple as clarity or obscurity. With the advent of radical antipositivism in the arts, craft becomes sneaky. The expressionists were antipositivistic (that is, I have read of them complaining about positivism. This question may remain open.), yet Schoenberg still had a traditional attitude toward craft. Sumptuous obscurity may be had through craft. Ravel and Debussy, on the other hand, are sneaky about their craft. I remember Dr. Robert Levin saying that the Debussy Trio for fl, vla, harp is unanalysable, meaning that it invited (Roman numeral) analysis and then defied it. Sneaky and aromatic are Ravel and Debussy.

Antipositivistically disposed artists are openly cultural and may be sneaky about their craft. Positivistic artists are openly concerned with craft and may be sneaky about culture. Positivistic artists will be interested in writing the greatest fugues or plumbing the deepest secrets (musical secrets!) of combinatorial arrays.

Here Babbit’s life becomes interesting. From one vantagepoint (the vantagepoint of a radical antipositivist) an artistic interest in objective reality seems altogether inhuman. Babbitt’s outward emphasis on craft touches buttons. Certain of Babbitt’s comments have pushed those buttons, hard. Spreading much like a conspiracy theory, Babbitt became the Spock archetype, the inhuman human, 10 years before Star Trek. It is not to be encouraged. Yet this is the way we swing from one generation to the next.

Antipositivists and antinaturalists are relativists because they are skeptical of the ability of one person to understand another, let alone one culture to understand another. It is not that the positivist espouses a universal culture. It is that when one capitulates to objective reality, the objective is universal. I find major and minor triads warrantably assertable realities. I find all the trichords warrantably assertable realities. This was one of Babbitt’s great and most successful projects, to make us embrace the equal standing, as warrantably assertable realities, of all the other trichords, in addition to the well worn major and minor triads. Music is not a universal language, but that which is objective in music is universal.
Practical Babbitt

When the ii chord receives a dorian inflection; when the IV chord gets a mixolydian inflection–Babbitt figured out how to do the equivalent with 12 tone aggregates in counterpoint with one another. In doing so, the row is so far in the background that the music does not sound anything like Schoenberg anymore. If there is anything that might emerge as a fresh common practice, this is it.

Babbitt and neoplatonist musical dialogues, from, another conversation:

I was very interested at one time in all the neoplatonic precepts that have found their way into music, things like “as above, so below”, etc. I was discussing this with Mr. Babbitt. I got around to the subject of Scipio’s Dream, and Mr. Babbitt cut me short saying, “I’ll Scipio that”. Thinking back on this now I sense that it has been an ongoing project of Mr. Babbitt to purge music of these dialogues. A great advantage of having done with neoplatonist/masonic dialogues is that they are all grossly misogynistic. Also, such dialogues are all European. Contextualism is Babbitt’s approach to Emersonian self-sufficiency, it defines Babbitt’s America.
Annals of antipositivism:

from Charles Baudelaire’s The Double Room—->

No artistic abomination on the walls. Compared with pure dream, with unanalyzed impression, all definite, all positive art, is blasphemy. Here everything has the sufficient clarity and the delicious obscurity of harmony.

From Baudelaire’s The Eyes of the Poor

First lines:

Ah! You want to know why I hate you today. No doubt it will be easier for you to understand than for me to explain.

Last lines:

How difficult it is to understand each other, my angel. How incommunicable is thought, even between lovers!

Rimbaud complicates the picture:

Here is Brian Stableford paraphrasing and quoting Rimbaud—>

[…Rimbaud had preached] living beyond the limits of good and evil and attempting to accomplish a “rational disordering of the senses”.

–William Anderson