Babbitt was employed by RCA in the fifties and is credited with the invention of the electronic synthesizer.  He also was a very gifted composition teacher with prominent students such as Paul Lansky, Mario Davidovsky, and Stephen Sondheim.

Hearing of Babbitt’s death, I began to think of his musical legacy and it left me with mixed feelings. 

In my opinion, Babbitt’s most important contribution to music was the invention of the synthesizer.  This has fundamentally transformed music since its creation, leading to parallel tracks of progress in the electronic and popular musical worlds.  A partial list of the types of music that sprang up as a result of pr that can be associated with the synthesizer include new age music, eighties hair-band music, digital sampling, computer music, techno-music, hooked on Bach, etc.  Not to mention the impact of the synthesizer on things like the act of composing or the areas of film music or theater or ‘pit-orchestras’.  Even the apps for the iPhone that allow the lay-user to create music can trace their foundation back to this important invention.

I also appreciate Babbitt’s wide ranging musical interests.  Apparently, he was an avid connoisseur of American musicals, not the typical fare associated with that of a serialist composer.  From what I understand, he did not push his musical views on his students, but was able to help them refine whatever sorts of music they were interested in pursuing.  He also was careful to point out the consequences of a student deciding to write serialist music (including the limitations of performance opportunities and of the dwindling numbers of appreciative listeners such a path entails).

Finally, I value the fact that Babbitt did not change course or sacrifice his musical convictions as a majority of listeners and composers turned away from serial music.  It would have been much easier for him to change with the times, and abandon his predilections for complexist-based music.  I’ve always felt that an artist should go with their gut, and trust their musical instincts to create the music they truly believe in.

But, as I stated before, I have mixed feelings on the legacy of Milton Babbitt. When I first heard his music, in my early twenties, I thought I wasn’t smart enough to comprehend it, that I needed to hone my ear to better understand its internal orderings. So every few years after that, I would give ol’ Milton another try, and I kept coming away from those listening experiences, feeling just as cold and empty as before.

As my ear grew, I began to love, not appreciate, but love the music of Anton Webern. So for me, it’s not that I have a general disdain for serial music, I enjoy it, if I can find some level of access to it and can connect with it.

And with Milt, I could just never find that access point, that welcomed me inside the music and beckoned me to hear more, to experience more.

There are plenty of composers I don’t connect with over the course of history, but for some reason those composers don’t irritate me, the way the Babbitt does. Part of Babbitt’s legacy is that there are legions of young composers that emulate his style, writing music that is overnotated, utterly difficult to perform, and is responsible for the bad rap that ‘new music’ gets with audiences.

I’ve organized many new music concerts in the past few years, and I’ve seen the consequences of Babbitt’s legacy firsthand. Supportive performers, champions of new music, who have agreed to perform at a given concert become alarmed when presented with a ‘Babbitt-like’ work. If they do perform the work, it comes with a price, either directly, through increased performance costs or indirectly, by the refusal of these performers to participate at future new music concerts.

The frustrating part, to me as a composer, is that often times there are different, and much more efficient notational methods of getting a ‘Babbitt-like’ musical effect that don't cause the performers' headaches.  In a solo piece, tempo changes, spatial notation, or simple indications like  ‘quasi recitative’ or 'freely' seem to be much better alternatives than the complex rhythmic nesting (subdivided triplets within a quintuplet) Babbitt employed. 

To me, there seems to be some kind of an agenda behind this sort of hyper-notation. At its best, it’s ‘Look at how smart I am’, at its worst, it’s a coordinated attempt, an unnecessary one, to try to elevate music into some other sort of rigorous academic discipline, like math or science.  Ask Howard Gardner, music is its own type of intelligence, and doesn’t need to be validated intellectually by moving it into one of the other core academic disciplines.  

I think people understand this at some level.  Try asking anyone to make a list of the top ten geniuses of all time. There’s a high likelihood that Mozart’s or Beethoven’s names will make the list.  What more is there to prove?

But the most damaging part of Babbitt’s legacy, is his affect on the audience, and their views toward new music. As long as these schools of thought continue to be perpetuated to young composers, the overall cause of expanding the audience for new music suffers, as more and more people turn away. The comment sheets I’ve collected after performances specifically name the 'Babbitt-like' pieces that irritated the concert goers, many of whom took a chance on a new music concert, and will never come back.

So Babbitt’s legacy is indeed a mixed one – perhaps as his shadow diminishes, the new music scene will progress to a much better place. 

But Milt, life is sure a lot easier with my Yamaha synthesizer.  Thank you for that!