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Abstract
This essay considers some specific examples, as well as the general idea, of adapting and transforming Babbitt’s compositions, especially cross-stylistically (to traditional chord-melody texture jazz, to improvised electronic idioms, to late-Romanticism, and to algorithmically generated textures). These unorthodox activities shed new light on the implications of some of the most central aspects of Babbitt’s theorising and compositional systematics (such as hexachordal combinatoriality, all-partition arrays, and superarrays), making these potentially arcane facets easier to imagine, comprehend, and hear.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplemental Material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here: http://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.2017186.
Notes
1 See Seo (Citation2021) and Iverson (Citation2021), in this volume.
2 The EDM synth pop rendition is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlv1qkfQCCU An 8-bit electronic rendition is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Udl0QJCL2H4. Constanzo’s A Greater Horror—Semi-Simple Variations is here: https://soundcloud.com/rodrigoconstanzo/a-greater-horror-semi-simple. Ben Norton’s death metal rendition is found here: https://soundcloud.com/peculate/semi-simple-variations with a link to his score and a video.
3 I recommend the following renditions of these works:
All Set: https://erikcarlson.bandcamp.com/track/all-set (Erik Carlson production).
Phonemena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hFtnAJtw1Q (Judith Bettina).
Whirled Series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Ew9zmd8Vw (Taylor and Abramovic).
4 MonoNeon’s improvisational rendition of Phonemena can be heard (and seen) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvVbFSaqTAk. His manifesto appears at the end.
5 An audio rendering of Zepeda's arrangement can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/milton-babbitt/zepeda-none-but-the-lonely-flute. I have slightly adjusted some of Zepeda's chords according to my own taste and we have briefly discussed various alternatives.
6 Zepeda's 7-Game Series is based on Babbitt’s Whirled Series array and employs drone (repeated or sustained) pitches whose durations are proportional to their pitch permeation (Mailman Citation2010, Citation2020a) in Babbitt’s array realisation in Whirled Series. All three of these array-based improvisational works (7-Game Series, Cannonball Storm and Ars Aleatoria) by Zepeda were commissioned and premiered by the New Century IMPROV! Ensemble.
7 Steve Beck’s performance of Duet can be heard at https://erikcarlson.bandcamp.com/track/duet.
8 Babbitt (Citation1950, 60).
9 Arrivals and Departures: https://erikcarlson.bandcamp.com/track/arrivals-and-departures.
10 Whirled Series, Around the Horn, the Fifth Quartet, Canonical Form and numerous other four-lyne array works use a row having three consonant triads as discrete trichords, as well as the complete A major scale as a discrete heptachord: C E♭ G G♯ B E D F♯ C♯ A B♭ F.
11 Robert Morris (Citation2012) presents a helpful different perspective on this development.
12 For comparison consider, also of 1956, Semi-Simple Variations, on which Seo (Citation2021) developed her tonal-Romantically styled Variations, Intermezzo, and Fugue. Like his Duet, Babbitt’s Semi-Simple Variations also tends to defy or discourage tonal pitch hierarchy (which Seo remarks on) but for slightly different reasons: The hexachord is a chromatic cluster and Babbitt’s 1950s trichordal array style presents only one aggregate at a time, via four lynes, in similarly direct contact.
13 Dalmonte and Varga (Citation1981, 107). Berio also states this in his programme note to Chemin I.
14 Audio renditions can be heard online here: https://soundcloud.com/joshua-banks-mailman/sets/a-short-history-of-babbaptations.
15 Closer to the other end of Babbitt’s career, the first few seconds of his Arrivals and Departures (1994) quite clearly establishes B♭ major and modulates to E major.
16 Upon receiving my reworking of Babbitt’s Duet, the pianist Steven Beck concurred that ‘it’s amazing how much it sounds like Reger’. The pianist Mari Asakawa remarked that ‘it sounds almost like Mahler’ (personal communication). Regarding Babbitt’s taste for Reger, this is also mentioned by his former student Matt Barber (Citation2021) in this volume.
17 It’s mysteriously suggested because I did find (in Mailman Citation2020a and Citation2020b), that when forging tonal voice-leading reductions of Babbitt excerpts the tonal style most strongly suggested by these is most often Reger. Interestingly, in the present volume Barber (Citation2021) remarks that his own tonal harmonisation of a Stravinsky quotation ‘plays like a Reger modulation exercise’.
18 Links to piano and organ renditions are provided here: https://soundcloud.com/joshua-banks-mailman/sets/a-short-history-of-babbaptations.
19 These aspects of Whirled Series were presented in Mailman (Citation2010) but they are discussed in fairly great detail in Mailman (Citation2020a).
20 The constraints and freedoms of partial orderings are demonstrated in Mailman (Citation2019).
21 This aspect of Babbitt’s array realisation is discussed in Mailman (Citation2020a) in terms of formal functions, and two mathematical models (pitch permeation and lyne part size diversity) in paragraphs [3.3.3.1]–[3.3.6.4] (A prerequisite section [3.1.6.1]–[3.1.6.4.2] discusses pitch permeation as a filtering rule.)
22 This differentiation, and how it arises from array features, is demonstrated in Mailman (Citation2020a).
23 Bubble Babbitt 1 can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/joshua-banks-mailman/bubbly-babbitt-version-1; and Bubbly Babbitt 2 can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/joshua-banks-mailman/bubbly-babbitt-version-2.
24 Such audible differentiations in Whirled Series itself are discussed and demonstrated (including with audio-synchronized computer animation) in [3.3.3.1]–[3.3.6.4] of Mailman (Citation2020a).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Joshua Banks Mailman
Joshua Banks Mailman has taught at Columbia University, NYU, U.C. Santa Barbara, and U. of Alabama. Notable performances include his audio-visual electro acoustic improvisational trio Material Soundscapes Collide (with Arthur Kampela and Rhonda Taylor) at the New York Philharmonic Biennial in 2016, John Cage’s Ryoanji at the Miller Theatre in 2015, and the solo audio-visual Montreal Comprovisation No. 1 at Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice (ICASP) at McGill University in 2012. Besides presenting numerous times at the Society for Music Theory and European Music Analysis Conferences, has also lectured on gagaku at the Japan Society (NYC), on metaphor and temporality at the Society for Music Analysis (UK), on Grisey's Vortex Temporum at IRCAM (Paris), and on flux and form for the Symposium (SIMPOM) of Brazilian Studies in Music (Rio de Janeiro). He researches form from flux: dynamic form, creates interactive audio-visual computer music, and writes on Schoenberg, Crawford Seeger, Carter, Babbitt, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Lucier, Ashley, Grisey, Saariaho, and others, as well as metaphor, narrative, improvisation, and phenomenology. In 2015, he appeared on ABC News Nightline, TV segment Why Some Songs Make Us Sad explaining emotional response to pop songs. Besides contributing chapters to several scholarly books, such as the Oxford Handbook of Spectral Music, his writings appear in Music Analysis, Music Theory Spectrum, Sonic Studies, Tempo, Psychology of Music, Music Theory Online, Open Space Magazine, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, SMT-V, and Perspectives of New Music. www.joshuabanksmailman.com.