Perspectives of New Music articles from June 1997

Perspectives of New Music archives from June 1997

Riemannian variations on a theme by Milton Babbitt.(A Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt)
June 22, 1997... 1. Voice from the back of the room: Professor Babbitt, in "Responses: A First Approximation," which, you will recall, appeared in Perspectives of New Music 14, no. 2 and 15, no. 1 (Spring-Summer/Fall-Winter, 1976): 3-23, you wrote (11-12),...

Babbitt and Stravinsky under the serial 'regime.'.(A Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt)(composers Milton Babbitt and Igor Stravinsky)
June 22, 1997... It is a great honor and a personal pleasure to participate in this Symposium in honor of Milton Babbitt.(1) Babbitt's work, his "thinking in and thinking about music," have so profoundly shaped my own work and the field in which I work, the...

What's the use of the twelve-tone system?(A Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt)
June 22, 1997... The title of my paper threatens to spoil a celebratory occasion with an obstreperous challenge to the life's work of the guest of honor. No doubt it would be reassuring for me to insist that in asking "what's the use?" I am only toying with the...

Rigors of subjectivity.(A Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt)(musical analysis)
June 22, 1997... I don't write twelve-tone music. My theoretical work is not objective or scientific. I didn't go to Princeton. And yet Milton Babbitt has influenced my thinking profoundly and pervasively. I am pleased to have this opportunity to honor him. ...

Milton Babbitt's 'Three Theatrical Songs' in perspective.(A Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt)(composer)
June 22, 1997... Many of us here know Milton Babbitt in several ways, some of which are being celebrated today. Milton Babbitt as songwriter for the American musical theater is perhaps a lesser known figure, but one who is nevertheless remarkable - which is...

Listening to Milton Babbitt's electronic music: the medium and the message.(A Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt)
June 22, 1997... Few composers of electronic music in the 1960s took Marshall McLuhan's slogan "the medium is the message" literally. If considered at all, the statement was best appreciated as an invitation to focus attention on the contingencies between a...

Still being an American composer: Milton Babbitt at eighty.(A Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt)
June 22, 1997... Six years ago, as I was finishing a manuscript on the music of Milton Babbitt, he sent me the opening pages of a new piece for seven instruments. My heart leaped as I read through them, both because the music itself was dazzling and because the...

Babbitt - introduction.(A Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt)(composer Milton Babbitt)
June 22, 1997... Some time around the late 1960s I was teaching a seminar on music theory in the library at Stony Brook. One day we were going over in class Milton's article "The Structure and Function of Musical Theory," using the library's copy of a book...

A response.(A Symposium in Honor of Milton Babbitt)(response to articles by Stephen Soderberg, Joseph N. Straus, Joseph Dubiel, Marion Guck, Allen Forte, Robert Morris, Andrew Mead and David Lewin, in this issue)
June 22, 1997... Had I but known, that rainy day in May as I sat in a refurbished but still tradition-soaked Coolidge Auditorium listening to a day-long succession of papers to which I - fatigued and famished - could add only a few casual comments and an...

The influences of Yugoslav folklore on two contemporary Balkan composers: Vojin Komadina and Ivan Jevtic.
June 22, 1997... Not until the end of the nineteenth century, when the nationalistic movements were fading in importance throughout Europe and when international music was at a point of fatigue and exhaustion, did there arise the first serious and artistically...

A body without organs: three approaches - Cage, Bach, and Messiaen.(body united with the divine; composers John Cage, Johann Sebastian Bach and Olivier Messiaen)
June 22, 1997... The full flowering of the Body without Organs is not the "hypochondriac body . . . the paranoid body . . . the schizo body . . . [or] the drugged body,"(1) nor is it even the transcendent state achieved through alienation of the organic strata....

Open letter to Hans Werner Henze.(composer)
June 22, 1997... Dear Hans Werner Henze, In your book, Die englische Katze: Ein Arbeitstagebuch 1978-1982 (The English Cat: A Working Diary, 1978-82), I find myself labelled as "representative of 'musica negativa'" (a term which, in a footnote, you...

Atonal embellishment: an application of subaggregate chains.
June 22, 1997... Sometimes a piece requires a slowing of the compositional action, an expansion or extension from within of a particular moment. Consider Example 1.1. [Musical Expression Omitted] Whatever the process that got me to this place, let us...

Some remarks on 'Odds and Ends.'.(musical piece)
June 22, 1997... The following remarks about my piece Odds and Ends are offered to explain its genesis and describe its compositional structure. These observations are meant neither to stand for an analysis of the composition nor to suggest any specific way to...

Errata.(correction to 'On Proportions' 'Perspectives of New Music' vol. 34, no. 2, and Brian Fennelly's 'Monogram' 'Perspectives of New Music' vol. 35, no. 1)(Correction Notice)
June 22, 1997... Corrections for Volume 34, no. 2, are as follows: In Matthew Greenbaum's translation of Stefan Wolpe's "On Proportions": Example 13, Piano 1, measure 2, last quarter note: [E.sub.4] requires a natural sign. Example 19, Piano 1, measure...

Errata.(correction to 'Monogram,' vol. 35, no. 1)(Correction Notice)
June 22, 1997... The Editors of Volume 34, no. 2, and Volume 35, no. 1, sincerely apologize to readers and authors for any inconveniences caused by errors which appeared in the journal.