Homage to Milton Babbit

I never cared much for Milton Babbitt’s music. It seemed like a complex mathematical system – completely serial: from pitch order to register to dynamics to notes to rhythms, but where was the music? We learned the systems, and while I understood the technique, it just seemed bloodless and hyper-academic.

Then, 35 years ago, in the first semester of my graduate studies, Milton Babbitt came to speak to our 20th century music class. He brought a recent example of one of his piano pieces in which he used the serial technique he called “semi-combinatoriality”… basically showing how hexachord were permutations of other hexachords. That was the secret to his compositional system. He explained the system, and at the same time – he admired it.

Then it struck me how much he clearly enjoyed the sonic universe he had created: After he explained the way he’d composed his piece, he played a recording of the work. And within a matter of measures he smiled – grinned actually – he swayed with the rhythm, he glowed with pride and pleasure at this 3 minute piece he had made. I realized the joy he derived both from the success of his mathematical system displayed in sound and the emotional thrill of hearing the music he had created.

After our hearing, one of the skeptics in the class asked Dr. Babbitt, “Do you like that?” and in that moment I learned two points of wisdom that changed my life: He said, “The first hearing is always the hardest. You have to teach you ears the ‘language’ and give it the opportunity to appreciate and enjoy it.” And “yes. That’s the most important part of composing in any system: it’s your voice – you have to like it. You owe that to yourself first.”

Several years later, Milton Babbitt was the keynote speaker at my doctoral commencement. I did not have the opportunity then to thank him for the wisdom he brought to my seminar, years before. But I often thought of that day, especially when I write my music. Thank you Dr Babbitt…. You were a great teacher.

The Daily News

Every morning – after I’ve read my email and played a few games of computer solitaire – I take the dogs for a walk. Actually, “walk” is kind of a misnomer; it’s more like a “smell”.

This is a bonding exercise for our little pack: sharing the smells on the morning walk and I am merely there to witness their daily ritual. In their own language they chuckle and gasp at the various smells along the route. They stop at the juniper bush in front and see who’s been by. Each one takes a sniff, and then we move on: “nothing new here… just bunny-poo”. A little further down the road, “Sparky’s already been here.” And “The River of Fur (three New Foundlands) has been by…” Then “Over here! Somebody had chicken for dinner last night!” “Uh-oh, Scruffy’s people forgot to pick up his shit again… Oh, that’s old shit.”

Everybody checks it out. Each smell. Gabi studies it in depth, with special interest in rabbit shit and bird droppings. Grreta will smell up one side of a blade of grass and down the other side to identify whoever left their “mark” – and she refuses to move on until she is finished. Bindi is dedicated to the hunt – and when he finds “evidence”, more often just eats it… but not until it’s been thoroughly examined by Gabi and Grreta.

And then! Together they huddle over the scene of a great disaster! Wait, wait! A coyote has been this way! Here is genuine coyote-shit! Red and mottled with bits of bone all in a great, tantalizing pile, right in the middle of the road!!. Grreta takes charge: she smells, she looks around, she reports to the others, they all hover and smell and discuss the pile of shit. Then Gabi goes about 10 feet away, up in the dirt! She’s found the ground all stirred up in a circle and… wait! Rabbit blood! Something happened here! The others join her. This smell is slightly older than the coyote-shit, but … yes, they are related! Same coyote! It’s a killing field – definitely! That Coyote has caught, slain and eaten a rabbit. It appears by the thorough cleanup of the site that the Coyote has a great deal of experience killing and eating rabbits. It is “His Nature”! And what about the rabbit? Are there more? Gabi looks under the pinon tree and in the usual rabbit dens… nothing new there. Grreta looks up in the far distance for signs of the Coyote: could He be walking across the arroyo now? She has spotted them before, and someday she dreams of catching one in the act.

And Bindi? He scruffs the dirt where the rabbit was slain, and then with a flying leap: he rolls in it.

How like in real life.