Me and JB go back a ways
“Johnny…it’s like I always told you, you have to give the people what they want…”
“Any idiot could hear that it sounds like the Hammerklavier.”
“Well, we’ll study it then. In the meantime, I have one word for you…. Plastics”
Tutte Le Corde (Complete Babbitt)
Tutte Le Corde(1994), Milton Babbitt
Live Recording, March 6, 2008
Merkin Concert Hall, NYC
This was the first piece of Babbitt’s I ever studied, a few weeks after performing it for the first time I firmly decided to devote the next year(s) of my life solely to studying Babbitt’s music. I didn’t know anything about Babbitt’s compositional methods, had not read any of his essays or the scholarly literature, obviously this had absolutely no bearing on the kind of effects this piece worked on me. I think of this often whenever I encounter the kinds of prejudices and mental handicapping so many people approaching this music labor under.
Even after learning all of the other works this piece remains my favorite, hats off Milton!
Tutte Le Corde — Milton Babbitt by Augustus Arnone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
Minute Waltz (Complete Babbitt)
Minute Waltz(1977), Milton Babbitt
Live Recording, March 6, 2008
Merkin Concert Hall, NYC
Minute Waltz + or – 1/8. It’s mostly in 3/4 but every other measure he alternates between adding or subtracting an eight note. Everyone that talked to me after the concert made a special point to say how much they liked this piece, I’m crowning it a crowd favorite.
Minute Waltz — Milton Babbitt by Augustus Arnone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
Semi-Simple Variations (Complete Babbitt)
Semi-Simple Variations(1956), Milton Babbitt
Live Recording, March 6, 2008
Merkin Concert Hall, NYC
Short but sweet, this little gem, written way back in 1956, is witty and charming and fun to play and hear. He employs the 12 tone system in a decidely Schoenbergian manner in this piece, obviously he was setting his sights on the potentials for hexachordal combinatoriality which would very soon lead to the all-partition array – don’t forget Partitions is only a year away.
Semi-Simple Variations — Milton Babbitt by Augustus Arnone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
Preludes, Interludes, and Postlude (Complete Babbitt)
Preludes, Interludes, and Postlude(1991), Milton Babbitt
Live Recording, March 6, 2008
Merkin Concert Hall, NYC
This is a great piece, written in 1991. It’s a bit lighter than most of the other large-scale piano works. Unlike Tutte Le Corde or Allegro Penseroso this piece goes through a number of different sections, each with a different tempo marking — ranging from quarter=60-quarter=96. The tempos are fairly quick through most of it, though — 72 is about average for the majority of the works, this one is consistently in the upper 80′s and higher. But the texture is overall fairly transparent, I suppose it must have been a conscious thing, though it seems unlike him, but the slower sections definitely tend to be thicker and spread across more registers as well.
Preludes, Interludes, and Postlude — Milton Babbitt by Augustus Arnone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Tableaux (Complete Babbitt)
Tableaux(1974), Milton Babbitt
Live Recording, March 6, 2008
Merkin Concert Hall, NYC
Tableaux(1974) along with Post-Partitions are to my mind the most severe works, the most ‘in your face,’ and the most intimidating and forbidding for players and listeners in his piano output. That’s probably not cool, to introduce a piece that way… Hmmm, it’s a marvellous galaxy of angular, jaunty and jolting flourishes, short and incisive. (ah, better) Seriously, the pace this thing keeps up for 13+minutes is no joke.
Interestingly, although the piece manages to sound among the most complex of his piano works, it’s actually one of the most straightforward, rhythmically. The quarter-note is divided into 12 parts (wanna guess, why?) So all the rhythmic configurations are some variant on 32nd note triplets. On the other hand, the piece seems to occupy 6 different registers covering the entire scale of the piano for better than 80% of its duration. My sister told me that her impression seeing a performance of this piece is like watching ‘kung-fu fighting.’ Funny, but it’s a valid point that the extreme physicality of covering so many registers tends to become a significant aspect of the overall effect, not that Babbitt would’ve bothered wasting 3 seconds thinking about it.
Tableaux — Milton Babbitt by Augustus Arnone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Partitions, Post-Partitions (Complete Babbitt)
Partitions(1957), Post Partitions(1966), Milton Babbitt
Live Recording, March 6, 2008
Merkin Concert Hall, NYC
Partitions(1957) and Post-Partitions(1966) — this is good old-fashioned ’60′s music. Terrifically hard to play, well all his music is more or less, but these two are really asking a lot. Both are marked by a pervasive density arising from numerous contradictory metrical groupings simultaneously presented. The later works are characterized with rapid cycling through contradictory meters as well, but usually either one after the other or two at a time. (with exceptions, naturally) At any rate, in those cases the complexity also arises from maximal diversity but the presentation itself is a bit more transparent. By contrast, these works pervasively feature numerous extremely dense and virtuosic with contradictory metric configurations operating simultaneously. The effect is particularly dense in those cases when they occupy the same register — not an uncommon occurrence. Clouds of sound…
I’m crazy about these gnarly pieces. The main difference between them is that Partitions consistently undermines the quarter note while Post-Partitions constrains its metrical multiplicity to quarter note divisions. The pianist has to be constantly on the sostenuto pedal as there’s usually a mixture of longer note values, and even sustained tones across measures, operating amidst a frenzy of shorter value activity. Sort of like a 14th Century motet.
Partitions — Milton Babbitt by Augustus Arnone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
Post Partitions — Milton Babbitt by Augustus Arnone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
It Takes 12 To Tango (Complete Babbitt)
It Takes 12 To Tango(1984), Milton Babbitt
Live Recording, March 6, 2008
Merkin Concert Hall, NYC
Oh Milton you are such a kidder! Takes 12, I get it.. From the same man who brought you ‘Whirled Series’ and ‘All Set.’ Guess you have to do something to lighten things up considering how seriously those people who object to his music take themselves. Man, music is all games, just like anything else you can do in life , they might as well be scintillating and challenging ones.
At any rate, this is easily the most uniform of his piano works, there are only four dynamics in the whole piece – p, mp, mf, and f. In case you didn’t know that’s NOT true of the other works. There is also a great deal of rhythmic consistency, which tends to group pages at a time into tangible sections. Also not true of the other works, for the most part. That said, the pace and asychronicity of registral and dynamic contrasts is such that the rhythmic uniformity does not result in entirely hegemonious sectional divisions.
It Takes 12 To Tango — Milton Babbitt by Augustus Arnone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Allegro Penseroso (Complete Babbitt)
Allegro Penseroso(1999), Milton Babbitt
Live Recording, March 6, 2008
Merkin Concert Hall, NYC
This is Allegro Penseroso, written in 1999 it is the most recent of Babbitt’s piano works. It was written for Marilyn Nonken, who has a fantastic recording of it out on the CRI label. This piece has something of a special place for me because I heard her play it at the Univ of Illinois back in 2000, which was a particularly formative experience for me. Then, a first year doctoral student, I marveled at this music, had never heard anything like it, or like her(!), and wondered how one manages to play it. 8 Years later and here I am playing all of it. So I began the series with this piece.
Personal history aside, I really feel it’s one of his best, along with Tutte Le Corde. It’s difficult to sum up in a general way how particular Babbitt piano works differ form each other but Allegro Penseroso and The Old Order Changeth share something that sets them a little apart, even from other works of the ’90′s. They somehow have a more or less constant motion to them, not quite so many contradictory metrical relationships as About Time for ex., there’s more a kind of motorized groove to these two somehow.
Allegro Penseroso — Milton Babbitt by Augustus Arnone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
K, here’s another one
Omaggio, no. 4 from Fantasies and Impromptus, Donald Martino
Live Recording, February 21, 2007
Merkin Concert Hall, NYC
hmm, working so far. Too bad the link to subscribe to this feed isn’t a little more prominent.
Here’s a more recent clip from my series “Brahms in the Contemporary Landscape,” also at Merkin Concert Hall (Jan-Mar 2007). I !!LOVE!! this piece, Donald Martino’s “Fantasies and Impromptus.” This is one of the most beautiful numbers in the set, the first ‘Ommagio’ Impromptu.
Oh, BTW, feel free to comment. It makes me happy to know that anyone is listening (helloooooo, looo, lo, lo….)
Ommagio (from Fantasies and Impromptus) — Donald Martino by Augustus Arnone is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
"Ommagio" from 'Fantasies and Impromptus,' by Donald Martino [5:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download