Files
Abstract
This paper explores the ways in which scholars can approach and meaningfully discuss the music of Milton Babbitt. Critics argue that the standard discourse constructs a binary division between how Babbitts music works and how it soundsthat is, the system-based analytical approach engenders an attitude that the only elements of Babbitts music warranting serious consideration are theoretical conceptions, not aural perceptions. An examination of Babbitts writings will reveal the motivations for, and importance of, this system-based discourse in the analysis of contextual musical languages. However, this rhetoric has its limitations as well, thus the second part of this paper offers an alternative, listening-based approach to Babbitts music by exploring the vivid interplay of compositional structures, poetic text, and perceived meaning of musical gestures in Babbitts song cycle, Du (1951). This paper concludes by suggesting possible means of reconciling aural perceptions and compositional structures within a larger framework of serial poetics.