The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt - Paperback

by Milton Babbitt (Author), Stephen Peles (Editor), Stephen Dembski (Editor)

Like his compositions, Milton Babbitt's writings about music have exerted an extraordinary influence on postwar music and thinking about music. In essays and public addresses spanning fifty years, Babbitt has grappled profoundly with central questions in the composition and apprehension of music. These writings range from personal memoirs and critical reviews to closely reasoned metatheoretical speculations and technical exegesis. In the history of music theory, there has been only a small handful of figures who have produced work of comparable stature. Taken as a whole, Babbitt's writings are not only an invaluable testimony to his thinking--a priceless primary source for the intellectual and cultural history of the second half of the twentieth century--but also a remarkable achievement in their own right.

Back Jacket

"The time is eminently ripe--indeed past due--for a collection of the writings of Milton Babbitt."--Elaine Barkin, University of California, Los Angeles

"Babbitt is one of the principal makers of postwar musical thought and expression, whose importance for musical composition, theory, and pedagogy in the United States is beyond that of any other individual. This anthology of his writings will stand as a major monument of late twentieth-century musical thought and history."--Benjamin Boretz, Bard College

"Milton Babbitt's influence on American musical composition has been both enormously significant and highly controversial--two excellent reasons for assembling his writings, previously scattered and difficult to locate, into a single volume. Anyone studying or writing about twentieth-century music--in its technical, philosophical, or sociological aspects--will have to deal with parts or all of this invaluable collection."--David Hamilton, The Julliard School

Author Biography

Milton Babbitt is William Shubael Conant Professor of Music Emeritus at Princeton University. Stephen Peles is Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Alabama School of Music. Stephen Dembski is Professor of Music Composition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Andrew Mead is Professor of Music at the University of Michigan. Joseph N. Straus is Professor of Music Theory at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.