An Introduction to the Music of Milton Babbitt

An Introduction to the Music of Milton Babbitt PDF Author: Andrew Mead
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400863333
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
In this celebration of Milton Babbitt's art, Andrew Mead explores the development of a central figure in contemporary American music. As a teacher and writer, Babbitt has influenced two generations of students, including such notable musicians as Stephen Sondheim and Donald Martino. He has helped establish the study of music theory as a serious academic pursuit, and his articles on Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and the twelve-tone system constitute a seminal body of research. But Babbitt is first and last a composer, whose works are, in Mead's words, "truly music to be heard." With Mead as a guide, we discover the strong emotional and expressive charge of Babbitt's music that is inextricably entwined with its structure. Babbitt is a twelve-tone composer, unabashedly so, and it is precisely his profound understanding of Arnold Schoenberg's epochal insight that gives Babbitt's music its special quality. By examining the underlying principles of twelve-tone composition, Mead allows us to appreciate Babbitt's music on its own terms, as a richly varied yet unified body of work. In achieving this purpose, he provides an excellent introduction to twelve-tone music in general. Without relying on professional jargon, he lucidly and succinctly explains Babbitt's complexities. A catalog of compositions, a discography, and a bibliography complete a book that will interest performers, music theorists, and music historians, as well as other readers who are enthusiastic or curious about contemporary musical works. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Oxford Bibliographies

Oxford Bibliographies PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Thinking in and about Music

Thinking in and about Music PDF Author: Zachary Bernstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190949236
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
On Milton Babbitt, Schenkerian -- Construction, Cognition, and the Role of the Surface -- The Seam in Babbitt's Compositional Development : Composition for Tenor and Six Instruments -- The Surface and the Series in Composition for Four Instruments -- Poetic Form and Psychological Portraiture in Babbitt's Early Texted Works -- Completeness and Temporality -- Babbitt's Gestural Dialectics -- Afterword. "Anything Vital is Problematical".

The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt

The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt PDF Author: Milton Babbitt
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400841224
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
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. Prior to this collection, Babbitt's writings were scattered through a wide variety of journals, books, and magazines--many hard to find and some unavailable--and often contained typographical errors and editorial corruptions of various kinds. This volume of almost fifty pieces gathers, corrects, and annotates virtually everything of significance that Babbitt has written. The result is complete, authoritative, and fully accessible--the definitive source of Babbitt's influential ideas.

Serial Composition and Atonality

Serial Composition and Atonality PDF Author: George Perle
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520019355
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays

The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays PDF Author: Richard Taruskin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520268059
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
"Roth Family Foundation music in America imprint"--Prelim. p.

Modern Music and After

Modern Music and After PDF Author: Paul Griffiths
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199792283
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
Over three decades, Paul Griffiths's survey has remained the definitive study of music since the Second World War; this fully revised and updated edition re-establishes Modern Music and After as the preeminent introduction to the music of our time. The disruptions of the war, and the struggles of the ensuing peace, were reflected in the music of the time: in Pierre Boulez's radical reformation of compositional technique and in John Cage's development of zen music; in Milton Babbitt's settling of the serial system and in Dmitry Shostakovich's unsettling symphonies; in Karlheinz Stockhausen's development of electronic music and in Luigi Nono's pursuit of the universally human, in Iannis Xenakis's view of music as sounding mathematics and in Luciano Berio's consideration of it as language. The initiatives of these composers and their contemporaries opened prospects that haven't yet stopped unfolding. This constant expansion of musical thinking since 1945 has left us with no singular history of music; Griffiths's study accordingly follows several different paths, showing how and why they converge and diverge. This new edition of Modern Music and After discusses not only the music of the fifteen years that have passed since the previous edition, but also the recent explosion of scholarly interest in the latter half of the twentieth century. In particular, the book has been expanded to incorporate the variety of responses to the modernist impasse experienced by composers of the 1980s and 1990s. Griffiths then moves the book into the twenty-first century as he examines such highly influential composers as Helmut Lachenmann and Salvatore Sciarrino. For its breadth, wealth of detail, and characteristic wit and clarity, the third edition of Modern Music and After is required reading for the student and the enquiring listener.

The Cambridge History of American Music

The Cambridge History of American Music PDF Author: David Nicholls
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521454292
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 668

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Book Description
The Cambridge History of American Music, first published in 1998, celebrates the richness of America's musical life. It was the first study of music in the United States to be written by a team of scholars. American music is an intricate tapestry of many cultures, and the History reveals this wide array of influences from Native, European, African, Asian, and other sources. The History begins with a survey of the music of Native Americans and then explores the social, historical, and cultural events of musical life in the period until 1900. Other contributors examine the growth and influence of popular musics, including film and stage music, jazz, rock, and immigrant, folk, and regional musics. The volume also includes valuable chapters on twentieth-century art music, including the experimental, serial, and tonal traditions.

Music, Politics, and the Academy

Music, Politics, and the Academy PDF Author: Pieter C. van den Toorn
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520201167
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
"I value this book for its idealism, its positive vote for autonomy and technical analysis, its courageous answer to feminist musicology, its exposure of the contradictions of academic politics. Its importance lies not in settling the debates but in construing the issues in new and provocative ways."—Kofi Agawu, author of Playing with Signs "We need books like this. It deals with major topics, raises critical issues, and develops numerous interesting ideas; and it is written in an engaging manner. The book should attract attention and will provide at least one articulate countervoice to the discussion of important issues currently affecting the field, that have been raised by those professing to the "New Musicology."—Robert Morgan, author of Twentieth-Century Music

A Theory of Music Analysis

A Theory of Music Analysis PDF Author: Dora A. Hanninen
Publisher: University Rochester Press
ISBN: 1580461948
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
This book introduces a theory of music analysis that one can use to explore aspects of segmentation and associative organization in a wide range of repertoire including Western classical music from the Baroque to the present, with potential applications to jazz and popular music, and some non-Western musics. Rather than a methodology, the theory provides analysts with precise language and a broad, flexible conceptual framework through which they can formulate and investigate questions of interest and develop their own interpretations of individual pieces and passages. The theory begins with a basic distinction among three domains of musical experience and discourse about it: the sonic (psychoacoustic); the contextual (or associative, sparked by varying degrees of repetition); and the structural (guided by a specific theory of musical structure or syntax invoked by the analyst). A comprehensive presentation of the theory, with copious musical illustrations, is balanced with close analyses of works by Beethoven, Debussy, Nancarrow, Riley, Feldman, and Morris. Dora A. Hanninen is professor of music theory at the University of Maryland. She received the 2010 Outstanding Publication Award from the Society for Music Theory.