American Modernism: Who Cares If You Compose?

Today covered a wide examination of what can be termed "modernism": that is, the field of complex, academic, rigidly composed music, maintaining a severe distance from tonality and usually from most or all centricity.  This includes the music of such influential composers as Elliott Carter, Roger Sessions,  Stefan Wolpe, and especially Milton Babbitt.  I have always had mixed feelings on such music.  On one hand, to generalize, I do not usually enjoy this music on an emotional or intellectual level, or any other level.  On the other hand, I have no problem with its existence, and I am glad that those who value it may make, listen to, appreciate, and use it to their heart's content.  It certainly does tend to push our art forward in one specific way, and for that reason I am glad that it exists and may be used freely.  Similarly, while I believe all art exists to benefit listeners spiritually or intellectually, this music does not break that: its composers and rare devoted performers certainly take something of value from working on it.

My largest qualm with this music is not that it is off-putting to the casual concertgoer, amateur musician, or non-amateur who simply does not frequently play music of this idiom.  My qualm is that it is so frequently off-putting even to the devoted performer of most contemporary music, who simply does not wish to delve into this one field of contemporary music.  This group of modern musicians generally includes myself, but it is a large and disparate group.  With this distinction, the music proves that it is lacking in the way of artistic merit IN TERMS OF the amount of people who are able to take something away from it.  I will grant that most contemporary concert music is ignored and unenjoyed by the average public listener, but at least most are enjoyed and enthused by the contemporary performer.  This coldly academic music so often is not, and so this does not sit well with me.

That said, Babbitt makes some great points about this music.  He suggests that the composer of such music retreat from life in the public eye, and compose only for the audience who seeks out his/her music and has desire for this sort of music.  In his words:

"I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition. By so doing, the separation between the domains would be defined beyond any possibility of confusion of categories, and the composer would be free to pursue a private life of professional achievement, as opposed to a public life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism."

I am in favor of this--it would be unfair and in a sense fascist to demand that the enthusiastic composer of such music cease to compose their music.  In addition, even though I may subjectively not often enjoy this music, I am 100% in favor of allowing all art to exist--no one should prevent such academic music from flourishing and propagation.  And so retreating from the wider musical public eye seems to me a good choice, allowing the composer the freedom to compose without needing to adhere to public desires and complaints.  I cite Ives as one such composer of the past, as he composed on his own spare time, with little regard to whether his pieces would ever be performed, and so did not need to bend to public opinions.

However, it is after this point that Babbitt no longer has my full support.  He suggests the following:

"But how, it may be asked, will this serve to secure the means of survival or the composer and his music? One answer is that after all such a private life is what the university provides the scholar and the scientist. It is only proper that the university, which-significantly-has provided so many contemporary composers with their professional training and general education, should provide a home for the 'complex,' 'difficult,' and 'problematical' in music."

Babbitt is suggesting that universities take on the financial burden of supporting the endeavors of such composers.  I return us to the example of Charles Ives, who supported himself admirably on an entirely separate career, knowing that his music was an unlikely or impossible source of a living.  Universities would be supporting this music through endowments of money either public or private; if public, then this support would be against the artistic interests of most of its financial basis; if private, then in all likelihood it would also be against the artistic interests of its contributors.

Babbitt argues that universities should be a home to such composers as they have been to scholars and scientists.  I see a key difference here--if in some oblique way, scholars and scientists provide practical benefit to the world, through understanding either of the world or humans' interactions with the world.  Modernist composers, on the other hand, provide art, but neither practical understanding of the world or our interactions with it.  Babbitt claims that they would be contributing to "our knowledge of music," but I fundamentally disagree.  It is not as if they are searching to discover musical laws of nature--concert music is a human-imposed medium, not something to be discovered.  As for the study of our music, that is for theorists, not composers.  Babbitt asks, "what possibly can contribute more to our knowledge of music than a genuinely original composition?"  I would argue that the study of such music, not its composition, is what is valuable.  I grant that the former obviously cannot exist without the latter, but I believe that people's money would be better spent through universities toward the study of such music, not its propagation, as very nearly all its contributors have no interest in the music and wouldn't mind if it stopped being composed.

One final point I'd like to make, where I was highly affronted by Babbitt's views, regards the following quote:

"Admittedly, if this music is not supported, the whistling repertory of the man in the street will be little affected, the concert- going activity of the conspicuous consumer of musical culture will be little disturbed. But music will cease to evolve, and, in that important sense, will cease to live."

Again, I am strongly in favor of the existence of all art.  That said, I am offended by the suggestion that without modernist, academic music, "music will cease to evolve."  This directly implies that musical evolution can only occur through this body of music, and not through any other body of music, of the vast variety that exist besides modernism.  Other current music has value, and facilities the evolution of music.  In this statement, Babbitt clearly shows a lack of respect for all music that is particularly different from his own, and as an artist, I am offended that my work should be second class if it isn't very close to one specific composer's.

This is where I leave off on Babbitt's article "Who Cares If You Listen?"  I am in favor of Babbitt's sort of music existing, and being enjoyed and studied by those who wish to do so; and it seems intelligent and prudent for its composers to retreat from the public eye and reject accountability to the public.  That said, I do not believe universities should use much of their money specifically to facilitate its creation, when those truly providing the money have no desire for this music; and I do not take kindly to Babbitt's implications that this is the only music with real worth to the art of music.