DQ for Watkins 528-32 & 557-65 (due Thurs 4.26)

Folks:

Posting these now, but they are not due until next THURSDAY Apr 26. Quite short (total 11pp) and available now so that you can get a jump on them over the weekend if you wish. Hang in there!

DQ for Watkins 528-32 & 557-65 Please be prepared to respond in either seminar meeting or in "Comments" on the course blog. In all venues, you must be prepared to cite specific passages (by page, paragraph, line, and quotation) in support of your responses—and specific works.

Summary: The first of these brief readings (528-32) uses the early—and most notorious, and probably most “rigorous”—compositions of Milton Babbitt as a lens through which to understand the situation of “serious” composition in post-WWII America. It explores diverse influences which shaped American composers’ choices in this period: professional, European, academic, systematic, technological, and so on. It demonstrates the reasons which underlay the choice of Webern as a model and serialism as a procedure dominating the compositional landscape in this period. You should certainly familiarize yourself with the works cited (via WebCT and/or classical.com subscription), but you should also think more deductively about parallel and contradictory artistic trends toward “order” and “disorder” in other music, and other art forms, in this period. Those parallels and contradictions are essential in understanding what happened in American music in the second half of the 20^th century.

General question(s) for consideration: Juxtapose Watkins’s comments regarding the European “Webern cult” of the post-WWII era (pp510-11) and on a roughly-analogous group of American composers in the same period (pp528-32). Think about and be prepared to provide responses to the following questions:

• What was the overall climate for “serious” composition in post-WWII America? What were the support networks and/or infrastructure for new-music composition, teaching, and performance?
• How did these climates shape the professional opportunities available for composers? How did they in turn shape these composers’ stylistic or analytical choices? [NB: the goal here is to try to understand how both musical and socio-economic environments drove the choice of serial technique as the overwhelmingly-dominant stylistic school in 1950s America]
• What was the result for new music’s reputation, reception, and audience? How did this change “who’s playing,” “who’s listening,” and/or “who’s paying”?
• What alternatives to serialism existed for composers either unable or unwilling to employ its rigorous organizational technique? Who were these composers, what were their (possibly contrasting) backgrounds, trainings, and aesthetics, and what alternative sources did they seek to draw upon in developing their alternative approaches?
• Can these “serial-alternative” composers be linked with other artistic and/or socio-economic trends in 1950s America? In other words, was there an analogous drive toward alternatives in other art forms? What were they? Give examples of artists or art-works that demonstrate same.

Summary: The second of these brief readings (557-65) provides a clearly-written and well-documented analysis of the “serial-alternative” cited above. In it, Watkins describes an “International” avant-garde which, despite his chapter title, was powerfully, even primarily shaped, by American and non-academic forces. He juxtaposes the American Cage and the European Boulez, but what clearly emerges from the comparison is the dominance of the Cagean, American, anti-academic, even “subversive” elements of what came to be called “chance” or aleatoric composition.

General question(s) for consideration: I have suggested that, while Babbitt’s maximalization of compositional control (integral serialism, analytical set theory, the use of magnetic tape and of the computer and synthesizer) dominated both academic and high-profile contexts in the 1950s, the Ivesian-Cowellian-Cageian willingness to relinquish control—to leave compositional factors to chance or to performer choice—can be seen in hindsight as equally significant.

• Why did these latter composers (quintessentially, Cage himself) choose an alternate path? Were there alternative choices driven by artistic preference, by professional opportunity, by background or biography, by compositional training, by historical experience, or by all of these factors? Be prepared to provide a detailed interpretive response.
• What was the impact of this alternate path on these composers lives, appointments, exposure, collaborations (very important), and/or interaction with the 1950s/60s culture around them? How is it reflected in specific pieces.
• We could probably agree that both the “Princeton” group represented by Babbitt, and the “alternative” group represented by Cage, were reacting to certain cultural trends, and (very importantly) to the weight of the past—a composer’s “problem” which has emerged throughout the course of the century. What is Babbitt’s relationship to models, systems, and the past? Who were his models and inspirations? What is Cage’s relationship to models, systems, and the past? Who were his models and inspirations? Be specific in your response.
• What is the influence of the serialist/academic composers? What composers of the next generation were influenced by them, and/or where did their stylistic emphases “go”? What is the influence of the alternative/experimental/”chance” composers? Who was influenced by them, and/or where their stylistic emphases play out?