"Milton Babbitt, born in 1916, has spent most of his career as composer, theorist, and teacher at Princeton University, where he followed his teacher, Roger Sessions, as William Shubael Conant Professor of Music. He has also been for several years a member of the composition faculty at the Juilliard School. His influence has been wide-ranging; his students include both Donald Martino and Stephen Sondheim. The recipient of many awards during his career, Babbitt has most recently been named a MacArthur Fellow: in 1986 he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
"The two works heard on this recording bring together a number of strands in the complex web of Milton Babbitt’s compositional concerns. 'The Head of the Bed' (1981), commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Baltimore and composed for Phyllis Bryn-Julson, embodies both Babbitt's interest in chamber music and his long-standing affinity for the female voice, previously exemplified by 'Du' (1951), 'Vision and Prayer' (1961), 'Philomel' (1963-64), 'Phonemena' (1969-70; 1974), and 'A Solo Requiem' (1976-77). The 'Concerto for Piano and Orchestra', written in 1985 for Alan Feinberg and the American Composers Orchestra, conjoins his massive, intricate vision of the orchestra with the pianistic virtuosity of 'Tableaux' (1972), 'Reflections' (1974), 'Time Cycle' (1978, 1982), and 'Canonical Form' (1983). Both compositions manifest the juxtaposition of brilliant virtuosity against a voluptuous setting characteristic of so many of his works for solo protagonist.
"Although both works are structurally complex—among Babbitt's most elaborate extensions of Arnold Schoenberg's breakthrough—each in its own way dramatizes the expressive flexibility and power provided by twelve-tone musical syntax.
"While Babbitt is perhaps best known for his chamber and vocal music, these loom over his oeuvre a series of vast monuments for orchestra, alas but dimly perceived due to their infrequent performance and the absence of professional recordings. (ed. note: This is the first of Babbitt’s orchestral works ever to be recorded.) The Piano Concerto is the most recent of Babbitt’s orchestral works, which include 'Relata I' and 'II' (1965, 1968), 'Correspondences' (1967) for string orchestra and electronic tape, the as yet unperformed 'Concerti' (1974-76) for solo violin, orchestra, and electronic tape, and 'Ars Combinatoria' (1981). In all of these works Babbitt treats a orchestra as a resource for a wide variety of timbres through a full range of dynamics and registers; the interaction of these factors with the solo piano is the crux of the Concerto. Throughout the composition the orchestra is divided ito four distinct registers, each of which projects varying versions of a multiply interpreted underlying structure, The various sections of the work are demarcated by the change of ensembles of registers in the orcheste: running through fifteen combinations of soles, duos, trios, and tutti. The piano, in contrast, remains constantly active throughout its range, and responds to the orchestra’s changes by changing the nature of its own material, now complementing the orchestra’s music, now reflecting it in a distorted manner. Although the surface of the music is mercurial, a gradual overall dramatic progression unfolds through the shifting orchestral registers. The Concerto opens with the piano pitted against the lowest register of the orchestra, followed shortly by the highest register; for the first third of the plece no more than two registers are present in the orchestra, and the lowest register is withheld after its initial appearance until the midpoint of the work. From then on, the lowest register is nearly always present, and more registers are active simultaneously. The gradual accretion of orchestral presence eventually forces the soloist into silence before its full majesty in the penulumate section. The piano reenters, however, casting the orchestra into its highest and lowest ranges to open its own ae ar passage to the close.
"'The Head of the Bed' is both synthesis and synopsis of Babbitt's vocal and chamber music. The work is a setting of a poem in fifteen stanzas by the American poet John Hollander, who also wrote the text for 'Philomel' (NW 307). The composition evokes a number of Babbitt's earlier works both in large-scale design and in detail, While the vocal writing and text echo several previous vocal compositions, the nature and treatment of the ensemble have their reots in his 'Composition for Four Instruments' (1947-48). The present work and the earlier piece employ the same ensemble of instruments, and both contain fifteen sections, each distinguished by a different grouping of instruments (analogous to the play of orchestral registers in the Concerto). In 'The Head of the Bed' the fifteen sections correspond to the fifteen stanzas of the poem. The further subdivision of each stanza into fifteen lines allows Babbitt to create a subtle echo between the composition of the vocal part for each section and the overall deployment of the instrumental groupings. The disposition of motive and register in the vocal line also invokes a fundamental compositional strategy of the 'Composition for Four Instruments', reflecting the encompassing compositional vision that has informed Babbitt’s music throughout his career." (Andrew Mead. From the liner notes.)
Performers: American Composers Orchestra, Charles Wuorinen, Alan Feinberg, Parnassus Ensemble, Anthony Korf, Judith Bettina
1. Piano Concerto
2. The Head Of The Bed
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