Pauline Oliveros and Milton Babbitt:
Two Polar Opposites in 20th Century Music… or are they?
Setting the stage:
Pauline Oliveros advocates for “Deep Listening” and Milton Babbitt says “Who Cares If You Listen?”
The discussions in our “Music of the 20th Century” history class have been fascinating, as they always are, and very thought-provoking. The last two classes we have been reviewing the music of Milton Babbitt and his essay, “Who Cares If You Listen?”; and also Pauline Oliveros whose passion in music is “Deep Listening”, natural soundscapes and the recording of sounds.
I found these two polar opposites very interesting and I’d like to explore this topic a little more today in this blog post.
Milton Babbitt — on the one hand…
We first discussed Milton Babbitt’s music as well as his essay that was published in High Fidelity in 1958. Originally, the essay’s published title was “Who Cares if You Listen?” To be fair, this was not Babbitt’s title at all but rather a title that the publisher decided to use! Babbitt’s essay was later published with his intended title of “Composer as Specialist” but I think it was too late as the damage had already been done with the publisher’s chosen title. Seeing a title of “Who Cares if You Listen?” automatically sets the reader up for potentially contentious content.
Initially, I felt that Babbitt was trying to say in his essay that the average listener or even a music critic could not possibly critique his music as he was a “specialist” at composing… a somewhat snobbish, elitist opinion, I thought. But I do not think this was Babbitt’s overall message. Rather, one of Babbitt’s arguments was that music composition should receive the same academic research status and support as other research fields such as the sciences.
I do believe that based on this quote below from Babbitt’s essay that he would have been perfectly happy being holed up in an academic institution delving into research on serial composition techniques (and there’s nothing wrong with that!):
Therefore, perhaps the publisher’s chosen title might not have been so far off and maybe Babbitt really would have thought, “Who Cares if You Listen?” albeit not admitting it out loud?
And Pauline Oliveros — on the other hand…
In today’s 20th Century Music class, we moved on to discuss Pauline Oliveros, one of the pioneers in electronic music who composed Sonic Meditations and developed a program for Deep Listening. Oliveros definitely cared if you listened and she wanted you to listen very closely! In her 2007 article , “My ‘American music’: Soundscape, politics, technology, community”, Oliveros describes Deep Listening as “experiencing an expanded awareness of sound, silence, and sounding. Experiencing is the key word.”
Two 20th century composers with different views… but are they really that different?
As I thought about these two 20th century composers, I humored myself how one composer did not seem to be very concerned about whether one listened to his compositions (although I imagine he really did want his works to be recognized for what they were… serial, formulaic, mathematical compositions), while another composer wants you to listen deeply.
I pondered this a little further and realized that Pauline Oliveros and Milton Babbitt actually do have a lot in common although their compositional styles just happen to be different.
First, both composers were important figures in the pioneering of electronic music.
Babbitt really wanted his style of music composition to be given research status at the academic level. Oliveros also felt similarily:
Both Babbitt and Oliveros explored new compositional methods and ideas and wanted these concepts to be recognized and acknowledged.
In addition, both composers were passionate about their musical viewpoints and took the time to educate whoever was willing to listen.
Take a look at this 1966 Youtube video of Milton Babbitt describing electronic music. One can tell that he is thoroughly enjoying his presentation.
This video shows Babbitt’s explanation of his compositional technique that he used in “Semi-Simple Variations”, just one of his many musical creations:
Likewise, here is a TED talk given by Oliveros educating the audience on the difference of hearing versus listening:
It would have been very interesting to sit down for dinner with both of these composers! I imagine there would have been some lively conversations on what is important in music. Babbitt composes for the pure joy of formulaic composition and Oliveros looks towards soundscapes for her compositional inspiration.
