The Age of Milton

- 365 The Age of Milton Martin Brody Princeton University, December, 2004 Colloquium celebrating the publication of The Collected Writings of Milton Babbitt [S]peech corresponds to the actualization of distinctness and is the actualization of the human condition of plurality.1 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition [T]hey were his words, as unmistakably so as his music. Milton Babbitt, “Stravinsky Memorial”2 The Composer as Orator, the Reader As Specialist Whether one prefers to declare: An opening: unassuming, not quite generic—but the friction of verb against verb, the tiny spark in the juxtaposition of “prefer” and “declare,” puts us on alert. Whether one prefers to declare that a theory must be, should be, or is: Variants of the copula, brisk motives, marking a pulse and setting a tempo; then a change of pace, a second overlapping sequence and a more intricate process of variation. Embedded phrases metastasize and join into an extended anacrusis. Breathing becomes a challenge. Whether one prefers to declare that a theory must be, should be, or is a mere symbolic description, or a structured formulation of statements of relations among observed phenomena, or a collection of rules for the representation of observables, or an interpreted model of a formal system, or still none of these….Or, or, or: The variations seem to be spawning irrepressibly; the sentence is in danger of losing its way, veering off its syntactic rails, depleting its momentum. But a wry postscript (or still none of these) curbs the proliferation and whips the sentence back on track, while still resisting a resolution of the matter at hand. Whether one prefers to declare that a theory must be, should be, or is a mere symbolic description, or a structured formulation of statements of relations among observed phenomena, or a collection of rules for the representation of observables, or an interpreted model of a formal system, or still none of these, presumably it can be agreed, that questions of musical theory construction attend and include. The curtailed list yields to coalescing gestures, a hopeful adverb phrase (presumably it can be agreed) followed by a no-nonsense noun phrase (that questions of musical theory construction); but then, another small gesture of amplification, another conjoining of verbs, attend and include, which sets off a new process of expansion. Whether one prefers to declare that a theory must be, should be, or is a mere symbolic description, or - 366 Martin Brody a structured formulation of statements of relations among observed phenomena, or a collection of rules for the representation of observables, or an interpreted model of a formal system, or still none of these presumably it can be agreed that questions of musical theory construction attend and include all matters of the form, the manner of the formulation, and the signification of statements about individual musical compositions, and the subsumption of such statements into a higher level theory, constructed purely logically from the empirical acts of examination of the individual compositions. In contrast to the turbulent crescendo and sudden curtailing of the opening anacrusis, the objects listed at the close form a seamless sequence of nested phrases. The sentence glides to its ending. And so Babbitt unleashes one of his longest, most intricate and animated, and altogether robustly particularized sentences. It’s a big metatheoretical announcement and a virtuoso example of hypotaxis, the rhetorical technique of deferring completion through an expansion of clauses, which occurs not far into the essay, “The Structure and Function of Music Theory.”3 At risk of stating the obvious, this mighty exhalation of 109 words (9 verbs, 18 prepositional phrases, a sublimely vast subordinate clause, and two long, complementary chains of phrases with predicates at the front and objects pulling up the rear) projects a unique authorial persona. It feels, sounds, and robustly, verifiably is like nothing or no one else: not Schenker or Schoenberg, Carnap or Quine, or any other theorist or composer who might dwell within the author’s self-defined Viennese triangle. The sentence is long, pointedly so. It takes its time, it ages before our own aging eyes and ears. Its length and density compel us to experience emerging meaning as a gradual, arduous process; its intricate...