Milton Babbitt - 100 Years, 4. Chamber music for two, four and five instruments

A large part of Milton Babbitt's (1916 - 2011) catalog consists of chamber works. There are a number of works for one instruments and piano, a series of String Quartets, and many works involving wind instruments. In this post I will feature Babbitt's chamber works for up to five instruments.

Composition for Four Instruments (1948) was written for flute, clarinet, violin, and cello. It is one of the earliest examples of twelve-tone music expanded to multi-dimensional rows and rhythmic patterns. ⁽¹⁾



Composition for Viola and Piano (1950).



Woodwind Quartet (1953), a one-movement piece for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet and Bassoon.



String Quartet No. 2 (1954). Babbitt wrote six String Quartets altogether, four were published.

The quartet alternates such sections of intervallic exposition with sections that develop the intervals presented up to that point, until eleven different ordered pitch-class intervals have been presented and developed until, in a moment referred to by Babbitt as "telling you the butler did it", the set that controls the entire musical structure is revealed by a process of "disambiguation", as Babbitt himself described it (Straus 1986, 22).⁽²⁾

Sextets for violin and piano (1966).



String Quartet No. 4 (1970), Part I. Listen to Part II here. The quartet was dedicated to the Julliard Quartet.

Cast in a single movement, the quartets musical surface is filled with widely-spaced, pointillistic gestures, some of bleak austerity, some of ferocious intensity. ... Individual voices and embroidered by an ornate filigree of dynamics, timbres, articulations, and performing techniques, all of which change from note to note. Lines are fragmented, leaping precipitously from one register to another, dislocated by the absence of metrical pulse. ...⁽³⁾

Arie da capo for five instrumentalists (1974) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano.

The work is a polyphonic web of independent lines, but the lines all work hand in hand to create a flowing and graceful piece of music.⁽⁴⁾

String Quartet No. 5 (1982), dedicated to the Sequoia Quartet.

The striking impression left by Mr. Babbitt's piece was its determined economy of means. Small moments of melodic material - one persistent downward two-note motive in particular - was repeated, elaborated upon and transformed throughout the piece. The emphasis was on long singing bow strokes with the violins in their higher registers most heavily influencing the color of the sound as a whole. There was everywhere a feeling of sustained lyrical simplicity rather than pointed, profuse, complex rhythmic textures.⁽⁵⁾

Four Play for four players (1984) for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano.



The Joy of More Sextets for piano and violin (1986).

The title is a reference to 'a work of 20 years ago entitled simply "Sextets." Neither involves a sextet in the conventional sense of six instruments; the term refers to numerical groupings that govern the pitches and other events in the 20-minute work.'⁽⁶⁾



Whirled Series for saxophone and piano (1987), 'a whirlwind of overlapping aggregates constituted by deformed arrays' showcasing Babbitt's intimate connection with the saxophone, an instrument he played in his youth, and a love of baseball.



Soli e duettini for two guitars (1989) is the first of a group of three Soli e duettini Babbitt composed in 1989. The other two are for flute and guitar and for violin and viola. Babbitt here uses 'nested array structures to produce 'superarray structures.''⁽⁷⁾



Arrivals and Departures for two violins and Accompanied Recitative for soprano sax and piano (both from 1994) are two short pieces using Babbitt's serial techniques, the latter with a hint at tonality.





Quintet for clarinet and string quartet (1996).

Babbitt's Quintet, written in 1995-96, leavens its intricacy with plentiful nods to jazz. Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle. ⁽⁸⁾

Finally, An Encore for violin & piano (2006), a very late work.



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⁽¹⁾"Composition for Four Instruments." Wikipedia entry. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_for_Four_Instruments (03/06/2016))
⁽²⁾ Straus, Joseph N. 1986. "Listening to Babbitt". Perspectives of New Music 24, no. 2 (Spring–Summer): 10–24, as referenced in "String Quartet No. 2 (Babbitt)." Wikipedia entry. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No._2_(Babbitt)#CITEREFStraus1986 (03/06/2016))
⁽³⁾ Lendallpitts, "Milton Babbitt, String Quartet No 4 1970 Part One." Notes to YouTube video, 11/13/2009. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkB_qJW0JR8 (03/06/2016))
⁽⁴⁾ Ciro Scotto, "Preparing a Performance of Babbitt's Arie da Capo." Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer, 1988), pp. 6-24. (http://www.jstor.org/stable/833180?seq=4#page_scan_tab_contents (03/06/2016))
⁽⁵⁾ Bernard Holland, "MUSIC: SEQUOIA QUARTET." Concert Review, The New York Times, 10/27/1982. (http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/27/arts/music-sequoia-quartet.html (03/06/2016))
⁽⁶⁾ Will Crutchfield, "Concert: From Babbitt, 'Joy of More Sextets'." Concert review, The New York Times, 01/13/1988. (http://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/13/arts/concert-from-babbitt-joy-of-more-sextets.html (03/06/2016))
⁽⁷⁾ John Cuciurean, "Self-Similarity and Compositional Strategies in the Music of Milton Babbitt." Canadian University Music Review / Revue de musique des universités canadiennes, vol. 17, n° 2, 1997, p. 11. (https://www.erudit.org/revue/cumr/1997/v17/n2/1014783ar.pdf (03/06/2016))
⁽⁸⁾ Joshua Kosman, Quoted at Phoenixensemble.org: "Clarinet Quintets of Morton Feldman and Milton Babbitt." (http://www.phoenixensemble.org/Our-Recordings.html (03/06/2016))