MILTON BABBITT: A Celebration of his Life and Music
October
31-November 1, 2003
Millsaps College
Jackson, Mississippi
Stephen
Peles
University
of Alabama
Babbitt as Author
In some respects we think of a composer's thought as being most clearly expressed in his or her music, and rightly so. In the case of Milton Babbitt, however, we also have his writings. Indeed, in this respect Babbitt is unique among composers of his generation, both for the extent to which he has committed his thought to print as well as the extent to which his writings typically address issues that previously had not been regarded as relevant to a composer's work qua composer.
This paper surveys the roughly fifty years of essays and articles which constituent Babbitt's literary output to date, the intellectual contexts in which these writings were produced, and the consequences they have had for the reception of Babbitt's music and thought.
