Babbitt Article Summary

"Twelve-tone Invariants as Compositional Determinants"

• insisted that application of serial procedure to non-pitch elements should be correlated so that the consequences of the procedure are musical and perceivable in these other [dissimilar] domains

"Twelve-Tone Rhythmic Structure and the Electronic Medium"

• primacy of interval invariance is basis for serial organization; basis of time-point system
• time point: attack points are serially determined (as opposed to durations of Europeans) according to “modulus” (time-point pulse)
• retains correlation between pitch and rhythm, when based on a intervallic set; remains invariable upon transposition; whereas Stockhausen based his series on a fixed set of frequencies, these relationships would not be preserved
• avoids “incompatable” procedures: ie, assigning of durational values to individual set members identified with corresponding pitches
• anyhow, feels that points of attack are more readily perceived than durational differences (release point); ordered succession of durational differences remains invariant under transposition only if transposition of modlus has been applied: even feels assumption of duration classes to be unrealistic
• [problem: listener may perceive different series unless one maps the same intervals to the same attack point in a series??]
• Europeans denounced Babbitt’s solution as inadequate; felt his linear system (additive) had no correspondence with logarithmic relationships of pitch scale; felt it to be contradictory and inconsistent; their solutions of addressing discrepancies between pitch and rhythm, however, failed to address problems of duration, incompatibility; furthermore, confounded the problem by introducing aleatoric elements in their music at this time