What was he thinking? Music as Machine

We discussed last week how the not-so-late Karlheinz Stockhausen was interviewed as calling the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center as "art" or "beauty".

I couldn't shake this from my mind as I read the articles and readings over the weekend, and noticed a slight mention in Gann's chapter about the reception of Milton Babbitt's music, and just how he felt about it.

Gann glazes over the article published by Babbitt in 1959 called "Who Cares If You Listen?", saying that the article was often taken out of context and may have done more hurt to Babbitt's career than he could recover from. I was somewhat shocked to read that Babbitt did not consider that not only his music, but music in general had the ability to communicate emotionally with an audience or performer. As an advocate for atonal, serialist, and most new works in general, I was truly disappointed. Why? I feel as though connecting these rarer and newer works to the audience on an emotional level is the biggest tool that composers and performers have to create an effective, memorable and learning performance experience. But that's just my opinion; back to Babbitt.

So Babbitt is both a mathematician and a musician, yes? Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive? We are getting in to some dangerous territory here, looking to define either field, but it's not totally necessary. When I read "Who Cares If You Listen", I did not at all sense that Babbitt was apathetic towards his music, or felt strongly that it didn't have emotional worth. What I brought away from his writings was this:
Math, science and technology progress, and it is expected, assumed and normal for this to occur. Music and composition, however, is stuck in a gear around the turn of the century, and resists moving forward into the new techniques and developments.

Babbitt's main tenants of the issue are as follows:
Efficiency: The new language of serialist (or even other 20th century techniques) composers is far more efficient, not necessary in length or number of 'notes', but in it's lack of redundant repetition, and the availability of new sounds that prevents said redundancy.

Dimensions: the new vocabulary allows new relationships between pitches and also allows pitches to function in entirely new ways that were once 'taboo'. This also makes scores far more detailed and precise for the performer, often resulting in a difficult performance if all and full attention is paid to composer's choices.

This-is-just-an-extension-of-the-old: This idea is quite Schoenbergian in it's thought that serial and atonal techniques are simply evolution, not revolution. If anything the 'revolution' are the techniques in which theorists and scholars have implemented to study this new music. Yet 'new' music is still seen as a deviation of tradition and thus the extended branch from tradition into the 20th century is severed.

Just as machines evolve, so does music. If we were to use the same refrigerators from a century ago, I'm certain we would not be content with the temperature of our milk. So if your musical tastes and understanding are going to be stuck in the era where women can't vote, Who Cares If You Listen to Milton Babbitt.