7/21/2019 mts.2012.34.1.007-008 DEMBSKI '... alone. Together.'

1/3

Society for Music Theory

. . . alone. Together.Author(s): Stephen DembskiSource: Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring 2012), pp. 7-8Published by: University of California Presson behalf of the Society for Music TheoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/mts.2012.34.1.7.

Accessed: 30/04/2013 10:57

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

University of California Pressand Society for Music Theoryare collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve

and extend access toMusic Theory Spectrum.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucalhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=smthttp://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/mts.2012.34.1.7?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/mts.2012.34.1.7?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=smthttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal

7/21/2019 mts.2012.34.1.007-008 DEMBSKI '... alone. Together.'

2/3

7

. . . alone. Together.

stephen dembski

Early in the 80s, Milton Babbitt and I arranged tomeet at La Guardia Airport to board a flight on which

we were both booked. Shortly before departure,Milton left me a telephone message ending with the words . . .

when we fly off alone. [pause] Together.With that Together, I suppose he just wanted to make sure

I wasnt confused by what hed said. Having heard himself finishwith the word alone, he might have thought I could have got-ten the wrong idea, and so he clarified. And as happened to meso oftenand apparently to others, toosome off-hand wordof Miltons resonated in me, and persisted. And by now, three

decades have extended that brief pause in which I began reflect-ing on how a solitude so profound could be maintained in themidst of the hustle of a life like Miltons.

For he was nothing if not out and about: in New York, theextent and consistency of his concert attendance was legend-aryso much so that when he wasnt there, the questionWheres Milton? was usually answered in terms of some otherconcert that must have taken him. And as far as music-commu-nity gossip went, he made sure to be one step ahead of everyoneelse, and with a broader reach to boot. However, hyper-engagedas he was, he also took on real communal responsibility in a waythat few others would or could; quite regularly, he would savethe social daysay, after a disastrous performance, whether of

his own music or someone elsesby coming up with one of hisfabulously multivalent comments, such as, Well, youve done itagain, my boy. Whether directed to performer or composer,such words, with the wry smile that so often accompaniedthem, would smooth over a moments awkwardness; it was onlylater that the recipient would begin to wonder what it couldhave been that Milton really meant, and a regular eavesdrop-per would yet once again be amazed at how, yet again, Miltonhad avoided compromising his philosophically grounded ethicalstance by side-stepping the common implication of evaluation.

His resonant voice and precise enunciation (offering preciouslittle trace of his legendary Jackson, Mississippi, upbringing),coupled with a grammatical precision sufficient to organizeeven the most complex of spoken utterances, always seemed soripe for imitation, but proved so resistant to emulation. Whenaddressing groupsincluding the public, as well as students inthe classroomhe called upon his reinvention of the epic,bardic improvisational technique, drawing on his proprietarystockpile of phrasesnot for him rosy-fingered dawn, butrather one of our oldest and dearest friends, or, call it what

you willto fill the moment he needed to extend the sentencestructure and compose the next phrase. So that even while heinsisted that he be called by his first name, the astonishing

power of his casual spoken expression served well to maintainaround him a force-field of formal solitude.

Occasionally there may have been some momentary impulsewithin him toward cultivating a popular audience and its acco-lades, but in his more prominent, dominant (and notorious)facets, he seemed, if not incapable of talking down to anyone, atleast unwilling to do so: not even children were offered simpli-fied speech. Although it often seemed not to occur to him thatfor many, merely following his thoughts, verbal or musical, tooksome real effort, implicit in his complex expressions was an ex-pectation of understandingthat if youd just listen, youd get

itreflecting a consistent respect for the auditor. The game offollowing his ideas via those expressions was, however, not rec-reation for the faint of heart, but rather a challenge to be metonly by intense concentration; his was wordplay reminiscent ofthe Elizabethan-era verbal sparring in which Shakespearescharacters seemed to delight so thoroughly.

And that verbal sparring was not just sparkling, but also en-ergetic, and quick; the words came fast, tightly packed but stilldeliberately articulated, and with just a bit of the syllable-swallowing that many of us might also associate with the Elvisof Hound Dog. Martin Brody, quoting Irving Howes descrip-tion of those New York intellectuals who could talk faster thananyone else, . . . knew their way around better, . . . [and]

were quicker on their feet, observed that it fit Milton perfectly,and went on to say that this sensibility, however critical itmight be, was not one of isolation and alienation, and I wouldnot disagree.1However, Id add that, at least in Miltons case,such a mode of expression nevertheless served him, as activelysocially engaged as he was, as a strategy of separation, on someconsistently, insistently private intellectual and social level.

While he may not have been entirely aware of how distinc-tive his speech seemed to others, Milton deceived neither him-self nor anyone else about how different his music was fromothers, nor more generally how different twelve-tone music wasfrom other musics preceding and surrounding it. I becamemarked by another decades-resonating remark when, in re-sponse to some nave question of mine regarding the twelve-tone system in relation to the tonal, he seemingly casuallysuggested that I try to understand a twelve-tone aggregate as aunit of harmonic progression. As the years went by, the contextof that remark gradually clarified its fallout: if I understood itthat way, the ordering of that aggregate took on the functionalrole that the single note played in tonal music, and, so con-ceived, musical progression would no longer proceed note by

1 Brody (1993, 19091, Note 65), quoting Howe (1970, 220).

This content downloaded from 192.87.50.3 on Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:57:14 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

7/21/2019 mts.2012.34.1.007-008 DEMBSKI '... alone. Together.'

3/3

8 music theory spectrum 34 (2012)

note, but rather from aggregate-ordering to aggregate-ordering.I suspect he knew that, while acknowledging its difficulty, he

was suggesting a leap in musical cognition that few were pre-pared to make. And indeed, in those few miraculous perfor-mances of his music in which, while totally absorbed, I had noidea how or what I was following, knowing only that I was

hearing music in a way that Id never heard it before, I can onlypresume that even I must have, for those few moments, andwith the help of some masterful interpreter, made that leap.

But by the time I met Milton, the loneliness of not being un-derstood was something for which he had prepared himself, ra-tional argument always at the ready, should his own chosensociety betray him with the kiss of sympathetic misunderstand-ingwhich, of course, it repeatedly would do. Often consideredto have formalized and extended aspects of Schoenbergs work,Milton could also be said, by his example, to have concentratedand polished the model of composer-society relation thatSchoenberg lamented so poignantly in his article How OneBecomes Lonely.2With the benefit of Schoenbergs experience,

Miltonno public poignancy for him!could prepare himself,developing a coherent and powerful argument for his singularlyambitious work, and be ready to respond: that is, to defend him-self and his music when the attacks camewhich of course theydid. However, by then well-braced against the loneliness of non-comprehension, and well-protected in his bunker of carefully cul-tivated solitude, Milton was able to survive, to emergeif notunscathed, at least unscarredand indeed, to thrive.

The concentration and clarity of Miltons expressionsbothverbal and musicalcan be understood simply as his effort tomake them as comprehensible as possible, while not compro-mising their singularity. Thus, remaining unmistakably his, intheir conforming grammatical formality they also had the for-

tunate side-effect of reinforcing the solitude of this most gre-garious, communicative, and socially adept of composersasolitude that, while protecting him from neither the pain northe loneliness Schoenberg admitted to suffering, at least allowedhim to seem to ignore them.

Schoenberg learned, and Milton knew, that the price of sur-viving singularity is loneliness. But knowing it, Milton, with hisverbal expression, both oral and written, and his musical expres-sions, whether in score or in performance, was able to find a wayof living in his chosen society that for us otherseven those

who might aspire to cultivating but a modicum of his individu-alitycan provide a model for a way to work in our chosenmusics and to live in our chosen worlds.

works cited

Brody, Martin. 1993. Music for the Masses: Milton BabbittsCold War Music Theory. The Musical Quarterly77 (2):16192.

Howe, Irving. 1970. The New York Intellectuals. In The

Decline of the New. 21165. New York: Harcourt, Brace andWorld.Schoenberg, Arnold. 1978. How One Becomes Lonely. In

Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg. Ed.Leonard Stein. Trans. Leo Black. 3052. London: Faber andFaber.

Music Theory Spectrum,Vol. 34, Issue 1, pp. 78, ISSN 0195-6167, elec-tronic ISSN 1533-8339. 2012 by The Society for Music Theory. Allrights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy orreproduce article content through the University of California PresssRights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/mts.2012.34.1.72 Schoenberg (1978).

This content downloaded from 192.87.50.3 on Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:57:14 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp