source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1996 07:55:37 -0800 Subject: Another Post from Brian McLaren From: John Chalmers From: mclaren Subject: The ignorance and incompetence of the doyens of modern music theory -- The most feted names of post-war music theory are a callow and ignorant lot. They rise to distinction solely by the magnitude of their incompetence. In shocking contrast, the most learned and profoundly insightful minds of post-war music theory barely even register on the academic radar scope: Harry Partch, Ben Johnston, David Doty, James Tenney, Ivor Darreg, Easley Blackwood, Rudolf Rasch, Augusto Novaro, Adriaan Daniel Fokker, Paul Rapoport, Ivan Wyschnedgradsky. These are strong claims, demanding strong proof. So let's examine one of the princes of post-war music theory, Milton Babbitt, in his own words. -- Babbitt writes: "And still, the structure of the harmonic series does not supply a basis for the status of the minor triad in tonal music. It either dissonantly 'contradicts' it or requires the invocation of still further assumptions of intervallic permutation or numerology." [Babbitt, Milton, "The Structure and Function of Musical Theory," The College Music Symposium, Vol. 5, Fall 1965] Let us leave aside the hypocrisy of Mr. Pitch Class Matrix complaining about "still further assumptions of intervallic permutation or numerology." For Milton Babbitt to gripe about "numerology" is a like a prostitute complaining about public immorality. Instead, let us merely take note of Babbitt's shocking ignorance--for Hugo Riemann answered his objection to the harmonic series as basis for western music in 1906, fully sixty years before Babbitt's article appeared in print. Riemann pointed out that the minor triad is generated by inverting harmonics 4, 5, 6 to produce 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, which when multiplied by the lowest common denominator yield overtone series members 10, 12, 15. Babbitt's bizarre fixation on the harmonic *overtone* series to the utter exclusion of the *subharmonic* series reveals both his shallowness as a theorist and his pervasive ignorance. Any second- or third-year music student should have been exposed to Riemann. Where was the sainted Milton Babbitt when he should have been taking notes as an undergraduate? Is *this* the low standard to which professors are held at Princeton? Milton Babbitt goes on to follow his previous howler about the harmonic series with an even more startling display of quackery: "And yet, the succession of intervals in the overtone series does not correspond to the categorization of 'consonant' and 'dissonant,' even in relative terms, whether one asserts the independent assumption of adjacency or of relation to the first partial. Under the former criterion, the fourth would be termed more consonant than the major third; under the latter, the minor seventh and major second would be termed more consonant than the major or minor sixth, or the minor third." [Babbitt, Milton, op cit., 1965] This is an astounding display of circular logic. Because members of the harmonic series cannot be characterized according to the limited criteria of 12-tet tuning, Babbitt concludes that the harmonic series is neither "consonant" nor "dissonant" and thus is not musically useful. Say WHAT? The harmonic series simply requires *different* criteria of consonance and dissonance than 12-tet. But this in no way renders the harmonic series *useless* as a source of music. It merely demands that we toss out our limited 12-tet definitions of "consonance" and "dissonance" when we compose with the harmonic series. Amazingly, Babbitt continues to heap shame on himself, writing: "The concepts of consonance and dissonance have induced centuries of a comedy of methodological errors, from the rationalistic stage, through the so-called 'experimental stage,' without it having been clear or inquired at any time as to the object of the rationalizing or the experimentation. Clearly, this is because consonance and dissonance are context dependent tonal concepts; it is impossible to assert that an interval is consonant aurally, since it always can be notated as dissonant, and this notation reflects a possible context." [Babbitt, Milton, op cit., 1965] We can only conclude that Babbitt never read Helmholtz; we know this because he is utterly UNfamiliar with the elementary and clear-cut criterion of sensory consonance as defined by Helmholtz. This criterion allows us to classify *ANY* vertical structure as "consonant" or "dissonant" (in purely sensory terms) contrary to Babbitt's ignorant and false claim that "it is impossible to assert that an interval is consonant aurally." Helmholtz's definition easily allows us to define which intervals are "consonant aurally" because Hemlholtz's theory deals with nearby partials interfering with each other to cause beats--this same idea was elaborated by Plomp and Levelt in their classic paper "Critical Bandwidth and Consonance" published *the same year* as Milton Babbitt's article. So not only was Babbitt unaware of Helmholtz's work, he was *also* utterly ignorant of *modern* acoustics and psychoacoustics. This is typical of the worst traditions of modern "scholarship:" read nothing outside your tiny subspeciality. Ignore the real world. Write only book about books about books. Even so, it's astounding and mind-boggling that someone could graduate with a PhD in music--much less rise to the position of professor at Princeton--without ever reading Helmholtz's Tonempfindungen or leafing through a copy of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. But we've still not plumbed the full depths of Milton Babbitt's ignorance. In a stunning display of slovenly logic, Babbitt confuses willy-nilly the *radically* different concepts of musical consonance, sensory consonance, and musical discordance. You don't need to be a scientist to understand the musical importance of making a sharp distinction between these different ideas. Norman Cazden was no scientist, yet he wrote with deep insight about these issues in his 1959 article "Musical Intervals and Simple Number Ratios," Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 7, 1959, pp. 197-220. Easley Blackwood is no scientist, but *he* understood the musical importance of these ideas: Blackwood makes an exquisitely precise distinction between musical consonance and musical discordance in his article "Modes and Chord Progressions in the Equal Temperaments," Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 29, No. 2, 1992, pp. These two far less famous music theorists understood quite well this distinction...yet Milton Babbitt didn't understand it at all. Amazing. Just amazing. Having demonstrated his ignorance of acoustics and psychoacoustics, Milton Babbitt damages his reputation even further by writing: "One can continue with the overtone follies, with what having the overtone series commits one to eat [!], but perhaps it is necessary only to point out that a theory...of representative works of the 18th and 19th centuries undoubtedly would include the concepts of the major and minor triad as definitional... These concepts hardly suggest the postulation of an overtone series as a master concept entailing them." [Babbitt, Milton, op cit, 1965] This is one of the most astounding displays of fractured logic in post-war music theory. After all, once you climb the overtone series you have by definition exited western music...so why must you retain such western concepts as "major" and "minor"? Babbitt never bothers to address this issue. It's obvious that he didn't even understand it--the concept that "major" and "minor" might be artifacts of 12-tet simply lay beyond his grasp. He was too ignorant or too incompetent even to realize that it *was* an issue. Second: Can a professor of music at Princeton actually have failed to recognize that the subharmonic series can be viewed as nothing more than the application of an elementary linear function to the harmonic series? Take the inverse of the harmonic series. You get the subharmonic series. This is nothing more than a composition of functions. It's simple. It's obvious. For heaven's sake, both Hugo Riemann and Max Meyer both pointed this out in classic music theory texts, and Henry Cowell strongly hinted at building chords out of subahrmonics in his 1930 text. All three of these well-known western music theorists used a transformation of the overtone series to explain the minor mode in western music. And yet these basic well-worn classic texts of music theory are unknown to Milton Babbitt... How can this be? At this point we must ask: How did this man get a doctorate in music? How in God's name did Milton Babbitt pass his doctoral oral examination? Why wasn't he flunked out? It's unbelievable. Untaught, untutored, unschooled, unlettered, unedified, unenlightened, unread: these are the words which describe Milton Babbitt. Remember those 7-Up commercials for "The UnCola"? Milton Babbitt is the "UnScholar." -- Hear the Word, ladies and gentlemen. The Prophet has Spoken. William Alves and Denny Genovese, you've received the Law From Princeton. You must burn all your music. Milton Babbitt has come down off Mount Sinai and He Has Spoken: you must give up your "overtone follies." Jonathan Szanto, you'd better dismantle and burn Harry Partch's instruments. Partch committed "the overtone follies." David Doty and David Canright, throw your synthesizers in the trash can-- the High Mikado of Princeton has uttered his edict. You are engaging in "the overtone follies." Marion McCoskey, sledgehammer your sound card and erase all your tapes of just intonation music. You're perpetrating "the overtone follies." Ye gods. And you folks *still* wonder why I hold up Milton Babbitt as an object of endless ridicule and contempt...? Get a clue, people. Babbitt was a pig-ignorant dunce. End of story. --mclaren Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 30 Nov 1996 17:35 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA12670; Sat, 30 Nov 1996 17:36:58 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA11361 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id IAA20434; Sat, 30 Nov 1996 08:36:55 -0800 Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1996 08:36:55 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu