Thinking In and About Music

Preface Acknowledgments Permissions About the companion website Chapter 1 On Milton Babbitt, Schenkerian Introduction Goethe, Schenker, and Hierarchical Organicism Babbitt and Schenker The Implications of the Series Analepsis and Prolepsis Conclusion Chapter 2 Construction, Cognition, and the Role of the Surface A Way into Emblems Rudolf Carnap and Phenomenalistic Construction George Miller, Information Processing, and Memory Babbitt's Cognitively Informed Compositional Techniques Organicism as Cognitive Heuristic: The "Schenker Memorative Approach" "The Requirements"--and Responsibilities--"of Cognitive Communication" Conclusion: Babbitt's Psychology and the Analysis of His Music Chapter 3 The Seam in Babbitt's Compositional Development: Composition for Tenor and Six Instruments "My Most Difficult Piece" Trichordal and All-Partition Arrays "Nearly Divine" Proportions Generative Polyvocality Extending the Trichordal Array The Arrays of Composition for Tenor and Six Instruments "Invariants of Order Embedded in Invariants of Content" Chapter 4 The Surface and the Series in Composition for Four Instruments Chapter 5 Poetic Form and Psychological Portraiture in Babbitt's Early Texted Works Introduction "The Widow's Lament in Springtime" Du Two Sonnets Vision and Prayer Philomel Conclusion Chapter 6 Completeness and Temporality Introduction Over-, Under-, and Multiple Completeness Signals and Verticality Conclusion: "Sounds of Relations" Chapter 7 Babbitt's Gestural Dialectics Introduction: The First Measure of Post-Partitions Sources of Embodied Energetics: Kinesthetic Empathy and Musical Forces The Gestural Function of Virtuosity Liminal Periodicity and the Threat of Discontinuity Serial Anomalies and Text Setting Rhetorical Closing Gestures in Three Late Piano Pieces Conclusion: Babbitt's Gestural Music and Formalist Discourse Afterword: "Anything Vital is Problematical" Glossary References