Recent Pasts 20/21 Words Series - Andrew Imbrie and Milton Babbitt, Page 13

BABBITT:

But there’s one more issue about that, Andrew, and I address more of this to you: He was in Berkeley all these years and Andrew could tell you if we had time and if we could get into that subject of why he decided to come back here… But it’s interesting. When he went to Berkeley he was writing his Second Symphony. He was finishing it up. And that’s anything but a 12-tone work. When he returned in 1951 to teach at Juilliard one summer – remember? – to lecture at Juilliard and I saw him there in New York, of course – he began writing his solo Violin Sonata, which was about as explicitly a 12-tone work as he ever wrote.

Now why is it that having left this ‘den of 12-tone iniquity’ – when he was still writing tonal, let’s call it ‘tonal’ music – that he began to write the 12-tone music among your virtuous people?

IMBRIE:

Well, he just found that he could finally do what he wanted done, and he could still be himself.

BABBITT:

No, look, I was half joking, but many of us have seen many people, particularly those who kept calling this place, again, the ‘den of 12-tone iniquity’. In that regard, the misrepresentations have been very, very great.

IMBRIE:

I think that California people didn’t have these categories – like this is a ‘den of [12-tone] iniquity’ and this is not... I think that people were much freer and they were interested in many things and they would try anything. I think that was the difference.

BABBITT:

They sure do. In any case – no really – I would be happy to answer any questions.

[to audience member] How did you get here? You belong in New Brunswick.

Please. I’d be delighted to answer – there’s so many things both Andrew and I could go into that I haven’t mentioned, but those days at Princeton were much less musical and they were just a fight for academic freedom of our kind. There wasn’t a great deal of music of importance.

I will tell you one more thing of this kind then to give you a sense of the atmosphere, if there are no more questions.

Dear Roy Dickinson Welsh I have described. He was chairman of the department. And we had visitors. Remember Roger Sessions had lived in Europe for eight years and knew virtually every composer, every performer. And when they came over here, most of them as refugees, they ran to Roger right away. And I met many and many and many of them. I’d be summoned by Roger to come to lunch with somebody because he didn’t want to have to be here himself and often it would be in German. I didn’t understand. It would be in Viennese dialect, but we did meet a lot of people. And you did too, didn’t you Andrew?

So, anyhow one day we were going to have a concert. Putting on a concert here was not easy, but we managed to get a quartet that was in residence in at the Westminster – I haven’t mentioned Westminster. (Probably I should have, but I’d rather not). At the Westminster school they had this Hungarian quartet in residence called the Rote Quartet. You remember them? And they decided that they would play a string trio that I had written. And I went over to hear them rehearse and it was in the dark. I was walking to this place where they were rehearsing and I heard, “Edge, edge, edge.” They weren’t the edge, believe me, but that means ‘one’ in Hungarian. And I got there just in time for them to say, “Look, we can’t do the third movement – that’s too long.” And there were three movements. So, okay, what can I say.

About a day before the concert, they call Roy Welsh, “We can’t play the first movement – it’s too difficult.” So they ended up by playing the second, which is a slow movement, which I could practically play at the piano myself. (And I have no illusions about my piano playing). They played this and (Ernst) Krenek was there, and I knew Krenek by then and he was very flattering. And I knew why there were things in it that he caught onto and that pleased him very much, but the response from the audience was anything but invigorating. And Roy Welsh was embarrassed. Here he was with his fledgling department and with his youngest member of the department, he got some very, very, very nasty – what should I say – I’m going to use the word ‘verbal’ because that applies to both the letters and the direct comments.

So, I realized that I had embarrassed him and I didn’t want to embarrass him. After all, he had meant a great deal in my life and I wished to do something about it. So I couldn’t think of anything except I wrote an a capella mass – that is, a setting of most of the sections of the mass, a capella – unaccompanied. I certainly don’t have to explain a capella’s unaccompanied, but it’s – I’d forgotten – it is a four part – I don’t remember it very well anymore. And I wrote it and I submitted it for the Burns Prize hoping it was kind of Reger cum Hindemith – and believe it or not, it won a Burns prize. And I thought it would do that and it did exactly what I hoped. It got some publicity. Presser wanted to publish it, which I didn’t exactly…

Also, do any of you here know who Daniel Gregory Mason was? Peter, oh you do. Peter, I didn’t see you back there. Peter would. Well I’ll just tell you this, then, for Peter’s benefit – this is Peter Westergaard who lived through a great deal of this with me – Peter was one of the first young members of the department when I was no longer a young member of the department. I won’t say anything more about Peter – there’s much more that I could say about him.

Daniel Gregory Mason was a man who wrote a book called Tune In America. And he says the trouble with America was that it wasn’t American enough and there were too many Jews writing music. This – the time of Hitler I remind you. He was particularly taking it out for Aaron Copland, who was becoming very successful. So, he wrote to me a private letter after I received this prize, saying: “It’s wonderful to know that there are young Americans writing music like this.” So I thought that was the time to quit and I did.

And I quit. Thank you very much.