Recent Pasts 20/21 Words Series - Andrew Imbrie and Milton Babbitt, Page 8

BABBITT:

That will give you some sense of what the world was like.  Roger Sessions and Aaron Copland had allegedly put on some concerts together in New York.  They were called the “Copland-Sessions Concerts”, but they were in the’20s.  Roger was living in Europe at that time and Aaron – I’ll call him Aaron.  (Forgive me for that, but I did know him as Aaron.)  And Aaron was the one who put on the concerts and Roger did approve of most of the music that was on the concerts.  And there was a certain tension between them.  There was always a certain tension between them, but that’s another story.  In fact, it is a story.  

So, I went to Roger and I began to study with him.  Well, things went very, very well.  I started from the beginning.  I did species counterpoint, which is now known as endangered species counterpoint.  I then – and we were doing it from two points of view, you know, from the thing in itself and the implications for large scale structure; very much Schenker-wise.  But I didn’t tell you – we were at the end of my first meeting with Roger – because I had to refer to this and therefore, I think perhaps I could and should.   

When we were through talking and we agreed how much I would pay him and how it would go (in Fred Prausnitz’ book it said it paid his rent for a year), the next thing I had to do was decide what we were going to study together because it was not really composition, I mean, it was a rather equivocal situation.  I mean, I was composing but I wanted to learn everything from the beginning. How would we do that?   

So he took me over to the piano and there on the piano was not music, but the first issue of a magazine called [Der] Tonwille which was a magazine allegedly edited by Schenker, but every article in it was by Schenker.  And there was an analysis of the Opus 2 No. 1 of Beethoven, which Roger had obviously been studying and annotating in great detail.  So he said, “Do you know this?”  And I could answer that I did, because I had seen [Der] Tonwille (everybody had – all ten of us).  So that he said, “What do you make of that?”  And we began to talk about that.

And that was the beginning of two things that dominated my life at that time.  Roger’s thinking, Schoenberg’s thinking – and those I regarded as one – and, of course, Schenker, which Andrew referred to, and which I won’t have much more to say about it at this point, since most of you know something about it, or probably a great deal about it.  

So that was the way it went.  Two years later, Roger said to me one day, “How would you like a job in Princeton?”  I said, “I’d love a job.  Twenty-one years old.  Go teach at Princeton.”  I mean, it’s not Millsaps, but it’s a job.  (I’m sorry – local allusion. Millsaps is a small college in my hometown of Jackson, Mississippi.  I was just there a few months ago).  So, I said, “That would be wonderful.”  He said, “I think this can be worked out.  Roy Dickinson Welsh, who is the new chairman of the department, said we need a young person in the department who can teach theory.”  He said, “I mainly need help.”  Oliver Strunk, who had been appointed as the senior historian didn’t need any help, yet there weren’t musicological students about.  There were a lot of people who wanted to do elementary theory and not a lot of people who want to do elementary musicology.  So, that was that.  

Roger came back in about a week and informed me rather sadly that at this point maybe they couldn’t hire me.  Now those of you who knew Princeton in that year, which was 1937, may be able to infer other reasons.  I’ve written about this in a different context and in a different way, but you can infer what you wish to infer.  You’re probably right.   

So, I said, “Okay.”  It was very disappointing because nobody got jobs in those days.  It’s worse – not worse than it is now – but as bad as it is now.  There were very few jobs.  Universities and composers hadn’t come together as yet to any real extent.  There were a few famous composers who were teaching in universities, and practically nobody else.  

So, I didn’t get the job.  The following year, Roger said, “I think now we can do it.”  And I came to Princeton, after studying with Roger my three years.