Princeton Theory's Problematics Scott Michael Gleason Submitted In
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Princeton Theory’s Problematics Scott Michael Gleason Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 © 2013 Scott Michael Gleason All rights reserved ABSTRACT Princeton Theory’s Problematics Scott Michael Gleason This dissertation situates historically a group of philosophical problematics informing a thread of post-World War II American music theory, begun at Princeton University under Milton Babbitt (1916–2011) and his students. I historicize and demonstrate the logics behind, without attempting to explain away, problematic notions from experimentalism to experience, solipsism to ethics. Initially a formalist project, Princeton Theory in the early 1970’s underwent an under-discussed Turn toward experimentalism, seemingly rejecting its earlier high-modernist orientation. The dissertation situates this Turn as an auto-critique and provides a variety of hermeneutics for the Turn. I discuss how Princeton Theory before the Turn problematically situated itself as both a logical positivist or empiricist discourse, wherein musical experience plays a foundational role, and a formalist, conceptual, discourse, complicating the claim that Princeton Theorists were unconcerned with music hearing as such. Because musical experience seems to be personal, not sharable, I historicize Princeton Theory’s uneven appeals to the notion of solipsism—that only the listening or theorizing “I” exists—and question this position’s implications for ethics, arguing that Babbitt and his students have been more concerned with ethics and morality than their formalist commitments may imply. This dissertation offers a sustained discussion and critique of mid-century high- modernist formalism, raising the stakes of our understanding of this foundational discourse for modern music theory by showing its historical situatedness, contentious status even for the practitioners involved, and what claims it may still make on our own musical imaginations. Table of Contents List of Musical Examples ............................................................................................... iii List of Figures .................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... v Dedication ........................................................................................................................ vi I. Defining Princeton Theory ..........................................................................................1 II. The Turn .....................................................................................................................28 1. Princeton Theory’s High-Modernism .........................................................33 2. Princeton Theory’s Experimental Turn ......................................................38 3. Meta-/Object-Languages ..............................................................................61 4. Temporalized Being and the Critique of the Metaphysics of Presence ...............................68 5. Tracing Continuities ......................................................................................73 6. An Experimental Reading of Compose Yourself ..........................................76 III. Experience .................................................................................................................83 1. What Is Music Theory: Explanation, Description, or Metatheory? ........91 2. Philosophy of Science and the “Stuff” of Music Theory ........................100 3. Babbitt on Theory, Practice, and Experience ...........................................116 4. Lewin’s Denaturalization of Music Theory ..............................................138 ! i! IV. Solipsism .................................................................................................................149 1. Solipsism and Communication ..................................................................153 2. Logical Positivism, Methodological Solipsism, and the Self .................160 3. Rahn’s “Epistemological Problem” of Intersubjectivity, Solipsism, and Objectivity ......................................................................................170 4. Boretz’s (Anti-)Solipsism ............................................................................178 5. Boretz’s Solipsism of the Present Moment ...............................................187 6. Babbitt, Guck, Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument, Solipsism and Language ........................................................................................197 V. Ethics .........................................................................................................................205 1. Solipsism and Ethics ....................................................................................207 2. The Fact/Value Dichotomy ........................................................................216 3. Ethics of Discourse and Music ...................................................................230 4. Lewin and Authentic Analysis ...................................................................240 References ......................................................................................................................245 ! ii! List of Musical Examples Example 3.1: Babbitt’s Example 1-8a: Schoenberg, Quartet No. 4, First Violin ...132 Example 3.2: Babbitt’s Example 1-8b: Schoenberg, Quartet No. 4, First Violin ...132 Example 3.3: Westergaard’s Example 13: Duration sets for Babbitt, Composition for Twelve Instruments (1948) ........................................................................135 Example 3.4: Lewin’s Example 1.9, “Mozart, Marriage of Figaro, I, opening duet, Passes 0–2.” ........................................................................................................141 ! iii! List of Figures Figure 2.1: First Page of Randall ([1977] 2003, n.p.) ...................................................43 Figure 3.1: Images and Words (Carmichael, Hogan, Walter 1932, 75) ..................133 Figure 3.2: Words and Images (Carmichael, Hogan, Walter 1932, 80) ..................134 ! iv! Acknowledgements Joseph Dubiel sponsored this project, contributing creatively and critically. Martin Brody, Brad Garton, Marion Guck and Benjamin Steege served as committee members. Ellie Hisama served as a proposal committee member. Colleagues, professors, and friends who also contributed include Joseph Abramo, Jessica Arenella, Elaine Barkin, Lee Blasius, Benjamin Boretz, Jill T. Brasky, David E. Cohen, David Curry, Stephen Dembski, David Dies, Joseph DiGiovanna, Dan DiPaolo, Aaron Fox, David Gutkin, Benjamin Hansberry, Justin Hoffman, Benjamin Joffe, Brian Kane, Gabriela Kumar, Maryam Moshaver, Ashley Nail, J. K. and Ruth Randall, Gavin Steingo, John Wachowicz and Jonathan Hiam and The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. I owe longstanding debts of gratitude to Steve Henry, Kelly Moore, Annemarie Pinto and Richard Stephan. I feel profound grief in acknowledging here those who could not provide input directly to this project, but with whom I made music, and whom I will therefore never forget: Mark Cornell, David Scaringe, Brock McElheran and Jonathan D. Kramer. I am grateful to Evie, to Amy Gleason Carroll, and to Michael R. Gleason for support—material, emotional, and intellectual. ! v! in memoriam Rita Rhoades Gleason ! vi! 1 I. Defining Princeton Theory I accept Reality and dare not question it, Materialism first and last imbuing. Hurrah for positive science! long live exact demonstration! . Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling, I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling. —Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Leaves of Grass This dissertation historicizes philosophies informing music theory as practiced by composers trained for the most part, but not exclusively, at Princeton University, from post-World War II to now. Their discourses started as high-modernist, appealing to then-latest developments in philosophy of science—verifiability, logicism, foundationalism, phenomenalism, etc.—but around 1972 took a postmodern Turn to experimental discourses about music. Unpacking this Turn constitutes Chapter Two. Chapter Three discusses Princeton Theory’s uneven appeals to musical experience, as opposed to conceptual thought, yet within a music-theoretical discourse. Chapter Four historicizes, starting with Wittgenstein, Russell, and Carnap, and moving to Descartes, Husserl, and others, the problematic of solipsism, as a kind of grey cloud hanging over the music-theoretical discourse, always threatening. The last Chapter inquires into ethical considerations in their discourses: asking if solipsism can ground an ethics; discussing the fact/value dichotomy as articulated by Babbitt; and arguing that for Lewin musical analysis should be 2 moral. One way to describe the project is as an historicization of a thread of modernist musical discourse, but also, now, an historicization of postmodern discourse. Another way is to say that it is a collection of chapters on various problematics (experimentalism, experience, solipsism and ethics) that are operative in crucial ways within that discourse and music theory more generally. Yet another way to describe the project, with its sonic or aural side out, so to speak, is as