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NEW MUSIC CONNOISSEUR THE BABBITT CENTENARY page 5 + LIVE PERFORMANCES Volume 22, No. 1 ++ ESSAYS Spring 2016 magazine NMC_Draft 4_Spring16.indd 1 8/16/16 9:53 AM Vol 22, No. 1–Spring 2016 New Music Connoisseur is a semi–annual periodical focusing on the work of the composers of our time. EDITOR–IN–CHIEF Michael Dellaira ART DIRECTION & DESIGN Russell Trakhtenberg ADVISORS Barry O’Neal Frank Oteri Kelley Rourke Eric Salzman Mark Zuckerman FOUNDING PUBLISHER & EDITOR, ASSOCIATE EDITOR Barry Cohen ADDRESS ALL CORRESPONDENCE TO: New Music Connoisseur Peck Slip Station P.O. Box 476. New York, NY 10038 Email: [email protected] Subscriptions are $24 for 2 years. $35 for 3 years. New subscription requests, change of address notifications and renewals should be submitted to [email protected] All material © New Music Connoisseur, 2015 2 | NEW MUSIC CONNOISSEUR magazine NMC_Draft 4_Spring16.indd 2 8/16/16 9:53 AM IN THIS ISSUE CONTRIBUTORS.....................................4 THE BABBITT CENTENARY “Milton Babbitt’s World” Program IV by Hubert Howe..........................................6 The Playful Babbitt by Anne Eisenberg.......................................8 Experiencing Milton by Judith Shatin..........................................9 A Quasi-Personal Reflection on Milton Babbitt’s Centenary and Its Celebrations by Benjamin Boretz......................................10 LIVE PERFORMANCES Jewish Music of Interwar Eastern Europe by Leonard Lehrman.....................................14 A Latin Latin Mass by Barry O’Neal.....................15 Hamilton: A Different Look at the Iconic Musical of Our Time by Mark N. Grant..................17 Happy Birthday William Mayer by Anne Eisenberg.....21 ESSAYS The American Composers Alliance music catalog and archives: A collaborative effort between ACA, BMI, and the University of Maryland by Gina Genova...........................................22 NEW MUSIC CONNOISSEUR | 3 magazine NMC_Draft 4_Spring16.indd 3 8/16/16 9:53 AM CONTRIBUTORS An album of music (on disc and on line) for and by Henriette Simon Picker (1917-2016) (cover) was a Benjamin Boretz has just been released by Open noted American shoe designer and artist. In 1935 Space (OSCD33) along with a special issue of The she became the first woman shoe designer to be Open Space Magazine to celebrate his 81st birthday, hired by I. Miller Shoes spending the next 43 years edited and curated by the Polish-American poet Dor- in the fashion industry. Early in her design career, ota Czerner. (www.the-open-space.org). she studied painting with Alexander Brook and Anne Eisenberg is a former columnist for The New Louis Bouché. Picker, who painted continuously York Times, where she wrote about science and tech- for 80 years, was given her first solo exhibition by Dennis Wedlick at the Hudson River Studio in nology in several hundred columns over the past two decades, first for “Circuits,” and then, until it Hudson, New York at the age of 95. She is now rep- closed, for the Sunday Business Section. resented by the Waxlander Gallery in Santa Fe and the PMW Gallery in Stamford, Ct. She also recently Gina L. Genova is the Executive Director of the exhibited at several other galleries throughout the American Composers Alliance, a music publishing northeast including The Carter Burden Gallery in and licensing company established by Aaron Chelsea. Picker worked in her studio in Dutchess Copland in 1937. County until six days before her death at the age of Mark N. Grant is a composer, the author of the 99. Her son is the composer, Tobias Picker. ASCAP-Deems Taylor award-winning The Rise Judith Shatin is a composer and sonic explorer and Fall of the Broadway Musical (2004), and an whose music ranges from acoustic instruments to annotator for the Kurt Weill Foundation and CDs of digitally-processed sounds of the world around us. musicals. His music is recorded on Albany Records. She is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor at the Uni- (1986) Hubert Howe recently retired from Queens College of versity of Virginia, where she founded the Virginia the City University of New York, where he had taught Center for Computer Music. since 1967. He is now Director of the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and Executive Direc- tor of the New York Composers Circle. Leonard Lehrman is the composer of 225 works to date, including 8 Russian songs, recorded July by Helene Williams, Alexander Mikhailëv and the State Symphony Orchestra of St. Petersburg under Vladimir Lande. His 11th opera, The Triangle Fire, ABOUT THE COVER:TP PERFORMING ABOUT THE COVER:TP by Henriette Simon Picker; Acrylic on Board 16.25 x 23” ( 41 58 cm ) Cat. No. 181 Used by permission of the estate HS Picker http://www.hspicker.com with libretto by Ellen Frankel, will be performed by soloists from Bronx Opera and The Metropolitan Philharmonic Chorus in previews in NJ Sep. 4 & 11, 2016 and in NY Mar. 5, 12, 23 & 26, 2017. A proud upper West-side New Yorker, Barry O’Neal, continues his involvement as a choir member at St. Michael’s Church and goes to as many concerts as time and budget permit. He is planning a week at Tanglewood this summer during the Festival of Con- temporary Music. 4 | NEW MUSIC CONNOISSEUR magazine NMC_Draft 4_Spring16.indd 4 8/16/16 9:53 AM the Babbitt Centenary magazine NMC_Draft 4_Spring16.indd 5 8/16/16 9:53 AM “world.” Juilliard Focus Festival 2016 I chose to attend program IV because “Milton Babbitt’s World”Program IV it featured some of Babbitt’s electronic by Hubert Howe music, which is of particular interest to me, although I regret that I missed the his year’s Juilliard Focus festival was be better understood, he was a vilified world premiere of his Concerti for Violin, a tribute to Milton Babbitt. Six con- T presence in the New York musical scene, Orchestra, and Synthesized Sound. This certs were arranged, but Babbitt’s music his music regularly denounced in the pag- work had been unfinished because of the made up less than half of the works played. es of The New York Times and elsewhere. destruction of the RCA synthesizer, and The rest included works by his friends, his And he was a considerable presence on it was reconstructed by Babbitt’s student students, works that influenced him, and that scene for many years, regularly at- Jonathan Dawe. From our perspective in the case of Brahms, music he simply tending concerts not just of his music but today, where electronic music is heard liked. The festival also included program of many others. It is ironic that, for most much more often than in Babbitt’s early notes that were really more like a book, of the years that he taught at Princeton, days, most people simply do not realize consisting of a biography and tributes he lived in New York, and that after he how truly remarkable this music is. There from various people. began teaching at Juilliard, he moved to has been loose talk about how Babbitt I felt that the introductory essay by Joel Princeton, so that his life was always spent “turned” to the electronic medium in Sachs, the director of the festival, gave a commuting back and forth. order to achieve accurate performances, somewhat unbalanced view of Babbitt, Babbitt grew up during the jazz age, because his music was too difficult to be at least the person I knew him to be. For and he played many instruments, so he played by humans. The RCA synthesizer example, much was made about Babbitt’s had the opportunity to see first hand was indeed a unique instrument, and it interest in jazz and his early cabaret songs, the growth and development of jazz and was the only device that Babbitt ever used and the programs includ- to create his elec- ed some of them as well as tronic music, so it is works by Irving Berlin, Ste- important to dwell on phen Sondheim, and Jim- that for a bit. mie Vincent, Donald Marti- In the early 1950s, no’s alter ego. The programs David Sarnoff, Pres- did not include Babbitt’s ident of the RCA one substantial piece that Corporation, which could be considered both was flush with money jazz and serial music, All Set. as the result of its There were lots of nice re- success with the new marks about his keen intelli- medium of television, gence, vast knowledge about gave a speech in which not just music but all sorts he described several of other topics, like baseball, new things that were within the scope of and what a presence he was at Juilliard, popular music. He admired some of what science and technology could pro- where he taught for almost 40 years. it and despised some of it, but his own duce, but which were unlikely ever to be The problem with this picture is that it music was developed along completely built, because there was no commercial leaves out the considerable opprobrium different lines, and it is a totally different reason for doing so. One of the things he that he endured for much of his early experience. While the programs included mentioned was a music synthesizer, which life, not just because of his article “Who several of Babbitt’s earliest compositions, would be capable of producing any sound. Cares if you Listen” (which wasn’t even they featured works from throughout his The company then announced that they his title, but made up by an editor at High creative life, so those who were able to at- would, indeed, produce all those things. Fidelity magazine) but also because of tend all the programs experienced a wide They hired a well-known acoustical engi- the truly challenging nature of his mu- spectrum of his music; but they also got neer, Harry Olson, to design the project, sic, which was never really popular except a sampling of works by other composers and by 1955 they produced the first syn- with a loyal band of his followers, myself that had little in common with Babbitt, thesizer at their laboratory in Princeton, included.