Three Essays on Milton Babbitt

Abstract

NOT MERELY IN its performance requirements is Babbitt's Composition Lfor Four Instruments what he says it is, but in the most pervasive premises of its construction: its sections are defined by the selections possible from its quartet of flute, clarinet, violin, and cello, and it exploits its set exclusively as a source of trichords for four-line derived-set arrays.1 Only in the last of its sections is this four-part polyphony realized by four instruments; until then, registral or timbral subdivision augments the resources of smaller ensembles (so that, for example, the clarinet plays one line of trichords above, and one below, its break, and the cello, one each in arco and pizzicato, to make four in their duet).