Nina Berman & Steven Beck: Milton Babbitt: Works for Treble Voice and Piano
New Focus Recordings

American composer Milton Babbitt (1916–2011) is remembered for the uncompromising works he created using serial compositional techniques and for his pioneering work in the field of electronic music. His fervent embrace of serialism and twelve-tone structures produced compositions of integrity and craft, music that invited admiration yet nonetheless could be difficult for the average listener to warm to. Unapologetic about the challenges his music presented, Babbitt argued in his infamous 1958 article “Who Cares If You Listen?” that the contemporary composer's first responsibility is to the advancement of art and not the general public.

Given that, it's understandable that his music might be viewed by some as daunting and intimidating. Yet, consistent with a composer who saw his music as belonging to a tradition that included both Brahms and Schoenberg, Babbitt's music is not just mathematically precise—he first studied mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania before majoring in music at New York University—but possesses a lyrical dimension too. It's this latter quality that soprano Nina Berman and pianist Steven Beck bring out on their joint release and in so doing have done a great service to Babbitt. Works for Treble Voice and Piano is valuable first of all for the simple fact that it packages all of the vocal music he created into a single volume. In sequencing the pieces chronologically, it also provides a fascinating opportunity for musicological study, especially when the writing spans a half-century. And by the very fact that Berman's expressive voice is front and centre, his work assumes a greater warmth and humanity that for many will make entering Babbitt's world easier. Enhancing the recording's appeal, no song exceeds five minutes and at fifty-five minutes the album is neither too short nor too long.

She and Beck are well-equipped to take on the project. Berman's a versatile singer with ample experience in chamber music and art song, while he's someone as comfortable playing Beethoven as Boulez, Dutilleux, and Wuorinen. Astutely noting the multi-dimensionality of Babbitt's music, she observes that, among other things, “it is notated with precision, yet it swings; it is simultaneously emotionally removed, yet full of pathos; [and] the melodic lines are disjointed, yet form a lyrical tapestry of sound.” His sensitivity to text and specifically his attunement to poetry's musicality is revealed in these works too.

The first song Babbitt published, “The Widow's Lament in Springtime” introduces the album with a piece set to a poem by William Carlos Williams and written in memory of the composer's Princeton colleague Roy Dickinson Welch. The piece serves as an effective illustration of the balance he could strike between adhering to the serial method and matching musical expression to the haunting character of a text. Aptly titled, “Sounds and Words” (1960) uses pure phonemes for its text and in so doing converts conventional vocal expression into free-floating musical material. “Phonemena” does the same, with two versions presented, the first for piano (1969) and the second coupling Berman with electronic tape (1975). In both cases, the acrobatic vocal part is demanding, but she rises to the occasion. Not unwelcome, a humorous side of Babbitt emerges in his birthday tribute to the composer Mel Powell, “In His Own Words” (1988), whose spoken text comes from Powell's own writings about Stravinsky, Webern, and Babbitt.

Two multi-movement works appear, the first, Du (1951), a cycle of seven one-minute songs drawn from a collection by German Expressionist August Stramm and dealing with two characters, Ich (I) and Du (you). In a gripping performance, Beck backs Berman's alternately agitated, desperate, and yearning articulations with spidery lines characteristic of serial writing. Fellow pianist Eric Huebner joins the duo for the six-movement A Solo Requiem (1977), this setting composed as a memorial for one of Babbitt's students, Godfrey Winham, and set to texts by Shakespeare, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and others. Accompanied by intricate piano embroidery, Berman's expression extends from probing reflection in the opening part to anguish, despair, declamation, and resignation elsewhere. In these works' more crepuscular moments (the sprechstimme delivery in the fifth part of A Solo Requiem, for example), it's easy to be reminded of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and Erwartung.

January 2023