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. . . Why should the layman
be other than bored and
puzzled by what he is unable to understand, music or anything else? It
is only the translation of this boredom and puzzlement into resentment
and denunciation that seems to me indefensible. After all, the public does
have its own music, its ubiquitous music: music to eat by, to read by,
to dance by, and to be impressed by. Why refuse to recognize the possibility
that contemporary music has reached a stage long since attained by other
forms of activity? The time has passed when the normally well-educated
man without special preparation could understand the most advanced work
in, for example, mathematics, philosophy, and physics. Advanced music,
to the extent that it reflects the knowledge and originality of the informed
composer, scarcely can be expected to appear more intelligible than these
arts and sciences to the person whose musical education usually has been
even less extensive than his background in other fields. But to this, a
double standard is invoked, with the words “music is music,”
implying also
that “music is just music.” Why not, then, equate the
activities
of the radio repairman with those of the theoretical physicist, on the
basis of the dictum that “physics is physics”? It is not
difficult to find
statements like the following, from the New York Times of September
8, 1957: “The scientific level of the conference is so
high . . . that
there are in the world only 120 mathematicians specializing in the field
who could contribute.” Specialized music on the other hand, far from
signifying
“height” of musical level, has been charged with
“decadence,” even as evidence
of an insidious “conspiracy.”
Milton Babbitt
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