Like his compositions, Milton Babbitt’s writings about music have exerted an extraordinary influence on postwar music and thinking about music. In essays and public addresses spanning fifty years, Babbitt has grappled profoundly with central questions in the composition and apprehension of music. These writings range from personal memoirs and critical reviews to closely reasoned metatheoretical speculations and technical exegesis. In the history of music theory, there has been only a small handf...

• Acknowledgments vii
• Preface ix
• The String Quartets of Bartok (1949) 1
• Review of Leibowitz, Schoenberg et son ecole (1950) 10
• Review of Le Systeme Dodecaphonique (1950) 16
• Review of Salzer, Structural Hearing (1952) 22
• Tintinnabulation of the Crochets (Review of Halsey Stevens, The Life and Music of Bartok) (1953) 31
• Musical America's Several Generations (1954) 34
• Some Aspects of Twelve-Tone Composition (1955) 38
• The Composer as Specialist (1958) 48 Twelve-To...