Milton Babbitt: Sextets / The Joy of More Sextets (1988)

Professor at both Princeton and Juilliard, Milton Babbitt is—by almost unanimous consent—America's most important composer of twelve-tone music. Yet for over three decades Babbitt's music has been more talked about, often in heated controversy, than heard or understood. Sextets, Babbitt's first solo string piece since the Composition for Viola and Piano. Written twenty years later, The Joy of More Sextets represents, in comparison with its predecessor, the ever-increasing lucidity of Babbitt's late style. Built of trichords (groups of three pitches), fragmentation becomes no longer an issue. Like all of Babbitt's mature music, Sextets is written in twelve-tone system, but to listen to it intelligently one must put aside common misconceptions of how twelve-tone music works—such as the idea that octaves are forbidden, or that no note can be repeated until the other eleven have been stated.

Tracklist

1. The Joy of More Sextets (25:28)
2. Sextets (16:57)

Rolf Schulet, violin
Alan Feinberg, piano

New World Records 80364